Public schools are supposed to remove barriers so people can succeed. For some, the system does remove barriers and provide a solid base for achievement. For others, the system replaces one set of barriers with another. For example, creativity is killed by pressuring students to accept the status quo, by establishing a fear to be different and a fear of failure. Independent thinking is replaced by dependency. In some cases, pressure to excel in academics kills the love to learn — a skill needed for success in the real world. People, who have a vision that motivates, will maintain a love to learn and overcome all barriers.

My Story:
My story begins in Summit, NJ, at the age of sixteen, where I am sitting in a classroom starring out the window. Out of the first window I could see myself exploring the jungles of South America searching for gold, I could see myself drifting down the Amazon River on a raft, I could see monkeys swinging through the trees, I could see myself as Tarzan swinging on a vine. Through the next window, I could see the bow of my sailboat plowing through the towering waves, heading toward the South Pacific. I could see myself on a white sand beach chasing girls.

Then BANG! The teacher's yardstick hitting my desk brought me back to the real world where subjects did not relate to my interest and dreamers are related to dummies. In a loud voice the teacher said, "You are a failure! If you don't pay attention you will continue to be a failure!"
When the bell rang, instead of going to the next class I walked out of school never to return. I was tired of being called a failure. Right or wrong, I took charge of my future. When I left school, I carried the single most important element for success... A DREAM. During the next twenty years, every one of my teenage dreams came true.
You may be asking, "How does one make their dreams come true?" There are three elements:

1. First - We must have a dream that motivates us. No one has ever achieved anything without a dream attached to a burning desire.

1. Second - We must learn how-to-learn. In school, we learn how to memorize or be taught. Learning how to learn frees our dependency on others for knowledge.

1. Third - We must learn from failure and learn how to bounce back from failure. No one ever succeed without failure. In the classroom, failure is a no-no.

In my early teens, I read the book Kon-Tiki. This is a story about six Norwegians sailing a raft across the Pacific Ocean.  Their adventure inspired my dream of duplicating their raft voyage. As a teenager with normal parents, a dream like this was considered ridiculous. Not only did friends and family not support my dream, they told me to get serious. But the Kon-Tiki dream turned me on. I wanted to know more about the ocean world and how it could be challenged. I went to the public library looking for more books and found plenty.

During the next few years, I joined the seas scouts, read boating magazines, studied nautical books, and went to boat shows. To help understand seamanship techniques, I made model charts, buoys, and boats. With models, comprehension was easy. Unknowingly, I was learning the art of learning how-to-learn — self-education — a technique that would follow me the rest of my life, a technique that would bring me success and make my wildest dreams comes true.

At the age of nineteen, during the Korean War, I was in the Marine Corps and in Japan. On my first day of duty an officer told me, "You are a machinist and will be in charge of the machine shop." As he gave me the shop keys, he pointed to a trailer. In the Marine Corps, everything is on wheels. When I opened the doors, I had my first look ever at a machine shop. In the shop was one short instruction manual titled "How to Run a Lathe." When a job came in, I followed the manual's instructions.

I was surprised at my ability to complete assigned tasks. The Marine Corps experience launched my machinist career. It also made me realize that learning how-to-learn is a powerful tool. For example, every manmade object around us is the result of someone's dream and failures. Consider the light bulb. Thomas Edison believed something could burn white-hot and not burn up. A wild unrealistic dream? Everyone knows everything burns up in a short time. A thousand failures later, Thomas Edison burned a steel wire white hot that never burned up. Continuous white heat creates light.

Opportunity is attracted to people with a dream. They are the first to be hired, first to be offered opportunity, and first to be promoted. Bigger the dream the faster doors open. People without a dream are last to be hired, last to be promoted and first to be laid-off in a force reduction. For non-dreamers, doors remain closed. WHY? People with a dream act differently than non-dreamers. Dreamers develop an attitude that radiates energy; they have a sense of purpose and meaning to their lives. Radiant energy is an attitude that bosses like and to which they offer opportunity. This is how the impossible becomes possible.

When I was discharged from the Marine Corps, I decided people were right; my wild teenage dream was ridicules. Real people do not drift across oceans on rafts. I am now an adult, I should think and act like one. The raft dream was dead. For the next five years my life went nowhere, my ambition, hope, dreams were gone. Something else was also gone — opportunity that came fast during my earlier years also dried up.
One day I dusted off the Kon-Tiki book. My dream jumped off the pages and came to life. I said to myself, "I must find a way!" Two years later, I was in Hawaii and learned how the Polynesian people populated the Pacific Islands in dugout canoes 1,000 years ago. My dream was changed from a raft to a dugout canoe. At this time, opportunity came back and fast.

I helped crew a 36-foot sailboat from Hawaii to California. This provided my ocean sailing experience. Next, I was hired by the Panama Canal Company, Panama. Soon, my supervisor asked me to attend hard-hat diver school at company expense. With this skill, money was no longer a problem.

A short time later, I was living on a beach in Tahiti building a 40-foot Polynesian double-hull boat named Liki Tiki. The hulls were built by Choco Indians in the Darien Providence of Panama and shipped to Tahiti. I built the boat according to popular theory and information supplied by the Bishop Museum in Honolulu. Three days at sea convinced me the double-hull theory was wrong. The two hulls worked against each other and would soon breakup.

Back in Panama, I took the problem to the Indians in the Darien Jungle. They said, "Outriggers is what works." I then succeed in sailing a 36-foot dugout canoe with outriggers, named Liki Tiki Too, from Panama, 5,000 miles, to Hawaii.

Opportunity never stopped. For the Navy Undersea Center Hawaii I help develop a two-man Plexiglas submarine. Moving back to the Panama Canal Zone, I learned five computer languages and became supervisor of the computer department, I became Captain of the Canal Zone's training schooner Chief Aptakisic on which we took a group of teenagers to New York. My wife and I spent five years sailing the South Pacific Ocean in our own 50-foot sail boat, Hunky-Dory, which I designed and self-built. Opportunity came my way because I could educate myself, was motivated and did not let a wild teenage dream die.

Africa, the cradle of human kind and once the toast of the world, has all but attained a different height. The continent has been defamed and her people mocked of by the rest of the world, thanks to prolonged disasters (natural and man-made), mismanagement, corruption, and a barrage of negative Western media reports. It is difficult to imagine that anything good has emerged, or will emerge, from this "Dark Continent." Sadly, many in the West have, without justification, bought into this idea. This is disconcerting. Consequently, and by virtue of my experiences of both cultures, I have decided (as have others) to undertake the Herculean task of correcting this negative impression of Africa and Africans. I hope I can accomplish this objective in a dispassionate manner and without the fears of political incorrectness. First, let us take a historical look at the continent and her peoples.

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Long before the European invasion, Africa was comprised of several great empires and vassal states whose prowess in every facet of human endeavor are well documented. In 1884-1885 at the Berlin Conference, the continent was partitioned among several colonial powers including Germany, Spain, Belgium, Portugal, France, Great Britain (GB) and Italy. This resulted in the creation of "false" States consisting of separate tribes and archrivals. It also saw the elevation of vassals and subjects over their erstwhile overlords.

To ensure effective governance, Britain and France introduced the "Indirect-Rule" system and the policy of "Assimilation," respectively. However, in spite years of Statehood many groups remained loyal to their tribes rather than to their so-called States. On attaining colonial independence, the quest for tribal independence and resource control became the precursors to some of the conflicts that have engulfed the continent.

Presently, Africa is comprised of over 40 nations and Islands and is the ancestral homes of Blacks, Jews (Falashas), Arabs, Caucasians and Asians. The people speak hundreds of ethnic languages and have had to adopt the languages of their former colonial masters as their official languages. For instance, the West African sub region has about 16 countries whose colonial overlords included Great Britain, Germany, France, and the United States (US). Nigeria, the world's most populous black nation (with over a hundred and forty million people who speak over two hundred and fifty ethnic languages!), is one of the countries in this Sub-region. Like the U.S., it is an English speaking country, settled by Great Britain.

The Western media often portrays Africa as a single entity or country made of a homogenous group thus conveying the impression that the incident in question transpired within a State or region. For instance, and without denigrating the colossal effects of these disasters, one wonders how the AIDS epidemic (Southern and Eastern Africa); wars, drought and starvation (Central and Eastern Africa); oil disasters (Niger-Delta, Nigeria); Muslim extremist (the North and Horn of Africa); bombings in Kenya and Tanzania (East Africa); "The Great Migration" (Kenya) ascend to the status of continental issues.

The list is endless. Imagine referring to, and treating, everyone in North America (Canadians, Mexicans, and US citizens) as Canadians; or referring to the bloody IRA conflict (United Kingdom), deadly Basque Separatist Movement (Spain), the Italian mafia, the massacre in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and ethnic cleansing in Albania and Kosovo as European conflicts. It would not hurt to distinguish events in Africa in like manner as doing so may provide an understanding of the continent's people and crisis as well as prevent thrusting her with one-size-fits policies.

Today, Africa is considered an anathema, and Africans burdens to the world. On the contrary, Africa is endowed with abundant human and natural resources, which, unfortunately, have been mismanaged. The positive accomplishments of Africans and their offspring traverse all spectrums of human endeavor. Quite often, they are underreported or their African heritage downplayed, unless it is a criminal enterprise. For now, it will suffice to mention a few notable sons and daughters of native Africa.
They include Nelson Mandela, Bishop Desmond Tutu (Nobel Peace Prize Winners), Wole Soyinka Nobel Laureate), Boutros Boutros-Ghali and Kofi Annan (former UN Secretaries-General). Others are the late Kwame Nkrumah, John Agwunobi Assistant Secretary, HHS), Ali Mazuri (historian), Chinua Achebe (author, "Things Fall Apart"), Kase Lawal (one of the world's richest black person), Manu Dibango, Seal and Sade Adu (music), Djimon Hounsou, Adewale Agbaje (movie), Ernie Els golf), Hakeem Olajuwon, Dkembe Mutombo basketball), Samuel Peter (boxing), Alek Wek supermodel), and not forgetting Senator Barak Obama (politics). (The plight of African immigrants and their offspring will be the subject matter of another article.)

Notwithstanding the foregoing, one cannot underscore the impact of Western media reports on the unending African crises; for that, they deserve commendations. However, more could be accomplished if issues are put in proper perspectives. Under the current dispensation, the consequences of their misrepresentation of Africa and Africans are dire: belittling the people, undermining their accomplishments, destroying their self-esteem and heritage. It does also, albeit inadvertently, provide "arms" to bigots (on all sides). It does not augur well to incense the situation with mis- and disinformation all in the name of profits or ratings.

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The words of Edward Lytton (1803-1873) that "the pen is mightier than the sword" can not be truer than in this instance. One can only hope that, in view of current global developments, the Western press will look beyond monetary gains to the social and moral obligations they owe societies in general. Hopefully, they will allow temperance to be the better part of valor.
Mr. Iyinbo was an attorney in Nigeria. He has a Master of Public Administration (MPA) from Southern University, Baton Rouge LA, and recently earned a Master of Laws