Who A Writer Is

Howdy! There have been, still are and will always be writers who truly merit to be called that the world over. Authors like Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Alexandre Dumas, James Patterson, Janet Dailey, Dale Carnegie and Stormie Omartian never fail to capture me completely. They are educating, entertaining as well as thought-provoking writers. I also read poetry (when I can) and Shakespeare. I love Shakespeare. Why do I love stuff which many people term “boring”? One answer only. Imagery! Nothing surpasses imagery. And Shakespeare is definitely the master of that. The power to hold your reader, to create live pictures in the mind of your reader and to make your reader a part of your write-up is second to none. Fiction is beautiful, isn’t it? It gives you the opportunity to escape from reality into a much-desired world where nothing can hurt you. But sooner or later one wakes up. To what? To reality! Shocking reality. Sad, isn’t this? This highlights the need for reality writers. In Nigeria, there IS a lot of reality and there are a good number of people writing and writing and writing about it. Are people reading about it? Really, truly and positively reading about it? I still read a lot of fiction. (That is when I can find time out of my huge workload from school!) I love to disappear into the make-believe. However, I’m beginning to read reality. For I see the need to do so. The need to see reality is a prerequisite to doing something about it. There are many good, really good Nigerian reality writers. I met someone in the latter half of last year at the University of Lagos. He struck me as a very interesting gentleman with a lot of something upstairs. He’s been described, by those who know how, as an activist, an educator, a diarist and freelance writer/journalist whose interests span the arts, culture, education, development politics and social issues. His name is ‘Bayo Olupohunda and he’s got interesting things to say about reality in Nigeria. (See some of his articles below.) I have read his articles and I must say that he truly is a writer.

Culture Shock In Germany
By Bayo Olupohunda
Published 03/14/2008
Living outside one’s country certainly comes with its pains of personal struggles and ups and downs. It can alter one’s lifestyle in so many ways...
http://www.nigeriansinamerica.com/articles/2479/1/Culture-Shock-In-Germany/Page1.html


The Guardian: A Day in the Life of the Flagship
By Bayo Olupohunda
Published 10/18/2007
‘Oga, good afternoon, what is happening, why is everybody sad?’ I queried. He looked at me and I could at once see that he thought I was dumb for not. ‘Na because Guardian never come’ he answered disinterestedly…
http://www.nigeriansinamerica.com/articles/2151/1/The-Guardian-A-Day-in-the-Life-of-the-Flagship/Page1.html Attachments


Nigeria’s Sun Newspaper And Gutter Journalism
By Bayo Olupohunda
Published 10/16/2007
Nigeria journalism is fast becoming a cash and carry venture with cash and carry reporters, paid columnists and Ghana-Must-Go editors...
http://www.nigeriansinamerica.com/articles/2149/1/Nigerias-Sun-Newspaper-And-Gutter-Journalism/Page1.html


An Open Letter To The Attorney General, Micheal Aondokaa (SAN)
By Bayo Olupohunda
Published 10/13/2007
...You seem to have neglected, since your assumption as the Chief Law Officer, the place of public opinion and the mood of Nigerians as regards corruption...
http://www.nigeriansinamerica.com/articles/2138/1/An-Open-Letter-To-The-Attorney-General-Micheal-Aondokaa-SAN/Page1.html


Curbing Unethical Practices In Private Hospitals
By Bayo Olupohunda
Published 10/3/2007
The neglect of the government owned health institutions became a blessing in disguise for the smart Alecs who took the opportunity to exploit the people while providing substandard services...
http://www.nigeriansinamerica.com/articles/2117/1/-Curbing-Unethical-Practices-In-Private-Hospitals/Page1.html Attachments

Nigeria at 47: Education Sector at a Crossroad
By Bayo Olupohunda
Published 10/2/2007
What is the goal of our education system? What values and national goal do we hope to achieve? What values do we also hope to inculcate in our youths through our educational system?
http://www.nigeriansinamerica.com/articles/2112/1/Nigeria-at-47-Education-Sector-at-a-Crossroad/Page1.html


Promoting Internet Fraud through Music!
By Bayo Olupohunda
Published 09/30/2007
Ordinarily, one should not be concerned when a musician is exhibiting his God given talent for humanity, more so when he can earn a living from his creative talent. However, questions must be asked when such talent is used negatively to corrupt the audience...
http://www.nigeriansinamerica.com/articles/2108/1/Promoting-Internet-Fraud-through-Music/Page1.html Attachments


Sexual Violence and Nigerian Women: Breaking the Silence
By Bayo Olupohunda
Published 09/20/2007
Even though we are not in a state of war, Nigerian women, girls and babies are daily subjected to one form of bestiality or the other by deranged and psychopathic men who do not have a place in a civilized world...
http://www.nigeriansinamerica.com/articles/2092/1/Sexual-Violence-and-Nigerian-Women-Breaking-the-Silence/Page1.html


Making Lagos Roads Safe For Pedestrians
By Bayo Olupohunda
Published 09/20/2007
The nature of Lagos roads is increasingly making it unsafe for pedestrians. You will be foolhardy to think that the pedestrian walks available, if there are any, are meant for you!
http://www.nigeriansinamerica.com/articles/2090/1/Making-Lagos-Roads-Safe-For-Pedestrians/Page1.html Attachments


Is Nigeria Safe From Terrorist Attack?
By Bayo Olupohunda
Published 09/18/2007
Given the strategic importance of Nigeria as the fifth largest supplier of oil to the US and the sixth largest producer of the product in the world, how immune to terror attacks are we?
http://www.nigeriansinamerica.com/articles/2087/1/Is-Nigeria-Safe-From-Terrorist-Attack/Page1.html

What ICT is

Information and Communications Technology (also referred to by writers as Information and Communication Technology) is an umbrella term that includes all technologies for the communication of information. It encompasses:
Ø any medium to record information (whether paper, pen, magnetic disk or tape, optical disks – CD or DVD, flash memory, etc.);
Ø any technology for broadcasting information - radio, television; and
Ø any technology for communicating through voice and sound or images- microphone, camera, loudspeaker, telephone to cellular phones.

Personal Computers (PCs) networked through the Internet through information technology can transfer information using satellite systems or intercontinental cables. Information technology has become a kind of a focal point for communicating information, most often using computers (The Wikipedia Foundation, 2008).

ICT is a major factor in shaping the new global economy and producing rapid changes in society. Within the past decade, the new ICT tools have fundamentally changed the way people communicate and do business. They have produced significant transformations in industry, agriculture, medicine, business, engineering and other fields. They also have the potential to transform the nature of education-where and how learning takes place and the roles of students and teachers in the learning process.

The pace of change brought about by new technologies has had a significant effect on the way people live, work, and play worldwide. New and emerging technologies challenge the traditional process of teaching and learning, and the way education is managed. This shift also demands new knowledge and skills in the work force. ICT has changed the nature of work and the types of skills needed in most fields and professions. While it has, on the one hand, created a wide array of new jobs, many of which did not even exist ten years ago, it has also replaced the need for many types of unskilled or low-skilled workers. For example, the new 'smart’ agricultural equipment, using advance digital and industrial technology, is able to do the work previously done with a large number of low-skilled agricultural workers. In addition, new manufacturing plants are requiring fewer low-skilled workers. A Canadian study notes, for example, that in high-tech companies only 10% of the work force is comprised of unskilled workers. These trends pose new challenges to educational systems to prepare students with the knowledge and skills needed to thrive in a new and dynamic environment of continuous technological change and accelerating growth in knowledge production.

Education is at the confluence of powerful and rapidly shifting educational, technological and political forces that will shape the structure of educational systems across the globe for the remainder of this century. Many countries are engaged in a number of efforts to effect changes in the teaching/learning process to prepare students for an information technology based society. The UNESCO World Education Report (1998) notes that the new technologies challenge traditional conceptions of both teaching and learning and, by reconfiguring how teachers and learners gain access to knowledge, have the potential to transform teaching and learning processes. ICTs provide an array of powerful tools that may help in transforming the present isolated, teacher-centred and text-bound classrooms into rich, student-focused, interactive knowledge environments. To meet these challenges, schools must embrace the new technologies and appropriate the new ICT tools for learning. They must also move toward the goal of transforming the traditional paradigm of learning. To accomplish this goal requires both a change in the traditional view of the learning process and an understanding of how the new digital technologies can create new learning environments in which students are engaged learners, able to take greater responsibility for their own learning and constructing their own knowledge.

Thomas Kuhn suggests that revolutions in science come about when the old theories and methods will not solve new problems. He calls these changes in theory and methods a "paradigm shift." There is widespread concern that the educational experiences provided in many schools will not prepare students well for the future. Many educators and business and government leaders believe that creating a paradigm shift in views of the learning process, coupled with applications of the new information technologies may play an important role in bringing educational systems into alignment with the knowledge-based, information-rich society. Information technology, while an important area of study in its own right, is having a major impact across all curriculum areas. Easy worldwide communication provides instant access to a vast array of data, challenging assimilation and assessment skills. Rapid communication, plus increased access to information technology in the home, at work, and in educational establishments, is the order of the day.

What Radio Is

(here's another term paper by yours truly.)

Radio is generally referred to as the system of broadcasting sound. It is a system of communication which uses electromagnetic waves propagated through space. In wireless telegraphy, television, telephone transmission, radar, navigation systems, space communication and radio broadcasting, radio waves are used.

Radio had no single inventor. It grew out of numerous international efforts. In 1866, Mahlon Loomis, an American dentist, successfully demonstrated "wireless telegraphy." Loomis was able to make a meter connected to one kite cause another one to move, marking the first known instance of wireless aerial communication. From 1875, many scientists, drawing on the theory of James Clerk Maxwell (a British physicist who published his theory of electromagnetic waves in 1873), began to explore the possibility of using electromagnetic waves to communicate between two fixed points, that is, to transmit messages over distances without wires. German physicist, Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (whose name has been given to frequency/cycle per second- hertz or Hz) was the first to generate waves electrically by creating an oscillating electric discharge which radiated some of its energy as electromagnetic waves but these could not travel great distances. Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian electrical engineer, proved the feasibility of radio communication. He sent and received his first radio signal in Italy in 1895. By 1899, he flashed the first wireless signal across the English Channel and two years later received the letter "S", telegraphed from England to Newfoundland. This was the first successful transatlantic radiotelegraph message. In 1894, Marconi had developed a receiver or “coherer” and an improved spark oscillator connected to a crude antenna which succeeded in transmitting radio waves over significant distances. He transmitted signals for a distance beyond 1.6km in 1896, established commercial communication between England and France in 1899 and sent a message across the Atlantic in 1901. Radio, thus, came to the attention of governmental agencies and business interests. (In addition to Marconi, two of his contemporaries, Nikola Tesla and Nathan Stufflefield, took out patents for wireless radio transmitters. Nikola Tesla is now credited with being the first person to patent radio technology; the Supreme Court overturned Marconi's patent in 1943 in favour of Tesla.) However, this was still wireless telegraphy (or the transmission of signals) rather than wireless telephony (or the transmission of sound itself).

By 1903, a Marconi station located in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, carried an exchange or greetings between President Theodore Roosevelt and King Edward VII. In 1905, the naval battle of Port Arthur in the Russo-Japanese war was reported by wireless and in 1906 the U.S. Weather Bureau experimented with radiotelegraphy to speed notice of weather conditions. On Christmas Eve, 1906, Reginald Fessenden, an American, succeeded in transmitting both speech and music over several hundreds of miles from the Massachusetts coast. Others followed in the United States, Britain and Europe as years rolled by. The creation of the “vacuum tube oscillator” helped the steady transition from telegraphy to telephony by providing a continuous signal. The development of the radio valve proved to be vital in the transition from wireless to broadcasting. In 1904, John Ambrose Fleming, a British electrical engineer, experimented with the first diode (or a thermionic two-electrode valve) and in 1907, Lee de Forest created a triode by inserting a third electrode into the valve to amplify weak signals and transmit radio-telephone messages farther than thought possible. In 1912, the first transpacific radiotelegraph service linked San Francisco with Hawaii.

Before World War 1, radio was little appreciated as it was regarded as a private means of point-to-point communication and not as a public means of mass communication though anyone with a receiver could receive the broadcast signals. Coastal, marine, army and intelligence officers were the first significant users of radio. During World War 1, radio enforced communication and governments commandeered all wireless stations. The war stimulated technical research, boosted large-scale production of the thermionic valve and got many soldiers, sailors and airmen acquainted with radio. After 1918, when these men returned home with primitive receivers of their own, they helped to popularise radio. At this time people began to regard radio as a means of mass communication.

In 1920/21, the first true and licensed radio station named KDKA (now known as CBS), established by the Westinghouse Electric Corporation, began regular broadcast in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the United States. The station aired entertainment oriented programmes along with recorded music played by a phonograph placed before the microphone. This station was not a commercial station and the primary purpose for its establishment was to boost sales of radios manufactured by the Westinghouse Electric Corporation. Other manufacturers soon followed Westinghouse’s lead and as a result, the next two years saw the establishment of hundreds of stations in the United States and Europe. In Britain, the “chaos of the ether” caused leading radio manufacturers to set up the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) which broadcast its first programmes in November 1922. In America, radio manufacturing grew faster than car manufacturing for a short time and listeners on both sides of the Atlantic grew by the millions. A good number of armature radio stations sprang up during the 1920s. Radio became an exalted household utility. The perception that the medium of radio (being a tool of propaganda) had the power to influence public opinion, fashioned the development of international broadcasting. State Universities such as University of Iowa, Ohio State University and the University of Wisconsin operated radio stations which broadcast educational radio programs to rural areas. Radio receivers’ qualities of being cheap and portable in addition to FM broadcasting were the factors which helped to ensure the survival of radio during the 1930s when the rival medium of television had its biggest impact. The radio, though still in existence, ceased to be the major mass medium of the twentieth century. Between 1949 and 1958, the BBC’s average evening radio audience fell from about nine million to about three and half million listeners. All radio stations saw their earnings halved. (Radio seemed to receive a boost in 1952 when Sony Corporation invented the pocket-size transistor radio.) It faced decline until it found new roles for itself and new ways of reaching people. BBC’s first director-general, John Reith, developed an approach often described as paternalistic, which offered listeners “something a little better” than they thought they wanted and a varied output was seen as a way of introducing listeners to a subject they had not previously sought. Radio, Reith believed, had the power, and therefore the responsibility in a democratic society, to lead opinion and tastes rather than merely reflecting them. Even in the United States, some early figures in radio, such as David Sarnoff, argued that broadcasting represented a “job of entertaining, informing, and educating the nation, and should therefore be distinctly regarded as a public service”. In 1940, the BBC introduced a Forces Programme to entertain the troops of the British Expeditionary Force with dance music, sport, and variety. Its tone was overwhelmingly light and it soon attracted a larger share of listeners than the more traditional Home Service. Modern telecommunications technology now even allows for large-scale opinion-polling during live broadcasts.

Electromagnetic waves in a uniform atmosphere travel in straight lines and as the Earth’s surface is approximately spherical, long distance radio communication is made possible by the reflection of radio waves from the Earth’s ionosphere which allows radio programmes to be received nationally and internationally. However, this produced interference between rival signals. What people actually listened to was, and still is, crucially dependent, not just on what programme-makers construct but on the allocation of wavelengths and the distribution of transmitters. The discovery that electromagnetic waves could carry radio signals over the horizon had raised the prospect of broadcasting on an international scale but governments and broadcasting organizations rapidly realized the inherent problems of the growth in the medium; if radio stations operated on the same, or very similar wavelengths, listeners would suffer severe interference in reception. In 1925, an international agreement over the allocation of wavelengths was reached in Europe through the so-called Geneva Plan of the Union Internationale de Radiophonie and in the United States, Congress passed the Radio Act in 1927 to create the Federal Radio Commission. Regulation of the world’s electromagnetic spectrum has since been enacted largely by national governments through the International Telecommunication Union based in Geneva; however, from these earlier dates onward, transmission technology has been concerned primarily with the range and frequency of the signal being broadcast.

An American named Edwin Armstrong invented the “FM” or “frequency modulation” which is very different from “AM” or “amplitude modulation”. Both terms apply to techniques for imposing a meaningful pattern of variations on an otherwise unvaried stream of energy during transmission, but they have also come to be applied to whole categories of broadcast radio. Throughout the first half of the century, most standard radio broadcasting was achieved using the AM technique and today, some music and a great deal of speech radio, which does not necessarily demand high-quality reception, is still found on the AM dial. FM reaches only to the horizon, so a transmitter’s remit is local rather than national in scale. This geographical restriction has the advantage of reducing interference, and coverage is therefore more stable, day or night. The signal itself is inherently static-free, unlike that for AM, and a suitable receiving-set can take advantage of its more generous frequency range and dynamic range to reproduce high-fidelity sound. FM’s quality advantage over AM, exaggerated further with the development of stereo, has proved particularly suitable for the broadcasting of music and explains the rapid growth in the number of FM stations (often associated with rock and pop) in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Both AM and FM radio depend on traditional analogue technology, where the signal consists of a continuously changing pattern corresponding to the continuous flow of sound captured by a microphone. Such signals are inherently vulnerable to all sorts of distortions which restrict their ability to carry information without degradation.

Digital processing, which breaks a signal down into a stream of individual energy pulses assigned a binary code, can resist distortion and convey far more information. Most contemporary large-scale radio broadcasters have begun to develop digital audio broadcasting, which promises a quality of sound equivalent to that of a CD and an increase in the number of radio services available within the existing electromagnetic spectrum. The technology of the radio receiving-set has also changed dramatically since the origins of broadcasting. The first commercially available radio receivers were crystal sets, which required headphones. They soon gave way to valve receivers with loudspeakers, which enabled people to listen in groups. Growing demand led to larger-scale production of valve receivers, and the price of sets dropped throughout the 1930s. Even so, the wireless valve remained a relatively expensive item to replace, consumed much primary power and meant large and cumbersome sets. In 1948, the first manufactured transistor revolutionized reception. It allowed radios to be built that were more reliable, used far less power, and, crucially, were much smaller and cheaper. Transistor radios were mobile in a way that the television sets of the 1950s and 1960s could never be.

The essential components of a modern radio receiver are:

(1) an antenna for receiving the electromagnetic waves and converting them into electrical oscillations;

(2) amplifiers for increasing the intensity of these oscillations;

(3) detection equipment for demodulating;

(4) a speaker for converting the impulses into sound waves audible to the human ear; and

(5) in most radio receivers, oscillators to generate radio-frequency waves that can be mixed with the incoming waves.

The sensitivity of some modern radio receivers is so great that if the antenna signal can produce an alternating current involving the motion of only a few hundred electrons, this signal can be detected and amplified to produce an intelligible sound from the speaker. Most radio receivers can operate quite well with an input from the antenna of a few millionths of a volt. The dominant consideration in receiver design, however, is that very weak desired signals cannot be made useful by amplifying indiscriminately both the desired signal and undesired radio noise. Most modern radio receivers are of the super heterodyne type in which an oscillator generates a radio-frequency wave that is mixed with the incoming wave, thereby producing a radio-frequency wave of lower frequency; the latter is called intermediate frequency. To tune the receiver to different frequencies, the frequency of the oscillations is changed but the intermediate frequency always remains the same (at 455 kHz for most AM receivers and at 10.7 MHz for most FM receivers). The oscillator is tuned by altering the capacity of the capacitor in its tank circuit; the antenna circuit is similarly tuned by a capacitor in its circuit.

Communication theorists suggest that, if people tend to interpret the world largely through their ability to see it, then being deprived of visual clues will compel them to supply such clues for themselves. Thus, when listening to a radio play, one needs to imagine not only a character’s thoughts but also that person’s appearance and surroundings. Radio dramatists argue that this offers greater intellectual and emotional reward to a listener (as opposed to a viewer) and allows the writer to create stories and characters that are truly experimental or fantastical which is something the medium of television would have to struggle to recreate visually for the viewer. Since each individual listener will create a different mental image, radio is also often described as an “intimate” medium: the ability to create a unique picture of a person speaking on the radio allows the listener to form a close relationship with that speaker as imagined, rather than as someone pre-realized on the listener’s behalf. Listeners feel that they are being talked to personally rather than being talked at as part of a large undifferentiated mass, and they respond by forming close attachments to individual presenters. The advantages of radio include its provision of information, entertainment, a sense of intimacy, intellectual enhancement, motivation while working and many chances for phone-ins as well as its allowing for large-scale opinion-polling during live broadcasts.



References

1. Bellis, Mary (2006). The Invention of Radio. http://www.inventors.about.com/c/a.htm
.
2. Milestones in the Development of Radio and Television, (2000). [Online]. http://www.kidcyber.com.au

3. Lewis, Tom (2006). “A Godlike Presence”: The Impact of Radio on the 1920s and 1930s. San Francisco: Harper and Row Publishers.

4. White, T. H. (2003). United States Early Radio History. http://www.ipass.net/~whitetho/index.html

5. Microsoft Corporation (2005). Microsoft Encarta Encyclopaedia.

6. Farely, T. and Schmidt, K. (2006). Telecommunications History: Early Radio Notes.

http://www.privateline.com/mt_telecomhistory/d_early_radio_notes

7. XCV Corporation Incorporated (2006). Electronics Museum – Review of 20th Century Progress in Electronic Devices (1900 – 1999). http://www.xcvcorp.com/index.html

8. Aitken, Hugh G. J. (1976). "Syntony and Spark--The Origins of Radio". Liverpool: John-Wiley and Sons.

What A Review Is

A review is any of the following:

1. survey of past: a report or survey of past actions, performance, or events a review of the stock market for the past five years

2. arts journalistic article giving opinion: a journalistic article giving an assessment of a book, play, film, concert, or other public performance The book got unexpectedly bad reviews.

3. publishing publication featuring reviews: a magazine or journal that publishes reviews the Literary Review

4. re-examination of something: another look at or consideration of something

5. US education covering of learned material again: a brief discussion of subject matter already learned, in preparation for a test

6. military military inspection: a formal military inspection

7. military formal military ceremony: a formal military ceremony staged to honour a person or an occasion

8. law judicial re-examination: a critical examination by a higher court of a decision taken by a lower court
Origin of the word "review"

15th century. From obsolete French reveue ‘inspection’, from revoir ‘to inspect’, from Latin revidere , literally ‘to see again’, from videre (see vision).

Reference

Encarta ® World English Dictionary © & (P) 1998-2004 Microsoft Corporation.

Here's a review I wrote for a term paper in 2006.

A Review of Nuptiality Dynamics and Fertility Patterns in Contemporary Yoruba Society: An Overview by John Lekan Oyefara in Journal of Society, Development and Public Health, Vol. 1, No.2, 2005.

The writer, John Lekan Oyefara, who holds a doctoral degree in Sociology, began defining family demography, quoting Daugherty and Kammeyer (1995). He identified nuptiality dynamics as a significant variable in the study of family demography. Adopting Tilly’s (1978) definition of nuptiality, he opined that understanding its dynamics would aid policy makers in Nigeria because nuptiality affects fertility.

According to him, this study’s theoretical anchor is “structural functionalism”. This views society as a complete system. Applying this theory unearths other variables of fertility level. He assumed that the existing form of marriage would significantly affect fertility level in the study location (Ila-Orangun, in particular and Yoruba society, in general).

He conducted his study in 1998, employing over 300 female respondents whose profile showed adequate heterogeneity for making generalisation. He used secondary data from 1990 to 2003 Nigeria Demographic and Health Surveys, referring to well prepared documents for empirically verified data in addition to analysis of his study.

He wrote that in traditional sub-saharan Africa, marriage is early, universal and interwoven with the system. Quoting Caldwell et al (1991), he maintained that the Yoruba traditional sexual system has been destabilized. Westernization and modernization are responsible, he wrote, citing Orubuloye (1981). Surveys show that in Nigeria marriage is no longer universal. His use of tables, division into sections and choice of words are commendable, showing style and logical organization.

He revealed that among Yorubas, age at first intercourse differs from age at first marriage. Monogamy and polygyny exist in Nigeria and the latter flourishes. Highly interesting and informative is the “polygyny-fertility hypothesis that women in monogamous unions have higher average fertility rate than those in polygynous unions. Pebley and Mbuguo (1989), Palmer (1991) and Isiugo-Abanihe et al (1991) agree while Olusanya (1971) and Feyisetan and Togunde (1989) dissent. He averred that marital stability, more certain after a decade, affects fertility.

He noted Timaeus and Graham’s (1989) discovery that late marriage affects fertility less than expected. Fertility rate of average Yoruba women is declining, national reports claim.

He, however, did not give the meaning of VVF nor the state in which to find
Ila-Orangun. He did not state why he chose the town as a representative sample.
He cited Haralambos and Heald (1980) but omitted this citation in the reference section. These are minor and do not reduce the intellectual skill shown.

His excellent closing suggestion is that government should channel adequate resources towards educating the Nigerian child and the proper implementation of population policies.

What Bureaucracy Is

Introduction
The classical theory developed in three streams- bureaucracy, administrative theory and scientific management. These were founded on almost similar assumptions and the practical effects of all three are essentially the same. They were developed during almost the same period (1900-1950) by separate groups of theorists working almost completely independent of each other. All three streams of thought are compatible, complementary, have common views about the nature of man and his organisations and emphasise the specialisation and organisational structure based on historical and functional criteria, with the basic unit of analysis varying. However, bureaucracy, as presented by Max Weber, is the focus of this paper.

Bureaucracy
Maximilian Carl Emil Weber, known simply as Max Weber, was a German political economist and sociologist. Born in Erfurt in Thuringia, Germany, the eldest of seven children of Max Weber Sr. and Helene Fallenstein, he lived from 1864 to 1920 and was one of the founders of the modern study of public administration. At age thirteen, Max's Christmas presents to his parents were two historical essays entitled "About the course of German history, with special reference to the positions of the emperor and the pope" and "About the Roman Imperial period from Constantine to the migration of nations". Along with Karl Marx and Émile Durkheim, Weber is regarded as one of the founders of modern sociology, although in his day he was viewed primarily as a historian and an economist. Weber's early work was related to industrial sociology, but he is most famous for his later work on the sociology of religion and sociology of government. He began his studies of rationalisation in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, in which he shows how the aims of certain ascetic Protestant denominations, particularly Calvinism, shifted towards the rational means of economic gain as a way of expressing that they had been blessed. The rational roots of this doctrine, he argued, soon grew incompatible with and larger than the religious, and so the latter were eventually discarded. Weber continued his investigation into this matter in later works, notably in his studies on the classifications of authority and on bureaucracy.
Bureaucracy is defined in the Microsoft Encarta World English Dictionary (2004) as an administrative system, especially in a government, that divides work into specific categories carried out by special departments of non-elected officials. Bureaucracy is the structure, and set of regulations put in place to control activity, usually in large organizations and government. It is characterized by standardized procedure, formal division of responsibility, hierarchy and impersonal relationships.
According to Weber, the elements of bureaucracy distinguish an ideal formal organisation from other types.
Before discussing the factors which make bureaucracy not so ideal, its advantages are examined briefly.

Merits of Bureaucracy
1. Universality
Elements of bureaucracy are found almost universally in modern organisations, particularly if they are large and complex. These elements are hierarchy, rules, regulations, procedures, professionalism and training.

2. Specialisation
Bureaucracy provides an ordered hierarchy with special emphasis on specialisation. Each manager is assigned a specialised task to perform.

3. Form or Structure
Bureaucracy frames duties, responsibilities and reporting relationships in a command hierarchy. Hence the organisation is provided with a form or structure which sets the pace and necessitates framework for organisational processes.

4. Professionalism
In a bureaucratic organisation, the selection of office holders is based on qualification and experience rather than other considerations or personal whims of managers. The employment of experts and professionals provides efficient management and enables the organisation to successfully cope with the competitive environment and achieve goals.

5. Career and Security
Bureaucracy provides for career development opportunities and security of employment.

6. Rationality and Objectivity
In bureaucratic organisations, decisions are made in the light of prescribed rules and regulations. Thus rationality in decisions is ensured by consistency in dealing with organisational problems which in turn results in objectivity. This means that there is neither bias nor favouritism.

7. Predictability
The presence of rules, regulations, structure, procedure, filing system and so on enables predictability about future events and members’ behaviour in the organisation and thereby certainty and stability are ensured.

8. Democracy
Bureaucracy makes, in some ways, an organisation more democratic, reducing patronage and other privileged treatment, and also by emphasising more on qualification and technical competence of office holders.

9. Better Coordination and Control
Bureaucracy provides a highly efficient system of coordination and control. The atmosphere of depersonalisation created by the hierarchy of authority and the system of rules and procedures, promotes better coordination and control of actions of individuals in the organisation.

The above qualities or functional aspects of bureaucracy are related to a normative model of bureaucracy, mainly that as described by Max Weber. However, in actual practice, bureaucracies often fall short of these ideal advantages.


Demerits or Dysfunctions of Bureaucracy
Alvin W. Gouldner (1955), in Pugh et al (1971), and Varshney (2003) are not convinced that bureaucratic authority is inevitably the most efficient. Bureaucracy produces a number of unintended consequences and these are discussed below.

1. A Utopia
Utopia means an imaginary state considered to be perfect or ideal. Max Weber himself opines: “In its conceptual purity, d mental construct (i.e. bureaucracy) can’t be found anywhere in reality. It is a Utopia”. Hence, managers are supposed to make an effort to conform to a certain ‘ideal’ rather than actual patterns of conduct.

2. Rigidity and Inflexibility
Bureaucracy tends to be non-adaptive and impersonal. Rules, regulations and procedures become an end in themselves. Hence, it fosters rigidity and inflexibility, and fails to account adequate for human considerations. There are subordinates and super-ordinates in a pyramidal system. It is like a machine organisation, and this is what gives a depressing view of modern economic life given the spirit of our humanity. Whilst it is good to get away from arbitrary personal whims of leaders, the placing of everyone into regimented offices reduces the human touch. “People are cogs in a machine.”

3. Lack of Individual Initiative
Strict adherence to rules and regulations produce timidity, conservatism (that is, opposition to change and innovation), and “technism” (that is, attention to petty formal points). Thus, individual initiative to do new things or to adopt new ways is killed or injured. Passivity is encouraged. Enthusiasm is lost.

4. Mechanical Way
Bureaucracy emphasises a mechanical way of doing things by ignoring human relations at work. Lack of human considerations or preference for impersonality encourages “status quo” feeling among members of organisations.

5. Compartmentalisation of Jobs
Specialisation and division of labour result in categorisation which in turn promotes the notion of water-tight compartmentalisation of jobs. This restricts people from performing those tasks which they are capable of performing.

6. Goal Displacement
Goal displacement is the distortion of real organisational goals, which occurs when managers and other employees divert their efforts and resources away from the organisation’s predetermined goals. Under bureaucracy, managers make the adherence to the rules and procedures their major object, neglecting the overall goals of the organisation. Rules become ends in themselves.

7. Empire Building
Under bureaucracy, the officials think that the office they hold grants them a privilege and therefore they are involved in empire building that is increasing the number of people employed under one’s control, so that they could relate power and prestige with number of subordinates.

8. No Riddance or Removal
Max Weber observed that once bureaucracy gets fully established, it becomes hard to destroy or get rid of, even if it has outlived its utility. Officials become slave of it, no matter how bad the prevalent conditions demand a change.

9. Red Tape and Paperwork
Bureaucracy promotes red tape, that is, detailed unnecessary official rules which delay action. Very many documents and papers relating to the decisions taken have to be maintained as “record.” Work speed is considerably slowed down due to abundance of paperwork and excessively systemised movement of files. This way work also suffers.

10. Contradiction Stemming from Authority
Another problem with Weberian bureaucracy is the built-in contradiction between the authority of experts and the authority of hierarchy and discipline. One comes from superior knowledge and another from the office held. Professionals may have more technical knowledge than hierarchical super-ordinates. Furthermore these professionals, called cosmopolitans, may be committed to their skills, and how they produce the general job title, but not as such to the organisation itself. The hierarchical people, called locals, show loyalty to the organisation. Loyalty to the organisation therefore comes at a price of speciality and efficiency, or efficiency comes at a price of maximising loyalty to the organisation.

11. Opposition
Research findings have shown that enforcing bureaucracy leads to opposition. One example occurred in a gypsum mine in the United States. After a lenient enforcement of bureaucratic authority, a new mine manager enforced the rules of the system effectively in an aim for better efficiency. The outcome, however, was a big fall in morale, increased labour-management conflict and a wildcat strike.

12. Lack of Individual Liberty
Bureaucracy is known to be an enemy of individual liberty.



Conclusion
Max Weber's rational-legal authority is an ideal type of the hierarchical organisation that exists where the office holders are there not because of their personalities or their family or status line but because they are matched to that office in terms of their ability to carry out its tasks. The aim is maximum performance through the speciality and the chain of command. This system of organising, co-ordination and control is calculated. This system thrives on rules.
Rules do intend to provide an impersonal method of authority and suggest basic equality (as rules replace orders) by production at a distance. But if rules come from too great a distance they become mock and are ignored. There is a cycle of ever increasing enforcement of new rules as super-ordinates and subordinates juggle for position. In any case hierarchical authority can involve a power struggle where rules even go backwards from subordinates against the management, as with union agreements on working practices. The status involved in such bureaucracy is a zero sum game, where a gain by one level is a loss by another. On top of this, bureaucracies do contain informal groups that may generate their own rules regarding obligations and these in effect overrule the bureaucracy's.
The intention of bureaucracy is to produce an efficient organisation working in conformity to rationally designed impersonal rules and procedures. It might work but it is just as likely to produce low levels of subordinate commitment and conflict directed at actual managers. Impersonal rules are not all bad; it is just that there are unintended as well as intended consequences and the former make Weber's bureaucracy not the efficient machine he presents. Thus more human, expert based and ultimately more rewarding (for everyone) forms of business organisation have been sought.

References
1. Pugh, D. S., Hickson, D. J., Hinings, C. R. (eds.) (1971). Writers on Organizations. Second Edition. London: Penguin Books. Retrieved 7th February, 2008. http://www.change.freeuk.com/learning/business/ratlegal.html
2. Varshney, G. K. (2003).Organisation And Management. New Delhi: S. Chand & Company Ltd. Retrieved 7th February, 2008.
http://books.google.com/books?isbn=8121922488

3. Wikipedia Encyclopaedia (2008). Max Weber. Wikimedia Foundation Inc. Retrieved 7th February, 2008.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Weber

4. Encarta ® World English Dictionary (2004). Microsoft Corporation.