RE-BLOGGED FROM OUR SISTER SITE ON WORDPRESS.COM
SAME NOVEMBER 2012, WE MADE THESE COMMENTS ON OUR SISTER BLOG AND ON VANGUARD ONLINE...IS ANYONE LISTENING?
guv-fashola-of-lagos-state
HERE IS OUR OPINION:
Let's congratulate our hard-working governor on many of his progressive policies and methods…no one surely will disagree with the ideas and needs leading to what might become a goal or an objective of his government…but there are many questions needing answers before we move any further on this proposal…these include…
1.Can Lagos State on its own include any subject on its secondary school curriculum without appropriate research work by the NIGERIAN EDUCATION RESEARCH COUNCIL (NERC) and approval by the Federal Council on Education through the Federal Ministry of Education? For instance can Lagos State set up an airport without approval by the Federal Ministry of Aviation? Should we not have some measure of order or of coordination in matters such as this?….
2. Who is going to teach the subject? Who is going to train the potential trainers? Where will they be trained and at what cost to the state? Has our governor ensured that this proposal is not one of the hundreds of money-making schemes that usually get to his table through interested cabinet members?
3. Has the Lagos State Ministry of Education submitted the reasons for the dearth of Yoruba,Igbo and Hausa teachers in its schools and why the failure rate is so high?
4. No matter how prosperous the Chinese become will English ever become a second-class language on the world stage without a physical conquest of the Western world? That is without an Armagedon?
5. What is so special about Chinese that did not make us put Japanese in our curriculum? At least their economy is still rated higher than that of the Chinese.And if India or Brazil which are also surging forward become as significant tomorrow will our children also have their languages in their curriculum?
…busy at chinese…huh?
“…even English Language has not yet been mastered by our students…pidgin is pulling at them,they hardly can speak local languages to their grandmothers and they take french as a joke…now add Chinese on top to see the bundles of confusion we want to create…i think they should restrict mandarin studies to universities as was done for Russian,German,Spanish and Portugese studies…governor Fashola’s ideas are forward looking but its better to set up a department of Mandarin Studies at LASU and encourage those interested with scholarships…but before doing this they should have 2 or three Chinese brought there through bilateral agreement with the government of China that will cost Lagos State nothing…note that China is desperately expanding its influence in Africa and Lagos is definitely a prime target…these people should map out the syllabus and training schedules starting first with 2yr diploma courses and eventually move on to B.A….if i was the Commissioner of Education for Lagos State that will be my suggestion to our Governor." Fall out.
