Rapidly Changing Form of Learning and How Africa is Being Left Behind

Few years ago…

ME: Excuse me sir, why are we still trying to memorize conversions in this course. We have Google to help us do that anytime any day.

If I travel to China today and I needed to buy a kilogram of meat there and I have Naira, all I have to do is check Google to know the conversion rate to Yen.

So why is the major part of this course about how to convert from one unit to another and another?

{the whole class laughs}

PROFESSOR: He asked a good question everyone. However, young man, it is essential you know all these in your head as a physicist, should in case someone asks you in an important interview in the future.

Well, this happened in my final year in school, and I’m still trying to wrap my head around the answer I was given to see if it was tenable enough to have a course in order to memorize conversion units.

While I might understand that it is important to know the conversion units by heart, it is however a better approach if we had a lot of practicals which lead to calculations where these conversions will be done. That is a more effective approach.

But you see, this is Africa where we are just so used to the status quo and also conventional way of things that we do not see a need to change and evolve. If you ever suggest this in Africa, you are termed a rebel.

Now, let’s talk about the internet and see its bright side because we have gotten accustomed to the negative use, and it has been the language on the lips of our African parents that they discourage people from using the internet.

They are not happy when their kids or children say he or she works online, spend all day with a laptop.

Like I said, that is Africa for you. A quick hint about myself and how I was able to totally build myself to a reasonable level in self business strategy, content marketing, social media strategy, content writing. I built myself professionally thanks to the blessing of the internet.

While I might not want to talk about the fact that I didn’t learn anything in my undergraduate days despite the fact that my grades were speaking of being a second class upper, I feel I could have learnt something better if I sat at home to learn physics (a specialized part) in the space of five years online.

Now, before you jump on the comment section to educate me on how you learn better in school, I will say it doesn’t apply to everyone; so my case is just one in 3 real life scenarios anyways.

Now, that a lot of you are done with school and probable working, are you aware that the internet is the fastest place to get very relevant information and even very quality education?

If you are not, I really don’t know how you check for country time zones if you have an online meeting with someone in another country with different time zones of which I have countless times.

This is Nigeria and Nigeria is in Africa, a lot of us spend so much on internet monthly despite it’s expensive rate.

I spend at least N5,000 (five thousand Naira on internet subscription monthly) and I spend it on YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, Medium and Whats-app.

I learn a lot and network on all these platforms. A lot of you also do the same. It keeps you up to date with the knowledge of the real world and makes you stay relevant with the world of work and mind you, you can only be relevant in the world of work if you have updated knowledge.

The question I have been asking myself for 1 year and 5 months now is that; why hasn’t the African educational system incorporated it yet? Why?

There are some things that are better learned online, seen online than sitting in a classroom for hours to learn.

Conversion rates are better googled than made a course, the 20 elements are better made assignments to be googled than made a course to write an exam for.

We are spending so many years in school in Africa and the result is poor. Thanks to a lot of information that can be easily learnt online or even irrelevant ones that are still made courses.

Universities in other parts of the world now have online platform for distant learners and also as a medium for students to update themselves with the knowledge, and remind themselves what they were taught.

I think that is a pretty good idea.

If Africa wants to develop, it needs to implement technology in the educational system, and we can see the continent has not chosen that development path. Quite sad anyways. Do we wait on the government to build it for us?

Well, yes! However, with the type of government we have, that will take decades; so someone else has to build it.