By By: Oyem, Israel Ekene.
Nothing can be substituted for hard work, particularly in students’ academic journey. There’s a time to read, a time to play and a time to rest. It is needful to state that failure to properly know when each of these period are to be put into action, failure is always the outcome of such student life. Reading isn’t something that’s easy to do; hence, many students find it hard to discipline themselves when it comes to sitting in a spot with their books to read. This is the problem, because many an educationist or situation-made educationist tend to use this as a tool to amass wealth at the detriment of the students. This article will delve into how hard work is becoming a missing tool in students’ academic life, the consequences of examination malpractice and a way forward.
It is sad to mention that the life of every individual in the society – at least 90% of all those in our society, pass through educationist; hence, it is a matter of seriousness for educationist to know that we are game changers and we our attitude towards the academic and moral growth of our students are influencers of how the leaders of tomorrow we are nurturing becomes. Our way of life and morals, will surely tell on our students. It isn’t therefore news that we are either making or marring the lives we are nurturing. We complain about bad leadership, forgetting that it didn’t just start today. It could start at an early stage. Take for instance, a child being aided in carrying out examination malpractices, when the child grows and become a member of the society – a functioning one, he would also not have second thoughts of doing something illegal or immoral, because the foundation has been set. We see many educationist engaging in providing answers for students in examination halls, just because they don’t want them to fail. It is shameful that after their spending more than 6 years in secondary school, you end up providing answers for them. What an utter shame! This act only brings them the wrong belief of living an immoral life as a normal one. They’d believe black is white because black has been called and made to look pure.
Asides creating a false sense of doing wrong thinking it is right, it makes them lazy. Laziness takes away one’s sense of responsibility. Every student knows that the right thing to do is to read – that’s the only task! But, like I said, some educationist end up creating the awareness either directly or indirectly that they would be assisted during the exams, this goes a long way in making the students feel relaxed and dependent on the exam malpractices waiting for them. Every functioning and great individual in the society is a student in the school of responsibility and discipline; you can’t be unserious as a student with your life and expect something tangible to be the outcome of your years as a student. It all boils down to responsibility. If they won’t take responsibility of their lives at this early stage in secondary schools, it would be difficult for them to amount to something great in life. This explains why we are still far below in this part of the world. The issue of responsibility has been left undiscussed and replaced with demoralizing shortcuts.
Parents aren’t also left out. Parents are also in support of this disaster. Haven’t you thought of it? You’ll send a child to school, and feel unconcerned about the academics. There’s no time you told the child to bring the books while you threw some questions for answers. No, most parents leave the whole job to the teachers, which isn’t supposed to be so. It is your personal duty to evaluate what the school is doing on your child’s intellectual growth and if it isn’t pleasing, you are free to go down to the school and make complaints. But majority of the parents do not do this. This is why when the child is about to write an external exam like WASSCE, GCE or NECO, the parents support the malpractices. You end up making payments from JSS 1 or SSS 1, depending on when the child resumed the school, only for you to also help the uncultured educationist in carrying out exam malpractices which you’d have to pay for again. Isn’t this disturbing? This simply means the money you paid all through is a waste and they didn’t do their jobs, because of they did, they’d have not thought of engaging the students in examination malpractices.
This is a terrible state which many educationist and parents have made a reality. Until we take our stand against this canker called examination malpractices in Nigeria, we won’t be able to meet up with the booming and growing standards the 21st century. We need to eradicate this disease in our educational system so as to create a sense of moral living where students take total responsibilities of their lives and not depend on shortcuts to success, because shortcuts can cut short one’s live. Asides this, it also makes one skip the process. Processes are meant to help us learn one thing or the other towards the path of greatness. We can do better as educationist, parents and students. There is no shame in failing; with every failure comes a lesson if properly utilized.
