A University Don, Profes
sor Ozomekuri Ndimele, has identified the ability to know what to teach, rather than teaching itself, as the major challenge facing Nigeria’s educational system.
Ndimele, who noted this during his inaugural lecture recently in the University of Port Harcourt (UNIPORT), stated that the development is as a result of Nigeria’s bias for methodology rather than context of educational curricula.
Comparing the Nigeria and Finnish English teachers’ training curricula, he noted that whereas the clamour in Nigeria is to further reduce the credit load of our students (so that “we can produce more first class graduates), the Finnish recommends biennial upward review to accommodate new challenges in a rapidly changing world (so as to “make their graduates globally competitive”).
Moreso, he said “the recommended credit units for training teachers in Nigeria is not up to half of the minimum credit units for training teachers at any level (Bachelors or Masters in Finland.
In the same vein, the professor of comparative grammar and communications said while in Finland, 60 per cent of the credit units are allocated to subject-based courses and about 40 per cent are allocated to education-based courses as well as other interests, in Nigeria, the curriculum is skewed more in favour of methodology than subject-based courses.
“The consequence is that the teacher may be grounded in methodology, but with a pedestal  knowledge  of the subject they ought to teach.
“What matters in the Nigerian curriculum is how to teach, but not what to teach. This is the bane of our educational system”, he said.
As a way forward, Ndimele noted that as an individual he had always emphasized on the importance of first preparing the teacher to know what to teach and subsequently train him to teach what he knows.
“No curriculum, no matter how well designed, can force the knowledge of the subject into the head of the teacher who has not been well-grounded in his teaching subject”, he concluded.