Apprenticeship is a learning process in which the learner understudies a master in the trade of interest with a view to becoming a practitioner in due course. This practice is rampant in the trading business, fashion designing and dressmaking, auto mechanic business, blacksmithing, woodwork and so on. Usually, after the acquisition of basic education, children who cannot continue with formal education for any reason are attached to an adept practitioner in any chosen trade to be trained for a number of years. While their mates are in school, they learn their chosen trade under a master who does not bother about notebooks and textbooks, but teaches them to do by doing. At the end of the period of apprenticeship, the trainee is expected to become independent and to be as proficient as his or her teacher in the trade.
The truth is that the apprenticeship scheme has proved to be a more efficient system of education than the formal school system over the years. It gives less room for truancy, absenteeism and other misconducts because of the closeness between teacher and learner. But the main reason for its efficiency is the practical nature of instruction. In the school environment, the teacher labours to fill the learners’ brains with cognitive stuff which they are expected to remember and write down in order to pass exams. In other words, the ultimate goal of formal education as we know it is to pass exams and acquire a certificate. On the other hand, the ultimate aim of every apprenticeship is to make a master out of every single learner. The success rate of these practical learning schemes is very high. It cannot be a hundred percent because some people are completely ineducable. However, majority, more than 95 percent of trainees, end up becoming masters in the trade without writing exams or getting certificates.
The result is that the person who spent many years in secondary and tertiary schools, filling his brain with all kinds of information, gets out of school and realizes only then that head knowledge is not enough to function in the society. Head knowledge will broaden your horizon and make you appreciate life better, but it is a sure recipe for misery and frustration if no practical skills are learnt.
In these days of declining fortunes in education, the picture is even more frightening. The head knowledge that the students who are termed ‘lucky’ to find themselves in formal learning environments are supposed to have in abundance is not even there. More and more schools are producing graduates that have nothing to show for the many years spent in school and the exorbitant fees paid on their behalf. The result is that they cannot clinch the few jobs available for products of formal education, except by high-level corruption that prevails in our society today. Of course, this situation also impacts negatively on the already bad situation. I know of some lecturers in the Department of English and Literary Studies who cannot speak correct English. They got the job of teaching people English because their relation was in a position of authority and influenced their appointment.
Those who do not have such privileges keep roaming the streets and facing panel after panel of interviewers who keep rejecting them either because there is no job or because they are unemployable. This is where the apprenticeship scheme supersedes formal learning by far. Every apprentice who successfully goes through his course does not remain idle. Either he starts his own practice or works for someone until he establishes his own outfit.
The unfortunate thing is that it is very difficult for someone who has spent his youth studying for certificates to accept to go through the rigours of an apprenticeship in order to become useful to themselves. They feel that doing that will demean their status, having already been certified worthy, in character and learning, to occupy respectable positions in society. This should be expected because it will be retrogressive for a person who spent more than 10 years in school to go back to wear overalls and start learning how to crawl under vehicles to trace faults or effect repairs. Moreover, there is no how we can advocate for the closure of schools. That would be moving backwards. However, there is an urgent need to review the education curriculum to make learning more functional.
The idea of paying lip service to skills acquisition as a part of the school work is not healthy. We should not shy away from inviting the same masters that turn neophytes into masters in blacksmithing or tailoring to teach students practically under strict supervision. They may not speak good English but what has the ability to speak English fetched those who have acquired it? Let them speak Igbo, Yoruba, Efik or even Pidgin English, as long as they communicate effectively and transmit the required skills. Some of the local trades that have been relegated can be promoted by inviting practitioners to teach them in school. Ogiri is a local condiment that is still in high demand. A woman who is adept at making it can be employed to teach students of a grammar school how to make ogiri or even dawadawa. Heavens will not fall if basket-weaving becomes a course of study in a high-brow school in Abuja. Cane craft, pottery, ugba production and many more should be integrated into the school curriculum and given prominence. Going to school has become the vogue. Majority of young people are found in school. It therefore lies on a responsible leadership to take the various trades our people are known for into the school system. This will ensure that no student gets out of school without a handy skill with which he or she can start life. It is time to change our orientation about education. Our education must be made to meet real needs of the society, else it loses relevance.
Now is the time for all those who hold their shoulders high simply because they acquired some knowledge of another man’s language or learnt a few scientific formulae to come down from their high horses and help to create a system of education that will address practical needs and save our young ones from their present pitiable dilemma.
Nnenna Ihebom
