TOTAL QUALITY EDUCATION: Need For Self-tutorship

The recent strike by University lecturers in Nigeria and the concomitant effect on the quality of education has again brought to the fore the need for self-tutorship as a sine qua non for quality education. For over eight months, public universities in Nigeria were under lock and key and students left to the vagaries of life. This development prompted many patriots to call for a re-examination of our educational system and mode of education. Proponents posit that self-tutorship will build up an attitude of searching for knowledge in Nigerians whether in school or out of school, whether deprived or favoured. Self-tutorship entails the inculcation of a “Do-It-Yourself mentality” in students rather than the pervasive spoon-feeding pedagogical style of rote learning and regurgitation of lecture notes aimed at just passing examinations.

Total quality education stresses the need for continuous improvement in knowledge acquisition from cradle to grave. Education is a lifelong endeavour and tutoring yourself means understanding your own learning process and being able to guide yourself through the mastery of a new concept or skill. To tutor yourself, you must take an objective and systematic approach to identifying and working on your weaknesses, both real and imagined. In short, self-tutorship simply means being your own teacher and developing an inquisitive mind that relentlessly seeks out knowledge as a researcher who probes issues to tease out practical solutions to problems.
The British system of education foisted on Nigeria at Independence predominantly sought to produce administrators and personnel who will replace expatriates in all walks of life. This necessity, unfortunately, led to the perception of certificates and degrees as meal tickets because graduates were recruited as soon as they completed their programmes, to fill the numerous vacancies that then existed.
Inadvertently, this led to the substitution of certificates and degrees for real education and engendered a newfangled desperation, with some unscrupulous Nigerians procuring them with money.