The ManicaPost
Morris Mtisi Education Correspondent
WRITES Professor Sheunesu Mpepereki in The Patriot of March 29 — April 4 2019; Unpacking ‘‘useless’’ degrees . . . towards achieving Vision 2030 Objectives: “Zimbabwe’s education system is being reviewed and re-focused in line with the thrust to fulfil the country’s Vision 2030 . . .
Vision 2030 seeks to develop Zimbabwe into an upper middle-income economy with a per capita income of US$3000 per month.” All through education to acquire skills and clear and beautiful!
The Prof adds: “Put simply Zimbabwe must mobilise its citizenry to work hard to generate sufficient wealth in terms of goods and services to reach the upper middle-income Gross Domestic Product target . . . .For Zimbabweans to increase their volume of production of goods and services, the population must be capacitated through education to acquire skills and competencies needed to boost the country’s economy . . .So we must examine the suitability, or otherwise, of the education system, and, if need be, re-configure it to fit purpose.” Brilliant and eloquent wisdom from the learned Professor!
He quotes generously from the Minister of Higher and Tertiary Education subtly and wisely disagreeing with him and then finally agreeing with him. Wise men and women do not disagree bluntly and cheaply. It takes a lot of wisdom too to identify where wise people differ and areas of their intellectual conflict.
The import of it is two-fold: First to congratulate the education re-alignments by the education reviewers and reformist. Nothing can be truer than the truth that the population must be capacitated through education to acquire skills and competencies needed to boost the economy and that “with independence, the Africans were expected to take up and carry their own cross of the development agenda, invent their own wheels and take charge of their own economic development…That did not happen because the enabling tool — education — was not fit for purpose.”
The Professor’s article in The Patriot espouses the development of Education 3,0 to 5,0 which is essentially making education more useful than before and eliminating ‘‘useless’’ degrees in favour of degrees that offer skills and competencies needed to boost commerce and industry.
While education 3,0 was limited to teaching, research and outreach, the fundis argue, education 5,0 added the Innovation and Industrial dimensions. Excellent, is it not?
For nearly 40 years since independence in 1980, all the previous education systems were designed by both educated and learned doctors and professors which Zimbabwe has no shortage of. Each new set of educational politicians or policy makers has seen something chronically inadequate with previous visions of education. How can we now trust that the beautifully sounding and seemingly perfect vision 2030 premised on the . . .Education 5,0 is THE vision?
Before a new set of visionaries come in to assess and replace vision 2030, for that is inevitable, is not possible to see NOW and not tomorrow, how Education 6,0 is already necessary, of course too late, to add and seriously entrench the Ubunthu /Hunhu aspect of education into the beneficiaries of Zimbabwean education? If education focuses on academics, skills and competencies needed to boost the economy only, well it may not be outright dead, but is it not terminally ill? Is such an education whole?
Is it complete? Why have educational planners since independence pushed the MORAL aspect of learners to the back burner? Everybody talks wisely about goods and services, creation of wealth and targeting a middle-income economy with a per capita income of US$3000 per month. Perfect vision! Perfect dream! But is that all a good education, a sound education can offer? Do Zimbabweans see, recognise, realise the consequences of omitting properly instituted moral rearmament in its education? Perhaps collectively, do African education systems realise the ultimate harmfulness of an education system that omits clinically prescribed values and principles of behaviour?
Are Africans only happy with certificates, diplomas, degrees, skills and competencies, Innovation and Industrialisation-delivery of goods and services? African governments and their people do not care about the behaviour of their citizens so long as they drive economies and deliver goods and services, create wealth and reach per capita middle-class incomes of US3000 per month? Is that correct?
Is an education system, 5,0 or 50,0 that defines purpose as wealth creation and delivery of goods and services complete? When we say education must fit purpose, is that all we mean?
Is a society or nation without corruption, thieves, crooks, fraudsters, adulterers, prostitutes not an ideal its education system must create? Why are our education planners, leaders and master-minders, doctors and professors silent about Ubunthu and Hunhu?
Is there something we can learn and conclude from such a squinty or myopic view of education from these people? If education is the only source of personal and national development and it does not care how the consumers of the product behave in schools, colleges and universities and thereafter, what progress is this?
We talk so passionately, loudly and wisely about creation of wealth, innovation and industrialisation, education fit for purpose . . . all which is quite impressive, but what purpose is it if it does not include behavioural modes of citizens?
With how porous global boundaries are today owing to modern technologies and digital connectivity . . . with a plethora of social media platforms and internet . . . with how the world has suddenly become a global village, how can any African education system be seemingly fast asleep about the speed and effect of cultural imperialism which is cultural poison for the honour, dignity and cultural rights of Africans, particularly youths in schools colleges and universities who must in their character and personality must live like human beings and not animals.
How does an education system talk about creating wealth, delivery of goods and services; what goods and services? Prostitution? You call it Sex work? Drug pushing and consumption? Laziness and other forms of altered though processes? A country of patriots (nation-loving people ready to protect and die for their motherland) who wait for the State President to teach or force them to clean their own environments? Is that not a shame . . . strange perhaps . . . to have a visitor teach you how to sweep your rooms and homestead clean? People who boast being the African state with the highest literacy rate in Africa? Should our education not automatically or easily produce citizens who know this without Presidential powers coming in to teach us how to clean our streets?
Now we are waiting for the President to tell us to stop looking for jobs which are not available, but to create our own and employ others; to tell us not to waste time on WhatsApp and admiring our own selfies while other youths in other countries are busy making money online; to tell us that prostitution is not an entrepreneurial skill; to tell us that work places are not secret brothels but sources of production; to tell us not to be hoodwinked by religious tsotsis every Sunday morning or afternoon to line the pockets of these smart sinners? What is the purpose of education if it fails to produce a thinker who does not wait to be told what is good or bad?
A system that cannot produce people who know that human beings reign supreme above animals and must not behave like them? Animals are guided by instinct. We are human beings with beliefs, customs and traditions, values and that is how we differ from animals.
But our education today, you can blame whoever you want to blame, produces young women and men who compete with animals, most osf them wild ones, in behaviour. Can or will Education 5,0 address this frightening gap in education.
Meanwhile I am desperately looking for Professor Sheunesu’s contact details. I want him on Head-To-Head With MM on Diamond FM Radio to elucidate a paraphernalia of educationally intriguing issues he brought up in The Patriot of March 29-April 4 2019.
Please advise him that he is on a wanted list — c/o Diamond FM Radio education programme.
