Tuesday, November 03, 2009

Don't Ask

"Which country in Africa is home to the largest population", I asked the young bright face in front of me.

"China", she shouted back almost instantly.

I looked at her with a smile borrowed from years of experience with young undergraduate students.

"Are you sure?", I asked.

"Yes I am because they have more than a billion people there", she insisted.

"But China is not on the African continent", I said.

She looked back with a furrowed brow as a slow smile of recognition crept over her face.

"Oh yes that is true ... China is more like in Europe", she declared.

"Right ... and China's capital city would be Lagos, right?", I said.

"I don't know but is this question going to be on our final exam", she asked somewhat exasperated.

"No it won't be on your exam. I'll stick with the easier questions on foreign policy formulation and implementation", I replied.
My head hurts!

Wonder what Mita is doing at home?

Onward! ... if even slowly.

Image Credit

3 comments:

Dade Cariaga said...

Hoo, boy! I don't wanna think about the future! ;-)

Aasia said...

Oh my-(why am I not surprised)- God!
This is shocking.

Ridwan said...

Dade and Aasia thanks kindly for looking in and for your respective comments.

Yeah we need to be worried.

Outcomes Based Education (OBE), that Canadian curse, I think we should re-think its relevance in total.

Hell I think we should just scrap it and go back to learning fundamentals with the use of textbooks, etc.

I remember too being asked (in the US) which country in South Africa I was from ... ):

Be well my friends.

Peace,
Ridwan