One factor may account for the very poor appreciation of the teaching profession in Nigeria. This may be their apparent lack of productivity. They do the same things over and over again without any sign of making effort to do better. The holiday period that is effectively 4 out of 12 months in a year are wasted, rather than being used for self improvement and acquisition of skills.
It has been quite a long while that we had teachers such as Akpabio: Physics; Ogunlade: Biology and Aluko: Economics with well authored books. Of course we had the Femi and Dotun Oyewole brothers as teachers that produced textbooks in Chemistry and Physics. We also had R. A. Ogunlade and Yanney Ewusie with Biology textbooks. Those were the days when teachers were real teachers.
Teachers of these days seem not to even pretend to do more than the copying of notes on the blackboard, or just merely hand over the same materials to class captains, while selling various wares on credits right on the school compound.
Whereas, teachers worthy of their calling is a learner for life. Learning is continuous and from any source. He or she is about practical demonstration of theoretical knowledge inside and outside the classroom. The so-called COREN certified engineer has a lot to learn from the famously derided road-side mechanics. In fact the road side mechanics are of greater value to the society anyway.
The Technology College has vacancies for those with practical skills obtained through apprentices and attachment to companies and even the so-called road-side technicians doing all the things described in this write up. We have no use for those with Certificates that have no practical value. We dont care for the dicipline of the degree.
