There are few things I find more enjoyable than telling a good story, one of them is listening to one.
Having conversations with elders is 33% enlightening, 33% informative, the other 34% is a mix of condescension and blame.
We have endured this mixture for years on end now and I’m quite certain that our generation is used to it. What is sometimes unusual though is the unrealized gravity of the kind of information revealed in the other 66% of the combo.
I recently had one of those conversations with my elderly neighbor and he recounted to me what it was like to go to university in their days. Of course the focus was on how much more effort they put into education in those days and how our generation is too unserious (you know the rest of that conversation). But then he also spoke at length about how much better the conditions were for students at that time.
He is an alumnus of my university and as such it was easy to visualize the parts of the school that had undergone changes in structure or usage and sometimes both. He talked at length about how there used to be a refectory that served high quality meals valued at N8.50k – of which N8 was covered by the government and students paid 50kobo to get a meal ticket to access their meals. The same area now houses a host of eateries who charge quite the fee for grossly below – par meals.
He is an alumnus of my university and as such it was easy to visualize the parts of the school that had undergone changes in structure or usage and sometimes both. He talked at length about how there used to be a refectory that served high quality meals valued at N8.50k – of which N8 was covered by the government and students paid 50kobo to get a meal ticket to access their meals. The same area now houses a host of eateries who charge quite the fee for grossly below – par meals.
He said much more about how it was easy to walk to a lecturer and have a reasonable discussion with them whenever there was a mistake on any of his results and how re–marking of disputed scripts helped solved many a problem that could plague a student’s career; sadly enough he warned me never to try that with any of my results seeing the system that operates today and how flawed it is (I reminded him that I already graduated).
The narrative continued on into the night and he harped on the quality of lecturers they had back then, how dedicated they were to their job and the success of their students – something which students of today will agree that they cannot find in many of their teachers. He even told me about the illustrious men today who were his school mates back then and some checks in their history that may never get printed (including some governor who was purportedly withdrawn for academic failure and had cultist affiliations).
The narrative continued on into the night and he harped on the quality of lecturers they had back then, how dedicated they were to their job and the success of their students – something which students of today will agree that they cannot find in many of their teachers. He even told me about the illustrious men today who were his school mates back then and some checks in their history that may never get printed (including some governor who was purportedly withdrawn for academic failure and had cultist affiliations).
In the end, for all the blame being heaped on our generation I believe some (plenty) of the blame is on the system. The system that allows lecturers to operate like gods and make the lives of students miserable without much to be done by way of remedy. A system that has made everything so hinged on money that education for the poor is no longer feasible. A system where students try so hard for long periods and ultimately find out that you can never beat these bad eggs among the lecturers - so you have to dance to their tune.
Don't get me wrong, there are bad eggs among us and one day we will talk about that. But kindly help me ask them, if your generation had it so good, why are you making it so hard for the next generation.
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