"A country can only be as good as it's Education" those were the words inscribed on one of the public school walls that I was working in for a school term.
As ironic as it first sounded, it is by far the most true statement I have heard in a while. How can one be any better than the education and the chances they got in life. It goes to say, the quality of the education of a country, says a lot about the quality of the people that that country has in it's society.
It is imperative on us as a nation to realise that the people in our society can only be a reflection of the education we attained. Now, I come from Uganda and I have seen the quality of our education and it's basis, has by far been one to create job seekers than makers.
Subject to correction, Many people will argue that there have been many "uneducated" folks that have made it in the world of business and have tremendously become rich to the extent of even employing learned folks. And I am very delighted that such people exist but the level of their scarcity says a lot about the possibility of such an outcome.
You see, the education of Uganda has been taken through the test of time and has been found wanting. From the foundations of our education, lies a foreign installation one that has no characteristics of home grown lessons to give to the people of Uganda.
An education, that was meant to offer the white man, labourers in their enterprises(no offense). It is characterised with understanding European history, chemical details of tests done and accredited in foreign countries and it is just a rub off of what they have told us that is correct. Our education has made us into passive participants of the transformation that we desire to see in our Country.
The margins of our education, have left us slaves of a development that doesn't answer the needs and the questions of the day. We are a citizenry that is merely surviving on the outcasts of what our society should be able to reflect. I will speak for many graduates, that while one might have attained a degree, the possibility of having that degree come to fruition is a distant reality.
With exception to some, medicine graduates, lawyers and some few degrees that give no option but to be that which you studied for. Many of the graduates brought out of the system of the university end up in mundane jobs that do not put their acquired knowledge to use.
It makes it hard for such a society to develop and grow into a better society.Paulo argues in his book, The pedagogy of the oppressed," students are considered empty bank accounts that should remain open to deposits made by the teacher. Freire rejects the "banking" approach, claiming it results in the dehumanisation of both the students and the teachers. In addition, he argues the banking approach stimulates oppressive attitudes and practises in society. Instead, Freire advocates for a more world-mediated, mutual approach to education that considers people incomplete. According to Freire, this "authentic" approach to education must allow people to be aware of their incompleteness and strive to be more fully human. This attempt to use education as a means of consciously shaping the person and the society is called conscientization"
So as we enter into 2016, the same people with the same education attained, may we make tangible solutions to make effort into nurturing a home grown education. People need to invest in institutions like Musa body technical University, into the Kiira-Ev project and into the talents of many people that have invented from planes to cars in our Country. Those people carry grains of Intelligence to the future we want. Instead of demonising the herbalists, we need to help and give them a platform to be able to advance their medicines and package and produce them for further study and for better discovery. The traditional birth attendant can be given the skills needed to create a support system for the hospitals that are by far lacking in personnel.
It should be noted that before the rise of colonisation and as well the far pinching no-colonialism, we had a great deal of local inventions, from guns to iron smelted weapons and steel ware. To working methods of saving/storing food to avoid spells of hunger. If we by any chance trade these essential heritage for a modernised, colonial mindset, we stand to lose out of the knowledge of that age that was able to think beyond the "banking" system.
It still stands to this day, I might be able to use my brain to write and to think on a number of issues, me and many others but one cannot alienate the fact that, a society is not any better than it's education. That UPE (Universal Primary Education) and USE (Universal Secondary Education) are by far going to produce half baked-society spat generations. And it is for a long time going to suffer our transformation, development and progress as a country.
Yet again, " A Country can only be as good as it's education"
