I remember the day I decided to remove my son from a top school in Lagos… the HOS had called me in for a talk.

I was wondering what my son could have done…

Not to worry he hadn’t done much except answer a question in a different way from how the Maths problem was taught in class.

I was told not to employ external tutors and that the students were to use only the methods taught in class to solve problems!

I repeat, this was a top school.. if I mentioned names or area you would probably know which school and be surprised.

Even though I was not Montessori trained at this point I knew that there was something wrong with the view that there was only one way to do things.

So the next step was to proceed to find another school where hopefully children would be allowed to think!

There were other reasons for this decision, this was simply the last straw that broke the camels back.

I have a question:

Must we control the children and parents in our schools?

Is there just one way to do things?

As adults, do we know everything? Are we supposed to give children all the answers?

There should be a place for inquiry and thinking outside the box, should there not?

I have learnt a few important lessons from my journey with educating the child, one of which is:

We must allow the child the time and space think, allow them to see things from different angles.

The world has moved on from the Industrial Age where conformity and sameness was the order of the day.

Children need the space to think, explore and see things from all aspects so they can possibly come up with breakthrough solutions to move us forward in the future.