Francis Sadhere
The Proprietress of Chinkelly High School, Ekpan, Dr. (Mrs.) Veronica Ogbuagu has tasked both the Federal and State Governments on the need for them to equip the public schools with modern technology equipment, urging them to direct all their energy and resources on education.
Dr. Ogbuagu said this today at Ekpan, Delta State, during the presentation of projects by students of Chinkelly High School.
She lamented the poor state of Nigerian schools, noting that education had been neglected by successive governments and that there was need to revive the educational system.
She said; “The way forward, most especially for children in the government schools that do not benefit from modern education, is that the government should try as much as possible to equip our schools. Most government schools do not have lights and I wonder how they perform their experiments. So even if they have computers they do not have light to operate them. My advice is that government should direct all their energies and resources to education.”
Explaining why she introduced project presentation programme into her school, Dr. Ogbuagu said that project are very important in the life of a child as it will enable the child to have confidence in himself when making presentation to the audience.
She said the only way to prepare the children to look into their future with confidence was to train them on how to use modern technology in learning, adding that schools that really know how to train children emphasized more on projects.
“We have decided that we are going to train these children up so that when they get to the university they will shine like stars among their colleagues. It is a very serious and tedious work but so far it has paid off,” she said.
According to her, “Projects in the life of the student is very important to the child in the sense that it does a lot of things for the child. It gives the child an opportunity to go and make research; it makes him or her to know how to prepare a topic and how to present it. It also makes the child to have confidence in himself or herself as he pass on information to the audience through presentation. Projects are the advance forms of home works and assignments and it is only schools that really know how to train children that emphasize on projects.
“In the process of presenting these papers the students are trained to face the audience and have self confidence in themselves and deliver their lecture. You saw what the children did just know and I bet you, they looked like university lecturers and most undergraduates and graduates cannot do what they did today.”
The project presentation by the students, according to her, was a right step toward the right direction as it affords the children the opportunity to learn how to go about projects, writing projects and making presentation with modern technologies.
She advised parents to encourage their children, give them all they needed, help them set goals and teach them how to achieve their goals, stressing that the average Nigerian child was intelligent and can thrive in any environment if given the right opportunity t to excel.
“At this stage I think we should try as much as possible to expose these next generation of children to things they should expect in the future, instead of aiding and abating them in exam malpractice and all that. Encourage them, give them all the assurance, tell them how great they are, help them to set goals for theselves and at the end of the day we will have better children in the future and not what we are experiencing now where teachers cannot teach properly or students cannot read very well,” she added.
Some of the parents who spoke to our correspondent, lauded the efforts of Dr. Ogbuagu in trying to prepare their children for the future, just as they called on other schools to emulate what Dr. Ogbuagu was doing.
One of the parents, Mrs. Eseoghene said; “Most of us before we went to higher institution we did not pass through this process and by time we were having our projects we had problems. As these children are making presentations now, they will not have any problem. I like what the school is doing and will encourage them to keep it up because they are making the children to be independent. Even when they are writing exams they do not know anything about cheating.”
Another parent, Mrs. Angela Asakpa, had this to say about the presentation; “I am so impressed with the presentation of my daughter because I thought that she cannot face the crowd. I am so happy that she did her presentation very well. If you go to our schools today and you call on a university student to come and do what these children have done, they would not be able to do it. I will advice all schools in the country to emulate what Dr. Ogbuagu is doing in her school because she is preparing the children to excel in the academic pursuit. With what they are doing now they can defend their projects any time.”
The performance of the children during their presentation took the audience aback as they performed excellently well beyond the expectations of the audience, and this could be seen in the way the applauded at the end of each presentation.
The children who gave their presentations were; Egwonu Asakpa who dealt on the topic, ‘Architecture’, Nwani Chidiebele dealt on the topic, ‘Electoral malpractices’ and Chinedu Nwanchi dealt on the topic, ‘Photography’.
Present at the project presentation were parents, teachers and other personalities.
