There is a lingering question in the heart of so many graduates begging for answer. Why graduates can't fit in into the labour force without going through another round of training. Better put, why graduates aren't employable. This question should make all stakeholders in the Education field to shudder and rally together to profer answers.

Until the source of this problem is identified, there will continue to be a rise in the unemployment rate in our nation Nigeria and in the world at large.

To properly identify the problem we need to beam our searchlight on the educational system as we practise it now and ask ourselves the honest question if our education system is still serving its purpose or it's outdated.

Change, they say is the only constant thing in the world. We have been noticing changes in the architectures of buildings, cars, computers etc. But as for our education system, there seem to be little or no changes at all. Make no mistake, changing nomenclature isn't changes in any way.

I strongly feel we need to declare a state of emergency on the education system of Nigeria in particular and the world at large. My reasons for this Clarion calls aren't far fetched. Let's examine closely our learning and education system.

Why do you think learning isn't fun to so many students? Why do you think some of them struggle to stay up in class during lectures? Why do you think so many students struggle to have a fair grade?

We really need to ask ourselves these germane questions as stakeholders in this field. Not so many of these students are lazy as we tend to believe. Not so many of them are unserious as we think. Some genuinely want to excel in their studies but couldn't.

Has it ever crossed our minds, perhaps our learning or education system is the problem. Are we not teaching yesterday's lesson today to prepare the students for tommorow.? Isbt our education system fast getting outdated?
Can we confidently say that the Education system as of today, is preparing the student for the future that isn't exist yet?

In my opinion, we can't find a way to reposition our education system until we query the following:

1. Why do we focus more on the cognitive learning domain at the expense of the others?

2. Why do our reward system only favour the high I.Q. students at the expense of talented and creative students?

3. Why is our assessment mainly knowledge-based and not creativity- based?

4. Why do we celebrate only the brilliant students and relegate to the background the creative ones?

5. Why is performance assessed based on knowledge through exam or test and not holistically on academic well being of the student through the term or session?

6. Why is our admission structured to only favour the brilliant students and not the creative ones too?

7. Why aren't our learning and education system capable of turning out employable graduates?

8. Why can't our graduates be self independent to set up businesses of their own using the training they have received in school as their asset?

9. Why do our graduates still need to be retrained to be able to fit in into the working force?

10. Why do we have so many graduates that are not employable?

All these whys should make us call for a solemn assembly of some sort as stakeholders to put on our thinking cap and chart a new course, a system they will focus on creativity and innovations. The education system as we have it now has failed. We need to come together and creatively come up with a system that will prepare our students for a future that hasn't exist yet. We need to create a system that will promote unique human intelligence. The era of CGP is gone. Google has been quoted to stay CGP is now useless in the recruiting process. The owner of Ali Baba - Jack Ma once said humans shouldn't be trained to compete with artificial intelligence but rather they should be trained to develop unique human intelligence.

The era of certificate is fast disappearing. Employability is now by what you can do hence the education system should be designed in a way that it helps students to be creative and innovative.

This is where our hope lies. This is the future. This is the only way we can fix the system. Creativity at all levels of education is the future. It is the key

Written by

Stephen Kay

many things goes wrong with our educational system and should be fixed right