ARE THERE HUMANS NATURALLY ACADEMIC DUMB?

ARE THERE HUMANS NATURALLY ACADEMIC DUMB?

‘’Ugo Chinedu? I will not mark this…he will surely fail if I do…let me save myself the stress and record him a zero…. Ugo Chinedu come out here and kneel down…I will flog the hell out of you because you love to fail’’

The quote above were the words of my mathematics teacher during my primary education, to him there was no need to make efforts towards improving me. In the long run, I made him eat his words, thats a story for another day though. The inspiration behind this write up is what Ugo Chinedu that dumb boy that there was no need to help turned out to become academically. Many kids are confronted with this challenge and the ones that are lucky find help and those who cannot pick themselves up like I did end up woefully which raises the question of this discourse; are there humans naturally academic dumb? NO. I attribute academic dumbness to certain factors, notable among these factors are; poor academic foundation, psychological effect, and environ.

Most families that I can tell about fail to understand the need for excellent or at least good academic background for their kids. I have seen a family where if not for the effort of the mother, the kids would have ended up in some low profile school in northern Nigeria for their primary education. The father of the kids emphasized on the fact that he would spend less if he enrolled his kids in a low profile school. Funny thing is, mothers in most cases that I have seen take the blame in future when the kids return poor results, I guess thats the reason my mama failed to give up on me during my trying times academically (smiles).

I had a pal during my undergraduate days, he had failed 8 out of 9 courses we did during our first semester in school. Determined to make a difference, he followed me out for night readings and was always early and attentive in class during lectures. Most times we were done reading, I had to lecture him on topics he found difficult to comprehend. I was hurt by the fact that his results were no different from the previous semester, I felt like I did not do enough to help my pal confront his challenge. I watched him psychologically battered for weeks, he had resorted to attending church more often so God can help him out. From my side, I was still trying to figure the way out when during one of our night readings he said to me ‘’Stevo I have decided to quit school and venture into business so I will stop wasting my time….my academic foundation is poor….it will take a lot of time for me to correct that.’’  Within, I knew he had answered the question I was trying to figure out for weeks, I encouraged him to stay put but he left before the semester could go halfway. During my third year in the university, a classmate of mine, seeing my results the previous semester had dared to beat me if only I could lend a helping hand. She followed me to the library on many occasions and had me explain topics she found very difficult. With few words of encouragement and her willingness to work, she witnessed great progress academically, she failed to beat me but she did not fail to beat her limit. Comparing both cases, I noticed the difference between my pal who had given up and her was the academic foundation like he told me, he had put in more effort but with less work compared to his, she had better results. It was clear that she just needed to put in work.

Psychological effect is another major factor for academic dumbness, every individual has learning capacity. While some individuals can easily understand an academic discourse, some tend to take little more time to grab. My mathematics teacher during my primary education failed to understand this, if you could not understand immediately, you were dumb and you were abused and punished for it. I became very scared of him and only concentrated on listening to the bell ring which usually marked the end of a particular class. Matters were made worse by the fact that my elder sister was very brilliant and I believe was one of the(if not the brightest) brightest students in school back then, most of my teachers reigned insults on me and asked me why I was so dumb and my sister bright. Statements like ‘’you are a failure” ate so deep into me that I was psychologically affected. The fear of being teased by peers left me lonely on most occasions while I kept suffering academically to the point that I got a weak pass on one occasion. Needles to mention is the fact that I had repeated once but my mother followed me to school and ensured that I did not repeat that class , she knew me very well (she still does) and she was shocked by the fact that I was very confident and expressive at home but the case was different in school. I picked up owing to the fact that my mama did not give up on me and encouraged me greatly. Imagine how things could have turned out if I felt insecure at school and home, I probably could have developed some mental illness. A lot of kids still face this kind of problem and they end up badly.

Also, one’s environ can greatly affect his/her academic life. Kids born into poverty and raised in the slumps find it hard to be focused academically. Some go hawking after school and barely have time for studies that is not to say that there are no exceptional cases where kids conquer these challenges and make it to the top. Some kids brought up in ghettos tend to join gangs at an early age to feed themselves and cater for their families by making money through crime, some join these gangs due to peer pressure. Some might dump out of school due to lack of funds. These factors play a major role in ensuring these kids go dumb academically. In the end, these individuals are described as dummies.

With these factors among others, people end up bad academically and are tagged ‘’olodo’’ (dummy). Some African parents tend to associate the issues raised above to spirituality, they fail to understand their kids and this worsens the situation. Some people on the other hand believe certain individuals are born dumb while some are born with brilliance, that is totally dumb. No human being is created to be dumb, we just have to understand our differences.