Mind your tone or get stoned

Mind your (use of) language

Many years ago, during my postgraduate programme, there was a class interaction where I challenged an assertion and demanded the proposer defend their position or rescind their premise. This was supposed to a rigorous and robust exchange of ideas and opinions, I did not think anything about it until our lecturer sent me a stern email asking me to apologise and withdraw my comment.

I apologised and withdrew my comment even as my colleagues could not see or understand why I was asked to reflect on my way or tone of expression. Within an international setting of the use of English, the lecturer had set the lowest common denominator of expression that mollified tone, crippled expression, eliminated nuance, and elevated the perfunctory to making an art of the bland.

Language is getting difficult

If anything, it stifled debate because no one was sure of what the arbitrary rules were as different versions of English sought a level of uninspired thought processing, each of us walking on eggshells just biding our time through the 8-week module in the hope that we will not lose purpose for the next challenge.

I now find that the language of our once globally understood and easily accessible discourse is evolving so rapidly into Shibboleths of war; you get usage, context, meaning, structure, tone, or grammar wrong, and you risk punishment and losing everything at the onslaught of excoriation and disapproval. It is like there is a cohort of readily offended seekers with feelers sniffing any mode of communication to find something to be offended by and set off a pile on.

The shifting sands of meanings

It is literally impossible to keep up with the terms and the redefinition of terms, the surfeit of sociological and anthropological jargon in search for a situation to contextualise in psychobabble, and whilst I have kept up with gay changing from happy to homosexual in common parlance, when I woke up this morning, I realised woke hardly referred to getting out of bed but a sense of awareness that triggering culture wars. Whatever that means.

Wiser counsel would suggest one keeps out of the global conniptions that pass for healthy debate. It left me wondering, if you have to qualify a noun, then the noun is qualified because it cannot stand alone for understanding, appreciation, and context at first use, else there is no need to qualify the noun in the first place.

Dare I even mention the noun in dispute? Not if I want my peace. I can contend with the debates in my head it is when you have to deal with people who are unpersuadable and entrenched, fully convinced of the rightness of their apparently unassailable views; it is a case of banging your head against a wall. Fundamentalist and extremist, they are, just avoid them.

Tweeting beautifully without apologising for it

The simplicity of the tweet

On a tweet that composed a seminal thought and political discourse within the conservative landscape of the 280-character limit of a simple tweet, some responses sneered, “Too much grammar.”

I have been on Twitter since the 8^th of February 2009, which means in three days I would hit a decade of tweeting. One thing tweeting taught me was brevity, concision, and precision. At first glance, these words are literally synonyms depending on context, but when the definitions are reviewed, you get a sense that they have different qualities.

Brevity - concise and exact use of words in writing or speech. This would suggest knowing the platform is limited, I would find the best words to present my tweet, which sometimes would include a foray into sesquipedalianism. If I have a word that fits the bill, I use it.

Concision - is the cutting out of unnecessary words while conveying an idea. For anything I have to say in a tweet, I want the complete context to be conveyed, I never used tweet elongators when Twitter had a 140-character limit. It could have made the tweet difficult to read, but when understood, you needed no other tweet to explain the tweet.

Precision - the quality, condition, or fact of being exact and accurate. Once the tweet was composed, there was no ambiguity, it conveyed exactly what I wanted to say, with its difficult and long words, the context of exactly what I had in mind and no doubt about what I intended.

Without the rules, we would be fools

For that, some people appreciated the work that went into the tweet, maybe it even gave some the opportunity to extend their vocabulary. I was never one to economise on what broad range of words the English language offered to anyone who was interested, whilst resisting a decline into neologisms.

Then, some would sneer, “Too much grammar.”, as if grammar had become a synonym for obscurity, verbosity, complexity, difficulty, or pomposity.

Grammar, according to the Cambridge dictionary is (the study or use of) the rules about how words change their form and combine with other words to make sentences. Invariably, without the rules of grammar, you cannot make sentences, you just have a jumble of words that make no sense, except if it is a word puzzle.

Covering for inadequacies

I have come to the conclusion that the sneering is more a lack of comprehension of what has been written, the people, rather than tax themselves with broadening their knowledge or maybe attempting a better delivery of the tweet, as the way people convey their ideas can be a matter of style, they revile and castigate the writer with a heckle, with disdain, with contempt or some other device to belittle the person and by that give themselves a sense of superiority over the expressed ability of the writer.

I do have a writing style, some have suggested it could be flowery, my blogs flourish with that style, you can read anything I have written in the last 15 years of blogging and conclude, that is unmistakably Akin expressing himself.

It goes without saying that much as we nominally recognise Nigeria as an English-speaking country, English comprehension amongst many lags their ability to read, as such, Nigerians would find that they have to take ‘English as a foreign language’ examinations on applying to universities in the UK. You would expect them to pass those examinations, but over-confidence can easily catch you out.

They do not matter

In a series of tweets, I averred, “Basically, if you have difficulty reading or comprehending a sentence of English language and think you can cover your inadequacies with condemning the sentence as excessive grammar, the truth is your proficiency at English is rudimentary if not illiterate.” I will make no apology for that viewpoint or for the fact that my privileged education should pander to the lowest common denominator of communication.

If you cannot contribute to a discourse or broaden the ideas offered in a public space like Twitter, it is better to keep your counsel than display your ignorance. I believe everyone has a story and a mode of expression, Twitter can be a marketplace of opinions and great ideas, and anywhere I find that people are expressing themselves in an interesting or inspiring way, I like to acknowledge them rather than sneer at them.

What I do not understand, I seek clarification or explanation of, and that is why I decided to tweet about grammar and comprehension, because nothing was wrong with what was said, and everything was wrong with those who had nothing to add to the viewpoint than participate in the braying mob of anti-intellectuals shouting out – “Too much grammar.”

We should never be afraid to express ourselves in the richness of all that we have acquired, experienced or been influenced by, most pertinently, never let the sneers limit your communication.

Basically, if you have difficulty reading or comprehending a sentence of English language and think you can cover your inadequacies with condemning the sentence as excessive grammar, the truth is your proficiency at English is rudimentary if not illiterate.

— Akin Akíntáyọ̀ #FBPE (@forakin) February 4, 2019

Thought Picnic: In search of the rational mind

Winning the freedom to be

It is becoming clear that the greatest battle to fight is one for the rational mind, one that is open to ideas and engagement, one that is willing and ready to jettison orthodoxy, tradition and beliefs for a newer understanding of things.

To be able to free oneself from the norms and chart a path of individuality risks ostracism and excoriation. Unique as we are in our beings, the need to belong even if belonging is inimical to our well-being is one of the poor sacrifices we make in conformity and securing ourselves in our comfort zones.

We create insurmountable boundaries in our minds and imagination, narrow our horizons to the perfunctory and limit our expectations to things either already in our grasp or the old laurels that gather dust in a backwater of irrelevance.

Slaves of superstition

Rather than unlearn, we reinforce the subjective at the expense of the objective and idle the mind to being spoon-fed the witticisms of lesser people we have given the power, means and authority to lord it over us and abuse us in our fawning subservience.

Our minds have become the raging mob with those readily incited to the reprehensible and in our subconscious that eventually gets acted out, we diminish the greatest resource of our humanity to becoming mere humans.

We are, by terms, the slaves of superstition – the widely held but irrational belief in supernatural influences, especially as leading to good or bad luck, or a practice based on such a belief.

Beyond reason

In that, we lose the trail of reason, out of which we could find a reasonable purpose of exercising every latitude of reasonableness. A mind governed by superstition cannot be questioning, inquiring, challenging, inquisitive, and precocious or ever dare to be irreverent.

We accept things as they are beyond which there is no other progress but to repeat the vicious cycle of bad traditions disabling our capacity.

It has to be a conscious decision to break free, to ensure that in seeing we observe, in hearing we listen and learn, in touching we feel, in interactions we begin to understand and appreciate other views. When presented with the prism of life, every incident of light brings new perspectives, if we are seeing just one thing, it means you, the prism and the source of light are not moving, we might well be glass-eyed.

Seeking the rational mind

The beginning of rationality in plotting the course from being steeped in superstition is to read and to comprehend. Comprehension requires exposure to mechanics of language, inflexions and intentions, context and usage, there is a world of ideas that would not fall off the trees onto our heads jolting us into conscious revival.

We need to desire that sense and determination of individuality that can change not only ourselves but those around us. Nothing is sacred or sacrosanct, facts must be scrutinised constantly for flaws, data is a jumble to be made sense of and opinions are just what they are opinions.

Yet, we can dare to be original, take initiative even in a crowded field without fearing to think differently from the accepted or what has been deemed the acceptable. We have to battle our idols, our anxieties, our misgivings, our doubts, slaughter the sacred cows and barbeque the steaks for a feast of emancipation.

We war against the superstition that has held us hostage for too long and set out on an adventure into the unknown, searching for new truths, debunking old myths and laying the legends to rest where they belong, in stories, in fables and in fantasy.

Nigeria: The need for improved English education

The need for Nigerian expression

I read Nmachi Jidenma’s blog titled Why every Nigerian on the Internet should start a blog [1] where she coordinates the editorial activities of CP-Africa.

One can easily see the premise of her argument; as usual some blogger with a big magazine profile receives a scam email purportedly from some Nigerian along the lines of what is commonly known as a 419 Letter [2] and finds the opportunity to fulminate.

When Peter Reilly who contributes to Forbes.com first wrote about the letter, he noticed a subtle change in the tone of a 419 letter from that of persuasion preying in the greed of the victim to fearful threats and is was only normal for him to default to stereotype with the headline Nigerians Switching From Greed to Fear [3].

It took one well-placed comment by a Nigerian resident in Nigeria to get Peter Reilly to change the title of his blog though the underlying URL still registers the original title; he then went one step further offering insightful research about the original of fraudulent scams and the resolution of some interesting cases.

Effective communication presages change

In the comments under his first blog he engaged the commenters and it appeared he was contrite enough to write the follow-up blog Fraud Has No Nationality- Apology to Nigeria [4] in what I felt was a display of maturity and interesting raconteuring, you had to hear him out.

However, back to the purpose of this blog, Ms. Jidenma noted that a Google search for “Fraud” almost always presented contextual results that made Nigeria prominent and this is exacerbated by the fact that there are not enough positive Nigeria narratives on the Internet to minimise the association between Nigeria and fraud.

That thinking is well placed but there are problems we do need to address, the comments posted on the Forbes.com posts ranged from a dispassionately objective criticism of stereotyping to somewhat unnecessary but naturally expected defensiveness.

An underlying problem

Now, having blogged for almost 8 years and reviewed many comments and blogs of fellow Nigerians on many Internet sites, I doubt flooding the Internet with Nigerian opinion without attention to content, quality and intellectual ability is the answer to the dissociation of fraud from Nigeria.

One statistic that buttresses this view comes with the announcement that only 30% of students passed English and Mathematics [5] in this year’s West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) results and whilst this is an improvement on the 25% last year it is appalling.

The problems are self-evident, maybe the strictures of mobile Short Message Service (SMS) known as texting does have an effect where the restrictions of 160 characters forces users to use abbreviations and strange spellings of words that depend on some sort of decoding to make sense; that form of communication is becoming so mainstream that it might have crept into formal communications like what students put down in examinations.

The low results in mathematics are worrisome too because it suggests that students are not leaving school with basic numeracy skills needed for further education or the workplace.

A failing curriculum

Even though English is my mother tongue by reason of it being the first language I could speak and the circumstance of birth but I do remember the attention paid to our English classes from primary school in Nigeria where reading, writing and spelling lessons and tests were part of our curriculum.

In secondary school, we were voracious readers, the girls on everything that Barbara Cartland [6] wrote and the romantic pulp fiction of the Mills & Boon series [7], we the boys started off with Nick Carter [8] crime novels then James Hadley Chase [9] and graduated to Harold Robbins [10]; we all not missing the African writers and compulsory Shakespeare texts in formal English classes and the traditional English novels by celebrated writers as Kipling, Twain, Shaw, Haggard, Dickens, Orwell and others.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the James Hadley Chase novels even had the Nigerian price on the dust jacket or back cover of the paperback novels.

The English syllabus contains essential guides for reading and comprehension, composition, context, interpretation which should result in communication that is at least structured and coherent with the possibility of it being concise, maybe precise and hopefully original belying some admirable intellect.

What is needed

I dare say, only a few expressions on the Internet have passed the muster and much as I would love to see more Nigerians on the Internet with blogs, comments and opinions that show Nigeria in more positive light, there is much more that needs to be done in terms of the quality of communication they present whilst it goes without saying that the slide of examination performance was not sudden much as it seems precipitously low.

Too much time is being spent on religious and motivational books and very little on those with useful literary value that would broaden outlook and improve expression, we have become clones of “How To” themed books.

The need to return to formal and traditional modes of English and language expression cannot be overstated and it starts with correct spelling, structured sentences, the ability to crystallise thoughts, an understanding of correct punctuation and tenses, the daring to be objective and a broadening of the reading curriculum.

Then we can ensure whoever decides to own a blog is at the least redounding to the positive narratives of Nigeria with good communication, clear thinking and commendable expression.

Sources

[1] CP-Africa.com | Why every Nigerian on the Internet should start a blog

[2] Advance-fee fraud - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[3] Forbes.com | Switching From Greed to Fear

[4] Forbes.com | Fraud Has No Nationality- Apology to Nigeria

[5] AllAfrica | Nigeria: WAEC Results - Only 30 Percent Pass Maths, English

[6] Barbara Cartland - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[7] Mills & Boon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[8] Nick Carter (literary character) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[9] James Hadley Chase - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[10] Harold Robbins - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thought Picnic: Civil Laws Always Trump Personal Beliefs

Another one of those things

Every once in a while, I dare to stick my toe in the barracuda infested waters of Nigeria discourse and commentary outside the haunts that I am more comfortable with when it comes to addressing social issues.

I cannot understand how it always ends up looking like a battle field where the fundamentally religious is pitched against the norms of civil society and reason is in danger of being suffocated and derived of the oxygen of tolerance.

Reneging on a contract for religious reasons

It started off on Facebook, with the following status:

A Canadian florist refused to provide flowers for a wedding after she found out that the couple was same-sex. Kim Evans, of Petals and Promises Wedding Flowers, reportedly agreed to sell flowers to the couple, but then backed out when she learned they were gay, citing her Christian faith. The couple was not identified, but their wedding planner said the florist's rebuff was "going to stay with them for years. [Link to Source – Facebook membership might be required.] The original news story is found here [1].

I will concentrate more on my views than that of others but suffice it to say that the moment someone applauded the act of Kim Evans and I raised issues about the wrongness of her act it developed into the well-trotted scriptures about sin, sinners, homosexuals, Christianity, the Levitical laws and much more.

This blog fleshes out the opinions I shared and the direction in which I had hope to steer the discourse.

The test for faith, hope and love

I like the way she has cited her Christian faith which probably is a valid excuse considering the circumstances, but that is a very personal if not a selfish thing. If she cited her Christian hope, she cannot have hoped to win her customers over to her kind of thinking by her actions it would read as being outrageously wicked to mar the couple’s happy day just because it did not correlate with her beliefs.

No matter how one dares to stretch the imagination there is not a smidgen of Christian love to see because love is tender, love is kind and does not create offence, her only refuge could be her faith because love has a selflessness that demands a lot of Christians when dealing with the world at large.

The “infidels” had entered a contractual agreement with her company out of good faith and just to give context to the matters of faith, hope and charity (love), there is a Bible verse [2] that states; “Three things will last forever--faith, hope, and love--and the greatest of these is love”. She probably passed the test of faith, one can only wonder what she hoped for but she definitely failed the test of love.

I went on to wonder how this looks for people looking at the broader issue of Christians who cannot be trusted to follow through on agreed contracts because their intolerance and bigotry (my view was that the withdrawal of business on the basis of religious belief was an outward display of prejudice) gets in the way of them ministering love that might work winning these people to the truth.

And I concluded, she was wrong!

A lack of comprehension

A number of comments followed from the idea that there was no prejudice in the lady’s actions to the fundamentalist homophobia seeking refuge in scriptural superfluity until someone interjected to bring a sense of frail humanity into focus but sides had been taken and some were already implacably entrenched.

I followed taking this reasoned support by identifying the gulf that had developed in educational standards in Nigeria where we are allowed the latitude of critical thinking and contextual analysis of issues which helped our comprehension of matters and the allusion that Nuhu Ribadu made on the presidential debates last Friday that Nigerian education is in tatters.

That sadly illustrates the fact that many with whom we engage are unable to accommodate different perspectives to an issue once they have found something they are familiar with to sink their teeth into.

Whilst they might well be able to reel off quotes and verses they very rarely find ways put such into context that exposes any critical thinking ability or logical process such that everything is literal and the figurative is too abstract to appreciate and as the assumed discourse develops contrived analogies are lumped in that it might just take a treatise to unravel the jumble that makes for the flawed thought process.

When you engage

It then get very easy to digress and concentrate on the subjective and sentimental without addressing the core issue which is personal beliefs are personal and private and not one is stopped from having such beliefs but when such a person has to interact with the public like running a business there are civil laws that have precedence over those belief systems allowing for a level playing field of clear communication and protection from prejudice and discrimination by reason of civil laws.

Like one religious person did say in the news story, “The shopkeeper has every right to her own convictions as long as she is a private citizen in her own house, but if she opens her doors to sell flowers, then she must be prepared to meet and deal with the public.”

This is the dilemma many religious people face their inability to appreciate the boundaries of their religious beliefs in the context of the society that they have to deal with. One option is for such people to assemble and reside in religious ghettos, separate from an influence and situation that would make their beliefs a subject of societal scrutiny.

The state ranks above personal beliefs

Recently, we have had cases of the religious beliefs conflicting with the sense of duty where people paid to provide a public service allow their prejudices to decline serving sections of society with different moral values or belief systems or they feel their religious laws are superior to the state and civil laws.

That situation is untenable and presents opportunities for a chaotic society if everyone believed themselves outside the ambit of civil laws that do not agree with their faiths.

The bigger lesson is found in the admonition or rather the advice to [2], “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar's, and unto God the things which be God's.”

This is one case where Caesar and God are confused in roles and service, when they are supposed to be separate spheres of operation, and what we know as the separation of state and religion or more particularly, the separation of personal belief systems from how we interact in the public space.

Sources

[1] Florist refuses to outfit same-sex couple's wedding - New Brunswick - CBC News

[2] 1 Corinthians 13:13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. NLT

[3] Luke 20:25 "Caesar's," they replied. He said to them, "Then give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's." KJV

Related blogs

Nigeria: Senator's defiance makes Sharia Law untenable

The case for State law over religious guidance

Thought Picnic: Using a putdown as a bridal bouquet

Starting with the alphabet

It is usually amusing to have to try and break down into fundamental parts the writings on my blog for the comprehension of people who do not bother to read and understand the points I am trying to convey.

I would be the first to admit that my writing hardly caters for the lowest common denominator of language or expression but I do take my time to clearly state my views and when controversial find a sense of balance.

There is no doubt that there are people who feel that the withdrawal of the Nigerian football teams from international competitions by the President is wrong – what has been missing from their clamour are clear reasons why they think he was wrong.

Scavengers are vermin

My blog on Questioning the FIFA Hegemony yesterday was written to offer exceptions to the FIFA rule of no political interference in national football associations with clearly documented examples of Togo, France and Nigeria.

A good blogging friend decided to highlight my blog as an excellent piece on Facebook and before you knew it, vultures descended on it, dismissed it out of hand and offered no objective counterpoint to the views raised.

That is what I find most irksome, seemingly intelligent people who yap and bark rather than foster an atmosphere for discourse with constructive input.

Distracted by a lack of comprehension

So, it was only right for me to suggest that certain readers might have been distracted by a lack of comprehension so evident from their comments to which one responded without first wondering if he really had missed the context of my blog by suggesting what I had written was stupidity beyond words, he had earlier said I was talking trash.

That left me with no other option but to state that the blog could not be recomposed on Facebook to accommodate intellect below par all by reason of the fact that the exchanges did not address with any sense of understanding of the matters raised in my blog.

In some ways, my less than courteous statements were flung out like a bridal bouquet and the over-exuberant bridesmaid made a lunge for it tripping over her shoes.

As a matter of principle, I never set out to patronise anyone nor do I enjoy the prospect of belittling people either, but when such persons make a blatant show of common breeding unworthy of gentlemen, it simply sets the stage for a gentle English putdown; the sad end of the tale is what once looked like a man is really a boy – and boys rarely ever understand when men speak.

Nigeria: Why Candidates Fail Our Examinations - WAEC

I am usually amused when I view the search words of visitors to my blog and find some seeking WAEC questions for one subject or the other. They usually end up on my blog Nigeria: WAEC Exam leaks are unacceptable. [1]

Now, these searches might be innocent, just of people seeking examples of past questions in their subjects of interest but a news story for the first time highlighted an issue I have been at pains to discuss for a while.

In The PM News, with the by-line, ’Why Candidates Fail Our Examinations’—WAEC [2], the West African Examinations Council tries to explain with some interesting reasons that I would tackle below.

There were mass failures from the examinations taken in November/December 2008 and the council lists the following issues

Unpreparedness for examinations

As far as the Council was concerned the standard of the examinations have not changed over the last few years but the attitude of students has changed. Maybe the examiners have become more stringent in their marking but the lack of preparation is quite plausible.

A good example of how that pervades the whole Nigerian system was when ballot papers for an election taking place on Saturday were still in South Africa on Friday. The National Electoral Commissioner believing all the papers would reach polling station in a country that has poor transportation and logistics.

There are too many examples of how preparation is not passed down in example and practice for the youth to strive to, we procrastinate and then hope that we can allow God’s will to correct our folly and in the process earn a miracle of success – no, it is a recipe for failure.

Poor grammatical expression

English is the business language of Nigeria, it is the glue of Nigerianness, it then behoves any Nigerian who wants to express the unity of that entity to master the language of that entity.

It is also the language of education and though for a majority it is not their mother tongue, there is no other alternative to expression when sitting examinations.

As I wrote in A malaise of inexactitudes [3], the Idea la need context is not sufficient for communicating ideas that are reviewed in answers to examination questions.

My mother was a WAEC examiner for 30 years and sometimes she read out answers to some Commerce questions and we all drew a blank, it was just impossible to understand what the candidate was trying to say before she had to read a grovelling appeal to be lenient in marking the same paper.

How much time can an examiner spend on divining the mind of the candidate through telepathy or clairvoyance before deciding that the answer is not catered for in the marking scheme and red-lines the whole stuff leading to a failure?

Failure to expatiate on points

I found this interesting, because Nigerians are generally given to the verbose rather than the precise. The questions have an intent derived from a syllabus that is public domain, the objectives indicated in the syllabus gives general guidance on what should be learnt and understood to tackle an examination offered by an institution.

Questions are phrased in such a way as to determine if the candidate has grasped those elements can relate those ideas in the context of their understanding.

If the candidate has no grasp of what is being asked, it is unlikely they would be able to expatiate on the points they list and hence show that they have mastered the topic.

A marking scheme might score for mentions but the better marks are in the detail that accompanies the mentions.

Misinterpretation of questions

This, I can very well agree with, first, it is a matter of comprehension – if the candidate has done the required study and understood the subject onto whether the student has the wherewithal to tackle questions that probe that knowledge.

Attention is paramount; the need to read the question more than twice and note clearly what points are required to be answered cannot be overstressed.

I am afraid to say that many do not pay close attention to the question and go off on a tangent doing their own thing but not fulfilling the main requirement.

Misinterpretation of questions - Doing your own questions

For instance, just over a week ago, I set a test on months in the Yoruba language which only 2 people tried. In the process, one commenter published the right answers to the questions for public viewing, destroying the need for the test and others published their own answers to questions that were not part of the test.

For any examiner, it would be annoying and really a bloody waste of time if they have to read through a diatribe only to find that it was completely irrelevant. It is a Nigerian malaise, I am afraid, because it also appears in comments to blogs.

On the sudden death of the wife of a Pentecostal church leader in Nigeria, I thought I was going to read she died at 75 only to read she died at 57. I was quite shocked at the death and then at the circumstances with the testimony of power in Christianity and the question of healing.

Unfortunately, I failed to excite intellectual discourse as it got subsumed in emotive, sentiment and hysterical fawning – basically, I was not supposed to as that question.

Illegible handwriting

We might write for ourselves, but when others have to read our writing it must not end up being an advanced course of deciphering cryptographic inscription.

I really feel for examiners who have to indulge in crude graphology to determine what the candidate is trying to say.

The fact is, writing is also a mode of expression, poor handwriting is poor expression, it is strange how after the writing lessons we have in primary school we end up with writing no better than animal tracks in the bush.

In my view, I think writing classes should continue into the early years of secondary school because once writing develops its personality and character, it can be impossible to adapt and change for legibility.

Wasting of time on unnecessary preambles

That probably speaks for itself, it would be different if I could say that it is an element of intellectual arrogance creating blinding ignorance but I have to ditch the word intellectual. People are wont to showing their knowledge without necessarily addressing the issue itself.

It is a waste of time on the part of the candidate, it wastes the time of the examiner and basically, it is just a waste of time.

Preambles? If only we really had to time to read through all that too, you are answering questions in examinations that have a set time in which to tackle the required questions.

Poor diagrams

We are not being asked to be artist but candidates striving to be scientists who can only make doodles are on to a failure. Diagrams require a bit of practice, lines that need to be straight should be, curves need to be regular and there is a world of difference between a diagram and a sketch.

Read wide

The last paragraph reads, “tasking candidates to read novels and newspapers”. You don’t say? That would mean there would be no time for the Bible, as if many read that to any level of understanding or comprehension.

Chxta [4] my blogging friend has many a time lamented the fact that many do not read. Reading expands horizons, creates inquisitive minds necessary to ask to the right questions and obtain good answers.

It helps people participate in intelligent debate and hones expression in ways that being spoon-fed doctrines, traditions and customs cannot begin to do.

Ask questions too

But then, we are averse to asking questions because our paternalistic society considers asking questions a sign of disrespect. It was interesting that in secondary school; very few of us did not see teachers as demigods, unapproachable and fiercely evil.

Religiously, we consign everything to God’s will, though I do wonder if we really do know God’s will but use our fear to enquire borne of our human relationships as indication of disrespectfulness to God if we were to dare to ask questions of God.

My frustration on the question I asked about healing for today was fully vented when I asked for a Gamaliel [5] to step up to the conversation; I was already fed up of listening to the Sons of Sceva. [6]

In fact, that is why in a very religious Nigeria many fail in a lot of their endeavours because they tackle issues like the Sons of Sceva rather than a learned Gamaliel, we need to approach these things with a sense of authority which comes from preparation, understanding and application. If God put a brain in man, it must be there for a purpose – Use it.

Sources

[1] Nigeria: WAEC Exam leaks are unacceptable [akinblog.nl]

[2] The PM News - Nigeria’s leading evening newspaper - ‘Why Candidates Fail Our Examinations’—WAEC

[3] Thought Picnic: A malaise of inexactitudes [akin.blog-city.com]

[4] Chxta's World

[5] Gamaliel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[6] Sons of Sceva: Spiritual authority and warfare