During my schooling days, there were many times that I sat down to analyse most of the things the school system is doing that are not supposed to be so. But at the end of my brainstorming and lamentation, I found out that there's actually nothing I can do to avert the issues, and also, the school system sees most of the 'errors' as normal, so I dusted off and moved on with my life.
There are a lot of things that seem wrong to me in the school system, but the one that freaks me out the most is the 'odd' general courses.
I know it's good for students to have broad knowledge, not just in their course but also in other sectors, so as not to be lost in the world when they finally graduate. This is a good idea, and I'm not fighting it. The spot at which I have issues is how these courses are being taught and pushed in.
There was a guy I met in school when I recently gained admission who had an extension because of French, a borrowed course. According to him, he said he tried all his possible means to merit the course to scale through without sorting the lecturer as most of his colleagues did, but no way. The lecturer boldly failed him and told him to return next year. The course was difficult for him, and the lecturer made it more difficult for them by mandating all of them to "sort" the course in order to pass.
I know French is good and it's advantageous to understand it, but hey, it's not for everyone. I don't see any reason why people in engineering faculties are studying French as a borrowed course, no!
I studied French all through my secondary school; the only things I managed to understand were the "Hi, hello, and numeric count". The learning process I passed through to know this was like a war front—many lashes of Cain.
When I heard it's part of our course in the beginning stage when I gained admission into higher institution, I got sick thinking about what awaited me. Luckily, it was removed, and we were given Physical Education.
You see that these courses can be removed? That's to tell you how irrelevant most of the borrowed curses are to some faculty.
My lamentation sounds funny, right? Wait until you fail the course twice in a polytechnic setting. That is a direct extension (extra one year with a brand new start of life; house rent, school fees, etc.).
- Remedy to this issue
To me, it's a big issue already, even though it appears fine to others.
If it's ever going to be possible, let these unnecessary borrowed courses be scraped off.
The people who want to study linguistics want to be good at languages, not calculus in mathematics.
I dropped my pen here.
Thanks for reading.