WAEC English Language 2016 Theory — Question 4

Model answer

A DEBATE TO SUPPORT EDUCATION AS THE BEST LEGACY Good day, Mr. Chairman, Panel of Judges, Accurate Time-Keeper, co-debaters, and my esteemed audience. My name is Anele Julius, and I write in support of the motion which states that education is the best legacy a parent can give a child. The term 'Education' implies a training or process of learning a lesson, skill, trade or profession by teaching, instruction or supervision. This is, however, formal. Education can also take informal through adapting to our environment and developing mentally, morally, socially, aesthetically and behaviourally. Education is what everyone needs and should have, particularly, children who at their age are naive and inexperienced. They need education to discover their potentials, enhance the quality of their life and living condition. A well-trained and educated child is an asset, not a liability. Education is empowerment because it breeds people who are useful and productive not just to themselves and their families but also to the entire society. The illiterate have nothing to offer. They are liabilities; they are solely dependent and they slow down the pace of societal progress. Mr. Chairman, you will also agree with me that the importance placed on education — particularly at primary and secondary levels — in most of the advanced countries reflects their national budgets on the education sector. It is the education sector that researches and develops what the society at large lives on. Today, their commitment pays off. The same, unfortunately, cannot be said of Nigeria. This is because we lack the sustained efforts to invest into our country's education sector. Audience, children are future leaders and education remains a sole platform for raising them. Parents must understand that the leadership problem we in Nigeria is partly traceable to lack of proper education, good moral and acceptable social behaviour, etc. all of which actually at first, began at home with the first teachers — parents. Now, my opponent might want to question the importance of education in the face of the challenges our country faces being unable to provide employment to legions of educated youth out there. I stand to be corrected that it is lack of proper education that has dragged us into the quagmire of unemployment in the first place. We run a system of education that teaches students to get educated so as to seek good jobs, rather than to get education/empowerment that can lead them to self-employment and becoming employers of labour. And now we are reaping the consequence of a faulty education system. In conclusion, as the saying goes 'If education is expensive, try ignorance', the consequence of not properly being educated is highly gruesome when compared to the resources we would have used to educate our children. It is the knowledge which education brings that set us free from perpetual slavery of ignorance. Thank you for your audience.