It was a great time today in my school, the University of Uyo, as the department of English in the prestigious faculty of arts marked their old school day for the academic session and it was a fun-filled event. The Old School Day is an annual event adopted by many universities across Nigeria to relive and celebrate the dress sense and lifestyles of teachers and students of past decades who did not witness as much civilization as we have today.
It was a beautiful thing to see many of my course mates who decided to be part of the celebration appear in different outfits that were peculiar to students and teachers who lived between the 1930s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, etc.
This event was particularly important to us because we are in our final year and we will never get the opportunity to be part of this event in the university, this was the reason why we were celebrated in a special way, both by our lecturers and our junior course mates. It was really funny to see my course mates in different old attires that were relevant so many years back. It will really take a lot of courage for anyone to have this taste of fashion in our present age because it is considered archaic and does not fit the modern world.
Aside from the fact that our dress codes were funny as we appeared in them, there was a great lesson that we drew from the old school sense of dressing. During their time, decency and modesty in dressing was highly encouraged, those who lived during that time were always well covered because they saw indecency in dressing as a taboo. This was a very great lesson we reflected on while we celebrated the old school day.
Another thing that we reflected on while we celebrated the old school day in our school was how the teachers of those days were able to be effective in their profession despite the fact that there was no great technological advancement at their disposal to aid them in their teaching work just as we have now in our age. I have met with many aged people who are products of the old school education and as I often get close to them, I always discover that they are very intelligent people and they are always sound academically, even with the fact that they did not have as many resources and technologies for education as we have now.
My father is one of such people that I am always so proud of because he too is a product of the old school education. Even though he is not a teacher by profession, he was the perfect accounting teacher for my younger brother while he was in high school. My brother would always come to take home lessons from our father each time he normally returns from school, and it was so because the two teachers for accounting that were employed to handle the subject by the school management were incompetent.
Though we attracted too much laughter from our onlookers because of how we dressed, there are certainly many lessons we learnt from the old school days.
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