Maravi

Prioritise university education

Prioritise university education
By The Post
Mon 20 Feb. 2012, 12:00 CAT

EDUCATION is a vital component of any society, but especially of a developing one. As Thomas Jefferson once wrote: "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilisation, it expects what never was and never shall be." A nation which values its future affords the highest priority to providing good or quality education for its young people.

Good education is the beginning of wealth. Good education is the beginning of health. Good education is the beginning of spirituality. Good education is where the miracle process all begins. It is said that if someone is going down the wrong road, he doesn't need motivation to speed him up. What he needs is good education to turn him around.

Ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is poverty. Ignorance is devastation. Ignorance is tragedy. Ignorance is illness. Ignorance is backwardness. Ignorance is under-development. It all stems from ignorance.

In trying to transform our backward country into a prosperous one, we are confronted with arduous tasks and our experience is far from adequate. This demands good education and we must be good at learning. Conditions are changing all the time, and to adapt our thinking to the new conditions, we need good education.

We need to learn from others. And the lessons learnt by Dr John Phiri, our Minister of Education and a former lecturer at the University of Zambia, from interactions with colleagues from Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua need to be put to good use.

We must learn to apply what we have learnt from others so that we can attract all that we want. Let the views of others educate and inform us, but of course in the end, let our decisions be a product of our own conclusions. There is certainly a lot to learn from our Latin American brothers and sisters.

They are trying very hard to transform their countries after many years of reversals and failures due to poor leadership and inappropriate policies. We need to strengthen our ties with Latin America. For many years, we have been looking to Europe but we are still poor and under-developed.

We have more in common with Latin America and there should be much more that unites us with them than with Europe. The quality of political leadership in Latin America has improved a lot over the last 10 to 15 years. Today we have a leadership on that continent that is heart and soul committed to improving the living conditions and dignity of its people.

And this is also a leadership that pays a lot of attention to internationalism and solidarity with the suffering and struggling peoples of this world. Let us increase our cooperation with the peoples of Latin America. Even Brazilians who have an embassy here, we don't seem to be doing much with them when much more can be done with them.

Cuba is one of the leading countries in the world in the area of education. And it's a country that has always been willing to share its experiences, its knowledge with others; a country whose leadership and people seems to believe that the highest level of political thought was reached when some men and women became aware that no people and no man or woman had the right to exploit others, and that the fruits of the efforts and intelligence of each human being should reach all others.

Education is a major factor for social change. We think it is important that our universities are made to accept their role as active agents of national integration and social justice. We will not have development for all until we have integral education for all.

Our universities should be awakening unawareness that the whole nation benefits from their services, and that the whole nation should therefore join in providing the resources they need to carry out their task. Our universities must participate in the transformation of present-day society and in the wake of bettering the human condition.

Our universities should commit themselves in working with the rest of the nation in their concern for societal problems. They have a vital role to play in the overall project of changing our society.

We must not forget that a lack of quality education lies at the base of the unjust social structures in our country.

We share the observations made by Dr Phiri that the Zambian university system has failed the nation and it is clear that the curriculum of our universities need to be reviewed so that they can support sustainable development.

Truly, "we need to review the curriculum at all levels so that learners are better prepared for the challenges Zambia faces; there is need to realign universities so that they meet the demands or needs of our people and that they stay with the people if sustainable development is to be realised". To educate for development is to impart those criteria without which that development becomes a chimera, if not a dangerous deception.

We think our nation should work so that our people are enriched culturally, intellectually and technically, without restrictions on this process. So that if everyone wants the honour of having a good university degree, then everyone should have the chance to get one; without, of course, this implying that if everyone has a university degree, then everyone is going to have a job that corresponds to that degree.

But this is a problem that has to be solved by creating facilities for study, and, of course, in the knowledge that having a degree will not automatically guarantee a job that corresponds to that degree. However, we need to channel our university programmes towards the basic careers in which there is a greater need at the present time in Zambia.

As Dr Phiri has correctly observed, Zambia can certainly learn a lot from Cuba, Venezuela and other Latin American countries on how to extend university education and make it popular to enable our universities to serve our people better. Let us afford the highest priority to providing quality education for all our young people.

This is the only way we will see a reversal of fortunes.

Labels: EDUCATION, JOHN PHIRI, UNIVERSITIES

posted by MrK @ 1:57 PM