Not quite long to run into decades or so, there was this excellent agricultural practices measuring up to extant primary and secondary schools curriculum. Then students found ground to experiment with contents of their paperwork bordering on agro-economy by witting and unwitting conscription into various farming and animal husbandry corps using vast school farmlands. They learnt tilling, making ridges and other incidental toils of agricultural enterprise with sheer amusement, without pay from the teachers who cheeringly guide their usage of farm tools accompanied by teaching guides and their application of the acquired knowledge to mitigate parents farm workloads.
While this most enthralling leisure moment away from vapid class troubles lasted, immortal life values like pride and dignity of labour were ingrafted in them during those formative years which outlived their stay in school. In addition, school management also nurtured pupils dexterity in a motley of artistic innovation regularly churned out for public display and subsequent auction of same to the mesmerized purchasers. Of most enthusiastic in these exploits is the liberty granted pupils to trade those artifacts and use the proceeds to offset ever geometry academic bills. It was the golden era of primary education as pupils were treated to mouthwatering chances buried in agriculture. Our neglect of this dignified track boomeranged into unemployment crisis.
Unlike lately, where teachers who battle their nonchalance to show they still have some drops of blood running unsteadily down their spine enough to march out pupils in the fields, yet end up being petty feudals’. As time went by, pupils earned vassalage nay proletariat honorary title, pityingly breaking the unhappy earth for the feudal teachers whose incentives to them is a phalanx of unsmiling trigger-fond men to garrison economic trees that sat sparsely in the school. At times, these guards go on rampage to smoke out rebelious students who are neither quivered by the former’s countenance nor submissive to rules fencing them off from those trees. Today pupils labour with no morals learnt from work life. They see such skid off endeavor as hip of sands emptied on their pathway.
There’s no gainsaying that this national uplifting practice like the dusk sun had receded into academic oblivion. Government aloofness and reclusive poise to sustaining pupils’ skills acquisition and farm training fast-tracked it’s non-existence. Again, some privileged parents delighted much seeing their wards piddle away from farming occasional hazards.
And so, despite all whooping loans invested in agriculture on youths who might have tired out from bandying lumped files office to office in search of white collar jobs bears no significant reward. What can account for this stagnation or rather unprogressive returns is lack of adequate honing of the grown youth in agricultural opportunities at tender age. The Igbo man said” You don’t learn the use of left hand at the twilight of your life”.
I agree completely. Though another determinant of poor harvest that cannot slip mentioning is the cleansing obligation flagrantly prosecuted by the emboldened herdsmen forcefully appropriating land to himself and raining destruction on seedlings culminating into astronomical prices of foods.
Be that as it may, there is glitter of hope in the horizon as Governor Ugwuanyi through his willing servant of the people, ENSUBEB boss, Hon. Ikeji Asogwa, an administrative maven, a cognoscente of human and resource coordination .
Hon Ikeje is an administrator who still holds as well as lives the ancient human values of hard-working and attendant results. Bent on sowing the old days unfailing primary education values, the ENSUBEB chief with the undiluted support of governor Ugwuanyi has resurged agricultural observance in our schools by constructing fish-ponds and poulteries together with adequate water supplies and solar powered electricity to these animal farms.
It appears the ENSUBEB chief is not yet done with the items in his educational draft sheet.
The outstanding Hon Ikeje knew how we have suddenly eroded our innocence hence his exhortation for maximum calvary force to encircle the nascent projects against criminal assault from children of no joy. He as well advocated that teachers should immerse pupils’ in this knowledge hunt as to weaponize them as catalyst of change in the society than ply criminal ventures.
Bibian Anekwe News…added…Hard work without talent is a shame, but talent without hard work is a tragedy
Written by
IKEMSINACHI NWA-ONAH
A Political Analyst
Media Team Member: Enugu di n’akachukwu movement
