Teaching Made Simple with Olusola Ipaye

We had Olusola Ipaye Director of Foreign Scholarship and the Office of Special Adviser on Education to discuss on the topic “Teaching Made Simple”. This discussion comes in a week after the International Teacher’s day was celebrated worldwide on the 5th of October.

She started by talking about the International girl child day celebrated this past Friday, 11th October. She spoke with respect to the occasion as a day where the girl child is been celebrated and encouraged. She went further to say that the day was declared to promote the girl child by teaching them and making them understand that they are girls, unscripted and unstoppable.

Going into the topic she spoke about the education sector in the 21st century in comparison with the education sector during her schooling days. She spoke of the dedication of teachers, the exploration of social media as being a major change in the educational system compared to her time as a student. Furthermore, when asked about her opinions on the current school curriculum she pointed out that it was important that a turnaround is made in the set of graduates the Nigerian educational system has since been graduating.

She said that in the case of most Nigerian Graduates their training within the school walls is poles apart from what they would often face outside. This she said even in spite of the clamoring and stressing for the need to pass exams she expressed her disappointment saying that graduates after getting out are later faced with another entirely different.

She moved on to speak about the method of testing that children are often put through in their process of learning saying that it was often very tasking. She spoke further saying that the need to keep children down and busy explains the volume of the homework that they are being given. She also said that these days children now have their own innate abilities that they are very quick to demonstrate but parents are suppressing their abilities.

This she said goes to show why the younger generation is not going in their parent's stead. She advised that mothers pay attention to every bit of detail, especially amongst their female children/wards. She said that females tend to have a change in their behavior when something happens to them but when mothers do not pay needed attention, they would miss these signs.

When asked to discuss the recent case of lectures giving sexual advances to their female student which was tagged #sexforgrades. She said that in such cases, the excellent academic achievements that certain students exhibit often puts them in trouble. She explained that when such students take to reading ahead of their classes such lecturers accused of wanting to have carnal knowledge of their students begin to take offense seeing their studious attitude as merely being too forward.