ON EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT

This blog today is specifically dedicated to John Paul,whose gratitude has got me sited here on the computer today.Thank you JP!!!
This week I happened to attend to important public dialogues and think tanks one on how to find peaceful means to prevent strikes in universities through inter university collaboration and another on how business finance is or is not a  hindrance to the growth of small and medium enterprises. A lot was said and a lot was learnt,If I have learned a lot on Uganda's progress it was in these so many think tanks,debates and public dialogues that I have graciously attended over the years through my life at campus but what is the gist of education in this discourse today.

Just to go back to the basics, the Millennium Development Goals that are set to be achieved by all signatory countries by 2015 have a pillar on Promoting Universal Primary education by 2015.And if we have followed the discussions around UPE in Uganda you may concord with me that we are dilly darling and this bitter truth has kept us in denial of the true state of our primary schools both the UPE and government schools   (I am deliberately leaving out the secondary schools that are no less in the same state) So our government has continuously used the education system as a winning ticket in all election campaigns and some how they pass the bar with the voters(legally or illegally) suffice to say it is overwhelmingly true that no other school infrastructure has been built by government after the Obote 2 regime shocking on one part since were promised "fundamental change".Today as we speak children in many UPE school across the country stay hungry through the day and we claim they are at school learning,and teachers who with love for the practice and little pay come as late as 10:00am to teach their not so interested pupils.I could go on till the cows come home on the dire state of our UPE schools that are supposedly assumed to have the responsibility of reducing poverty and increasing development.

Suffice to say is the fact that to attain such an unrealistic goal is an insult to the Uganda populace(with all due respect to the heads that sat and thought so!).If I may but say,Countries that have  achieved poverty eradication and have attained sustainable development invested in education at all levels of learning and in a holistic manner,they invested in brain gain and pushed their citizens to the highest level of education and that created patriotism and a love for their country that kept them coming back even after attaining education in prestigious university known in the world.I use South Korea as my cadaver in this point,there was a time when South Korea had no university and we in Uganda has our Ivory tower Makerere University to show to the world today South Korea has some of the best universities and also humbly funds research project to our dying country.

Allow me say that no matter how many people we take through a lacking UPE system r even just take through primary level and we do not provide a quality and good education thereafter no development will have been attained at the end.A country's wealth is its people and what better way to develop a country than to invest in it populace and its education system.And educated person and go through life and survive the hurdles that would have thrown them back into poverty and it will take understanding the the human person is the driver of the development of his country to realize the need to invest in education at all levels of learning.
Now no matter what the GDP or the economics of our country says,investing the human person will by far remain the plausible if not the only plausible way to achieving a sustainable development because I know I have been educated and given a voice then surely I will educate those that come after me so that they too can be empowered.and may be in awestruck it could be a deliberate act of our nation and the custodian of our wealth(the government) to keep Ugandans in an ignorant and less educated state because that  makes it easy to rule an uneducated crowd,you then become their brain and only source of knowledge(thank God there is globalization,I could get an education else where if it failed in my own country)On a serious note,as long as we still flood our selves in the less educated zone and have more children born into a system of UPE that has delivered to fundamental change and no better brains to present the world with we are only but on a time bomb into the future,the future of our children and our children's children is at stake if the next generation happens to have more uneducated people than the educated one

Recommendations;
I could go on and curse the dark but I need to as well forward some important solutions that could help if my voice is just but heard among the many that have spoken in need to provide help for our great nation(not so great lately)
Education reforms,it has been said it is still going to be said but I would rather phrase it differently,The practical bit of education,ostensibly I would prefer a scrap of the last two years of high school and right out of junior high we send our students to Tertiary institution to learnt he practical skill and knowledge before they join college.The need in that is to spare the students in very remote areas to get practical intellect that could help them regardless of whether they make it to college or not. and consequently, they will know how to survive with a degree or with no degree.
Then intensely invest in the education sector form providing material for learning,to paying teachers and lectures(yes,I know this hurts the thieves in government)and also create a will that can lead to change,where there is a will there is always a way!This sound rather obnoxious because it is what has been said forever but may be all that is lacking is the will to cause change.
and last but not least is the need to invest in infrastructure,sometimes am appalled when our leaders stand and promise and fail to deliver ,that is the highest level of lack of integrity.Your word is the only thing that bare witness to you sometimes but if we can issue out lies as if it is a norm then we fail our moral fabric(if at all they still have one,anyway).
as I pen down or rather stop writing,I earnestly and continually hope for "fundamental change"for our education system at all levels so that it can also be part of the elements that will cause sustainable development in the long run.I will smile with admiration if even the little girl and boy in Amuru district could get the education that I am offered today.
For God and My Country