If you missed or would like to re-read any of our posts in 2017, we have all of them listed below for you according to themes.
Book Reviews
Historical tensions that have always existed between the citizens’ agency to decide their interactions with books and the state’s structure in trying to limit the access people have to books, particularly books that are considered to be dangerous to readers or the society at large, are highlighted in the book.
King categorises the writer’s toolbox into three layers, with the topmost layer representing the most important tools that any writer will need. The second layer are filled with those necessary tools that a writer will need and the third layer is full of tools that will serve as icing on the cake for a writer.
To highlight the importance of control on habits, two case studies of – a serial gambler and a murder case – were used to establish how bad habits can be voluntarily controlled if there is enough willpower from the perpetrators.
Childhood issues
Why Are You Not in School? The Story of a Young Boy
I also thought of some of the reasons the boy’s family might have considered, for example: maybe the boy lives in a state in which education is not really free? maybe there are no public schools around where he lives? and most importantly, I thought to myself that, maybe the boy’s family just want the best for him, irrespective of the cost implications to them as a family?
Engaging Children During the Holidays
I can easily think of construction sites, Tinubu market on Lagos Island and Tejuosho market on the mainland. Also, going to places like the Ido terminus, Carter and Third mainland bridges, and nowadays some of the theme parks and public gardens in the city will be nice to see.
Although, this piece started as a draft article that I never intended to publish on edusounds.com.ng but the more I thought about the issue the more I realised the need to publish it here. I shared the first draft copy with some friends who are educators and I got some very interesting reactions from three of them.
Sometimes the loss of a parent or both parents can lead to homelessness for some children or young people, especially if there are issues that relate to social stigma against such families.
How Sports Can Help in Developing Reading Habits In Children
It was 1985 and Nigeria had just won the first FIFA JVC U16 World cup and the streets of Lagos had gone agog and NTA was showing the Final match all over again and I had just been sent to a close relative’s house and the TV was on and I just caught a glimpse of the TV and that was the birth of my interest in football as a sports.
Curriculum
The Foreign Curriculums Phenomenon
It is important to understand the significance curriculums play in the education of a people, particularly children and young adults. Ordinarily, curriculums are designed based on many factors that are deemed important by the relevant authorities in any educational setting, at individual school level, local, regional or national level.
The Role of the National Curriculum
The system seems to create an outwardly homogeneous education curriculum that is inwardly deeply fractured.
Feedback Is the Soul of the System
There is the need for more Nigeria based education practitioners (teachers, school administrators, educators, educationalists…) to engage more with the use and interpretations of the national: curriculum, policy on education and teaching practice standards framework.
Emerging issues (series)
The Perils of Public Education in Nigeria
The proponents of free education’s laudable vision saw the successful implementation of the first free education in Nigeria for school-age children up to 18years. This education-for-all programme was rolled out in cities, towns and villages across western Nigeria.
Now, you may see this as a step in the right direction to revamp the standard and professional investment in public school, but a close digest of the import makes it clear that this directive applies to teachers!
It is important to find out the factors influencing the sharp decline in secondary school enrolment in the state and create a very robust and responsive structure that will address such an anomaly.
Since that period, the old Union of Soviet Socialist Republics disintegrated into 15 countries including present day Russia. Nigeria as a country was still very much under military rule and the national population was estimated at 88 million.
It is obvious that the extension in the specified duration of the postgraduate programs is frequently influenced by student’s unpreparedness and negligence in the cause of the study. Funding could also be a consequential encumbrance in completing the program within the specified years.
A fundamental issue with the provision of vocational education and training in Nigeria today, aside the issue of the social perception of it being for ‘education failures’ is that the federal government in particular has not been able to properly articulate and present the role it intends to play in the provision of vocational education and training in the country.
The fact that those teachers failed the test, the decision by the state government to sack them and the uproar the decision generated is not enough justification to destroy such a fundamental aspect of employer-employee relationship – trust.
Policy
Go Back to The Farm: The Vocationalisation of Education In Nigeria
In a week that the New Yorker magazine covered a story on the Brazilian literary icon,Raduan Nassar, on his decision to abandon the literary world for the world of farming to much debates in Brazil since then;
The Challenges of Regulating the Nigerian Education System
The challenges hindering the delivery of quality education by the Nigerian education system are multifaceted. These challenges are fundamentally encircled in these two words: “responsibility” and “regulation”.
Use Mosques to Provide Education – Emir of Kano
It doesn’t matter at certain levels in education if a child was educated under a mango tree or in an air conditioned classroom, what matters most is that learning takes place.
There are many questions that need answers and also, there are many issues that demand both short term and longitudinal research strategies in understanding the dynamism that a bilingual education policy will bring to the Nigerian education landscape.
The Era of Tuition Fees Increment
It is important to note that the economics of tuition fees in higher education in different parts of the world is saddled with both economic and political issues that are influenced by multiple factors that range from philosophical to ideological.
Reflections
My Journey into Education: In Solidarity with Every Out-Of-School Child in The World
So, it all began when I was a child. I can still remember those playful days with fond memories; when I used to play alone in the morning whilst other kids were in their classrooms studying. Back then in Lagos – Nigeria in the late ’70s and early ’80s going to nursery school was still very rare for most kids. I can still remember a particular morning when I was around age of five and I was playing alone, looking at the kids in a church run nursery school in my parents’ condominium rented apartment premises.
I hope whatever differences in opinions, views or positions we may have or take, we will probably have more in common, as far as addressing most of society’s challenging issues are concerned.
The Book Is Dead: Long Live the Book
To most bibliophiles, book acquisition is second nature. They acquire books to read for their immediate intellectual gratifications or to read at a later date or at times to beautify and add to their ever growing book collections.
The Metaphor of the Nigerian Parrot
Although, there are over 450 ethnic groups and languages in the country, the definition is very limiting and non-inclusive of the whole populace of the country.
Blog refers to both an artefact and a practice. As an artefact, a blog (short for web log) is a frequently updated personal online space. As a practice, to blog is to publish a series of posts for others to read, comment upon, establish a hyperlinked connection to and from, or otherwise engage with.
There is that part of the writing process in which the reader becomes the defacto king, that period when the writing becomes a finished article and the reader’s reaction of acceptability, mutability or rejection becomes primordial in the mind of the writer.
In times of loneliness and hardship reading can provide succor and companionship. Through books we are able to live many lives and extend our own world views.
I also embarked on the journey of podcasting and this opened the door of opportunity for me to interview them and benefit immensely from their wealth of specialist knowledge and professional experience.
Society
Instagram, Snapchat, Flickr… Vanity or Preservation?
In November 2016 I interviewed three (3) professional photographers on the whys of some of the pictures they took and what photography is or isn’t to them. The responses I got from the three of them were: interesting, surprising and at times very philosophical.
On Photography, Moments and Loneliness
Loneliness of a photographer; fear and loss; the ephemeral nature of images and the fact that “The photograph that is produced of the moment is never going to be the moment…”
I have to confess that I only got to know about her PhD qualification after we’ve almost completed the interview and she just randomly mentioned it whilst talking about her MA degree!
Between Psychiatry, Literature and Culture
He blogs regularly at Mindreadings (Femi Oyebode’s musings), where he writes on issues of interest and makes use of beautiful pictures to visualise his writings and simplify his thoughts to the general public. He’s very poetic with his writings on his blog and he randomly drifts in and out on issues seamlessly, attaining that level of writing that can only be achieved by someone who specialises in the readings and understanding of the human mind.
Between Psychiatry, Literature and Culture (2)
“It has always seemed to me that translation into the literary classics is the first step into nurturing a language and giving it life.”
The Strange Case of Fanta, Sprite and Benzoic Acid in Nigeria
In order to address the issue from a scientific point of view, edusounds.com.ng interviewed Dr Olumayokun Olajide, a world renowned pharmacologist and Senior lecturer in the Department of Pharmacy at the University of Huddersfield in the UK.
…Veins, arteries and nerves of the house
where electricity and water once flowed
are frayed, melted, dysfunctional.
If I were to describe a house fire,
I would describe how memories are left
Destination Brazil, Arrival Nigeria
Her research focuses on the importance of private and everyday life for wider social relations and political processes in the Yoruba-speaking Southwest of Nigeria.
Historical information was primarily conveyed in narratives called itan which belonged to the representatives of important groups.
Public Space as an Institution of Learning
“Even though I was a foreigner and a stranger, there was always somebody around to play with or to talk to, so I really enjoyed myself.”
The Story of the Nigerian Montane Forest
It is interesting to know that a childhood experience has become a lifelong career and hobby. When Dr. Chapman decided to visit Nigeria in the year 2002, little did she know that she was going to embark on something that would not only be life changing to her but would be a bee-hive of activities.
“…This history has an uneasy relationship with depictions of the city in tourist publications as an inclusive world of adventuring, beaches, dining, and warm weather…”
The residents became agitated and disoriented as majority bought flats in this estate not only for its affordability but more for its location.
While I was travelling on a public bus sometime in 2016, there was a fellow traveler on the bus who sat on the seat next to where I sat. During the course of the journey she did not utter any word.
The Shortage of Medical Doctors
I once had to visit a clinic some time ago after I had tried self-prescription (just to avoid the hospital hustle) but the symptoms persisted, after long hours of waiting in the queue and shouting at the nurses who will sometimes make their friends and relatives jump the queue, claiming all sorts (and those ones too will still blame government for corruption), I became exhausted to the extent that I didn’t know how to describe the symptoms of what I was experiencing to the doctor.
Historically, the railways in Nigeria were conceived and constructed from Lagos to the furthermost parts of Northeastern part of the country, to open up the hinterland of southwestern Nigeria along its corridor.
It influenced inter-ethnic interactions in areas like: marriage, clothing, foods and language borrowing. In addition, the continued development of the known big cities in Nigeria such as: Lagos, Kano, Kaduna, Zaria, Enugu, Aba, Port Harcourt and others were enhanced by the presence of railway termini in them.
We wanted to do something that will show people that look, waste sector is a very huge sector in terms of investment. It is something that will never go away, everybody generates waste and if you are able to have a good solution in that sector and capture people and start forming like a scale-up, there is really no limit to how much money you can make.
It’s amazing to see the scale of the change starting from an individual level and then starting to actually ripple across communities. I think that most people operate not according to what the law actually says but according to what is commonly practiced and so many times practices that diverged from the law are the norm instead of actually following what the law says.
I was very interested in that, and that is still the main period that I’m interested in to be perfectly honest. But the project has expanded in its time frame because of the density of sources.
They are usually harvested by men and children who pour water into the holes in which the crickets live in. This makes them hop out and then they are caught. These highly agile orthopterans are killed by freezing them for few minutes before they are roasted. Their wings and limbs are removed before they are consumed.
Today a lot of hardworking and educationally qualified young people in the country are unemployed or underemployed while those with little or no formal education have little or no access to outlets that can provide them with alternative learning opportunities to become educated or better educated individuals, as well as, develop necessary life and employability skills.
The Sad Case of a Deceased Student
A situation in which people engage in victim blaming wouldn’t change or improve the status quo, rather, it would re-enforce it, which most likely wouldn’t yield any positive outcome in future.
Of what Nigerian literature are we talking about precisely, is the question one should answer first. Ibo, Hausa and Yoruba authors, alongside the many that come from different ethnic backgrounds, have each their own particularities.
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