Education
In contemporary times, western education had been the vogue throughout Ekiti. Ado-Ekiti took the lead with the number of educational institutions.
In March 1896, Old Emmanuel School was established at Odo Aremu. In 1917, the Roman Catholic Mission established St. Patrick's Primary School. By the 1950s, the number of primary and secondary modern schools had increased very substantially. By 1974, the CMS alone had 104 primary schools, 8 secondary schools, and a teachers' college.
In the early 1930s, the The Venerable Archdeacon Henry. Dallimore superintendent of the CMS mission established Christ's School in 1933. It was raised by the priest to a Middle School and finally towards the end of the 1940s it became a full-fledged Grammar School. He was succeeded as Principal and High Master by Canon LD Mason from 1948-1966. Chief RA Ogunlade was Principal from 1966 to 1972. Christs School, Ado-Ekiti has contributed greatly to the educational and scientific advancement of Nigeria in general and Ondo-province in particular. Within a short span of time Christs school had produced one of the highest numbers of Professors in virtually all fields of learning and especially the professions in Nigeria. Christ school, was indeed, the basis of the epithet that Ekiti is the "fountain of knowledge". Christs school Alumni are found in academia and professions around the world today. In the early 1950s, the Ekiti Progressive Union built a second grammar school at Ido-Ekiti. Soon after the CMS agreed to separate Christ's School into two (boys' section and Girls' Section)-as a result of the major road(Iworoko Road(Ilewu Road)which naturally divided the two sections into two) viz: Christ's School,Ado Ekiti and Christ's Girls' School,Ado Ekiti.
Thenceforth, communities took it in their strides to raise funds and establish a number of community grammar schools. Ado-Ekiti established its own in 1960 and another one towards the end of the 1970s. The number of Grammar Schools kept increasing and by the year 2000, there were twelve pupil grammar schools, private grammar schools numbered six, a total of eighteen. The Federal Government established its polytechnic at Ikewo, Ado-Ekiti, the defunct Ondo State University established its University at Ilewu, Ado-Ekiti.
Within a period of 50 years, much development in western education had taken place in Ekiti in general and Ado-Ekiti in particular. What a leap! Chief E. A. Babalola, a native of Oye-Ekiti was first University graduate in Ekiti. He was a high school master in 1947 and he took over the management of Christ's High School, Ado-Ekiti when Archdeacon Dallimore retired and left for Britain. Today, the Ekiti are found in large numbers in every academic and professional positions, Ado-Ekiti has its fair share in this industry.
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Famous quotes containing the word education:
“There comes a time in every mans education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“We find that the child who does not yet have language at his command, the child under two and a half, will be able to cooperate with our education if we go easy on the blocking techniques, the outright prohibitions, the nos and go heavy on substitution techniques, that is, the redirection or certain impulses and the offering of substitute satisfactions.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“Meantime the education of the general mind never stops. The reveries of the true and simple are prophetic. What the tender poetic youth dreams, and prays, and paints today, but shuns the ridicule of saying aloud, shall presently be the resolutions of public bodies, then shall be carried as grievance and bill of rights through conflict and war, and then shall be triumphant law and establishment for a hundred years, until it gives place, in turn, to new prayers and pictures.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)