Joseph Umera|14 March 2016|5:44am
Does school prepare students for the real world? Well, let's see.
To succeed in the real world, three things are very important–Intellectual skill, emotional skill and teleological skill.
Intellectual skill enables you to read and write, and ascertain/comprehend what you read and critically assess them. It is a very important skill because in this era, if you are not learned, many things will pass you by. However, roughly speaking, intellectual skill contributes about 20 percent to our success story in life. Our school system here in Nigeria is doing a somewhat progress in this area.
The emotional skill is a skill that enables us take charge of our emotion, not the other way round. Depression, anxiety, fear, greed, anger, etc. are all emotional problems and the nexus between them and success is a very thin line. However motivated you are, if you cannot handle depression, your motivation will be dampened. Interestingly, you have to note that emotional issues, if not handled properly, can degenerate into a moral issue. Hence, from this stand point, I will like to say that the reason why we have moral dwarfs in our society is because many of us are emotional dwarfs.
A student knows that preparing for examination is best done from the first day of a new term/semester, but the inability to stay away from attractive distractions keeps her away from applying her knowledge properly, will make her indulge in examination malpractice. The same goes to the spouse who knows that cheating is bad but cannot apply or live what he knows. The reason why emotional issues degenerate into moral issues is because we our emotional state is more powerful than our intellectual prowess. Hence, to treat moral issues is to start from the emotional cause.
To succeed, we need to stay motivated in a cause even when we are depressed, control anxiety so as to be able to detect wolfs in sheep clothing's, manage our anger properly and channel them genuinely to the right quarters in order not to close a door against you, etc.
Sadly, schools don't teach us emotional management skills. This is why we have informal organisations conducting seminars in these areas and motivational writers and speaks working painstakingly in this area to bridge the gap. Sadly, people in this part of the world treat programmes like this contentiously because we've been ingrained with the idea of going to school, study very hard and get a good job afterwards. Consequently, we end up developing job skills without developing the man possessing the skill. I will like to advise here that schools should include motivational books in their curricula, at least, one book per term/semester so as to enable our pupils and students develop emotional management skills.
Emotional skill carries 40 percent of our success in life because it strongly colours and determines our attitude. Attitude is everything. Attitude is the way we act and react. The ability to act and react properly is strongly related the state of our emotion. A demotivated person cannot work. A broken heart feebles the body. A down spirit is a down body. Our emotional state heavily affects our lives. It determines what we do and don't do, it affects the way we see life and react to it.
Our emotion is more powerful than our intellect. Managing our emotions become very vital.
Teleological skill.
Everything in life is created for a purpose. Discovering our purpose early enough in life saves us from investing our time–the currency of life, at the wrong place. Teleological skill carries 40% of our success story and has to do with one's ability to discover what he is created for. Because we are created for a purpose, GOD endowed us with gifts/ talents for the actualization of our diverse purposes. Thus, not being able to discover your purpose will amount to a waste and abuse of the resources in you. This explains why we have a lot of square pegs in round holes. Our schools don't encourage purpose discovery. I would really have loved to talk more about this issues here but space is greatly impeding me. So I recommend the first series of my book "Why we Fail" to you. There I explained this issue in details.
Our educational system is not preparing us for what to do after school. Previously, people could easily get jobs in Nigeria immediately after graduation. Government were looking for people to work, companies were coming to schools during convocations to pick best graduating students. Now things have changed. The reverse is now the case. Even first class graduates roam about with nothing! Times have changed but our ideology of going to school to work afterwards remains the same.
From the foregoing, I will like to ask the question I asked from the beginning of this article. Does our educational institutions prepare us for the real world? keep the answer to yourself till I come your way next week.
Joseph Umera,
Author "Why we Fail series"
08175242620.
