If learning is listening to your lecturer lecture and memorize facts for tests and examinations, then you’re, unfortunately, right.

Students are tested on how well they regurgitate facts, not how well they understand concepts. Our education system puts emphasis on rubrics and grading students than allowing us to learn.

Instead of sparking curiosity, we’re suppressing it — instead of promoting learning, we’re inhibiting it.

Hmph! Permission to talk about you. Yes you.

You were pretty sure of why you are in school. You didn’t get there to memorize facts; You got there to learn. But our system has put too much importance on grading that students have lost interest in learning.

Computer Science. Great. You've always wanted to be a developer of sort.

First year. First semester. You were excited to take your first programming class. As soon as the professor walked in, he began discouraging you by commenting on the importance of getting an “A” in the class.

You needed it. You've always been the bright student.

You needed to get that “A” since that was the only way you could get bag the first class of your teenage dreams.

Consequentially, your course mates, you, began to focus on your grades instead of learning.

You read to pass tests.

You read to pass exams.

You sit behind the laptop screen, surfing the net for this and that to pass assignments.

When you were assigned homework, you worked together and submitted similar solutions, whether you understood or not, in the desperation of getting an “A.”

The learning had been overshadowed by the significance of grades.

Your dreams are beginning to fade.

You turn to tutorials.

Extra money. Extra expenses. More lies to tell daddy and mummy.

Instead of working on your personal projects and gaining more skills, you all rather spent your time on a subject that didn’t correlate with your goals and study borrowed courses that has no business whatsoever with your career path, only because your grades mattered more to you than your dreams.

But hey, gotta make that A list, right? Haha! Shame!

My point is... why study French? Shouldn't you be rolling in Java and PHP and HTML and this programming language and that programming language?

You wonder... 'Why aren’t we allowed to take courses we are curious about instead of being forced to take something we’re not?'

As you reflected upon your journey, you realized that 95% of “education” is self-taught, either through personal projects or internships.

You wanted to learn JavaScript, so you used online resources and learned at your own pace, on your own time, that too for FREE. Why TF are you in school then if you can teach yourself?

Oh the grades?

Certificate?

We were told... 'When you stop worrying about being graded, you begin to focus on learning. When you enjoy your work, your due dates become your milestones and those milestones turn into self-motivation.'

But education, our Nigerian version of it, ruins the above stated.

Students would kill each other to get an “A” and that is what our education system has become — a place where students are ranked by GPA for their gifted memorization skills rather than one that allows students to fail and learn through collaborative effort.

But just imagine if professors encouraged students to work on autonomous projects and served as mentors who “guides” them, as oppose to lecturers who “grades” them.

Just imagine.

In an era where countless industries are thriving, our education system remains stagnated.

Education drives and shapes our future, for which we spend mindlessly on, yet we don’t stand up for what we deserve — we don’t question this system that limits our potential as students.

For what? A piece of paper with our names on it?

I think I still hate school. 

This video says it all. Click Play