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.
Nice one
ReplyDeleteAwesome bro!
ReplyDeleteSo you were really that dumb? 😂 😂
Hahaha
Delete