(From the archives: Memories from South African Reminiscences in 2014/2015)
| Image courtesy of Google images |
An
interesting spectacle unfolded during the last three days as I attended a
doctoral supervision training course at UFS (University of the Free State
Bloemfontein) aimed at strengthening and enhancing the quality of doctoral
research in South Africa. It suddenly dawned on me that a society’s values are best
measured depending on where its money is invested. Suffice to note that a good
number of developed economies invest a colossal sum of their money in building
human capital through educational programmes. The inverse is true for
developing countries whose resources seem to get wasted through a political
class hell-bent on attaining highest honours on self-aggrandisement and
economic enrichment.
For
example, Kenya has a small number of quality doctorates in relation to its
population compared to a preferable sample ratio of 100 doctorates per one
million individuals. The trickledown effect is that educational standards are adversely
affected. As a result, instead of having the most qualified personnel teaching
pre-schoolers and early grade children, the reverse is witnessed. In Kenya, the
more qualified you are, the less likely you are to teach lower cadres of
students. Indeed, most professors are stuck in teaching doctoral students, or
handling administrative tasks, thus denying young scholars the opportunity to
benefit from their knowledge.
In
an ideal environment, a professor should be the one teaching children and
helping to nurture and horn the educational skills of a future generation.
However, in most developing countries, this task is delegated to people who
failed in school because the career is associated with poor pay and lack of
respect or recognition. It is thus not surprising to realise that there is a
dialectic relationship between the quality of education amongst the majority of
people who happen to be poor and their masterly of language skills or other
pedagogical matters.
On
the contrary, those who can afford to enrol their children in expensive
schools, begin to reap the benefits of a quality education system that, so to
speak, unfairly advantages their children over those from poor backgrounds.
Essentially this means that expensive schools have the capacity to attract and
retain highly qualified personnel as opposed to public schools that have to
rely on meagre government funding. Thus, it might be possible to surmise that our
educational system is largely discriminating and responsible for exacerbating
the social stratification of our nation.
What
would it take for a country like Kenya to have qualified professors to teach
kindergarten kids? As it is, many undergraduates will finish their first degree
without imbibing or sipping from the fountains of professors’ wisdom. And
therein lies our educational tragedy. I am not in any way postulating that
people with master’s degrees or PhD’s are not qualified, no way! My argument is
simply meant to underscore the fact that the years invested in research and
dissemination of knowledge percolates into the making of the individual thereby
making him/her a better academician.
Besides,
if the Kenyan educational environment was conducive, apportioning adequate
resources in terms of time and money, many people would venture into the
profession. Unfortunately, being a teacher in a Kenyan context is something
that most of us disdain and look down upon. There is no question that societal
demands have pushed many a young person to escape the academic path lest they
wallow in eternal miasmic conditions of poverty. It is thus prudent for us to
rethink the values of education and to appreciate the different demands that
societal responsibilities will exert on us. In this way, we will equip
ourselves with different skills and pursue different careers with our heads
held high.
| Image courtesy of Google images |
Indeed,
we need to re-invest in the education sector. We need to retrain our children
that education is important. Although there are high achievers in the society
who are school dropouts, our children need to be in the know that pursuing
education does not mean putting one’s goals to an end. Rather, it means that
education becomes a means to help them to better focus and crystallise their
vision and goals. Maybe it is high time we stopped being paranoid about
education and respected this noble profession if we actually belief in the
sanctity of human growth and a holistic society.
Back
to by doctoral supervision course. At least I learnt one important issue
regarding power play in connection to supervision – education can make or break
someone’s future! Consequently, if we are not careful, our educational pursuits
as a country will end up breaking our kids’ souls instead of transforming them
into inspired qualified beings capable of discovering innovative solutions to
our social, political and economic woes. I hope that the next time we talk to
our kids about what they want to be when they grow up we will think about the
need for a quality educational system that can propel them to be what they
visualise in their dreams and fantasies.
