EDUCATION: ONE OF THE CENTERS OF INFLUENCE I always start my discourse on the centers of influence with a brief summary and recital of the seven centers of influence in any given society. These are religion, politics, sports, education, arts and culture, business and finance, and the media. I have since stated unequivocally the link between these centers of influence and the galvanizing of one’s ambitions in any field into a formidable enterprise. The moment is now upon us to delve into education as a veritable center of influence.
Education is a life long excursion that only ends the moment one breathes their last. The desire for knowledge in the human heart makes us exceptionally different from any other creation of God. The desire for knowledge becomes the premise on which the quest for education is founded. There is formal and informal education that others have ably termed the “University of Hard Knocks”! This article however, discusses formal education and its influence in societal formations.
As always, to chart my course in this discourse, I will give hopefully a brief evolution of education in ancient Greece without following any chronological order for lack of space and time. My desire is not to display much information for the sake of it but simply to give you a snap view in a historical context.
1. A Historical Perspective on Educational Theories
When discussing the Western world’s philosophical formations, one inextricable fact of such monumental proportions is often missing in most books on this score. This is the African influence on Plato while in exile in North Africa in what is today known as Alexandria, Egypt. Plato’s sage and guru Socrates was eventually executed by the authorities for worshiping false gods and polluting the minds of youths he conversed with. Rather than accept censorship of his ideas, Socrates chose to sacrifice his life.
It is believed that while on this brief spell in Africa fearing for his life, Plato learnt philosophy from Egyptian gurus who taught him the tenets of philosophy. The eventual capture of Egypt by Alexander the Great led to the relocation and destruction of literary masterpieces at the Alexandria library. It is thought that some of these literary masterpieces helped to spar Plato and his protégé Aristotle to their heights in philosophy. There is an extricable linkage between the Western tenets of knowledge and the mystical sages of ancient Egypt. It will amaze the average reader that Ancient Egypt thrived in the fields of algebra, geometry, medicine, science and surgery long before the West did. Africa was at that time a well established civilization with schools in places like Carthage and Tunisia.
Ancient Greece was divided into small and often competing City-States such as Athens, Sparta and Thebes. Athens prided itself as being more civilized than the other City-States by affording the noblemen of its citizens the best education. It was a place of humane treatment of its citizenry where democracy thrived. Athenians believed that free men should have a liberal education forming a basis for civic engagement and personal development. However, only sons of free citizens attended public school while girls were educated at home by tutors. Slaves and foreigners had little or no education.
Sparta on the other hand, a sworn enemy of Athens, offered formal athletic education to its women to enable them have healthy bodies that would eventually raise sons to join the military. Most schools in Sparta were of military persuasion to engage in battle formations against Athens. A group of ancient teachers emerged in the 400s BC called the Sophists who taught rhetoric, grammar and logic. They were unwilling to teach truth and moral principles.
Socrates, unlike the Sophists taught that there was in every person the knowledge of universal virtues of life such as truth and justice which could be discovered through conscious effort. Socrates sought to discover and teach universal principles of truth, beauty and goodness. He formulated an educational system called the Socratic Method. It was a way of asking probing questions that caused his students to think deeply about the meaning of life, truth and justice.
Plato, a protégé and torchbearer for the teachings of Socrates, then founded a school in Athens called the Academy. Plato believed in an unchanging world of perfect ideas or universal concepts. He asserted that since true knowledge was the same in every place at every time, education; like truth should be unchanging. Plato made lengthy arguments for his educational theories in his book, the Republic, one of the notable works of Western philosophy. According to Plato, each class of people would receive a different kind of instruction to prepare for the various roles in society.
In 335 BC Aristotle, a student of Plato also founded his own school in Athens called the Lyceum. Believing that human beings are essentially rational, Aristotle taught people that they could discover natural laws that governed the universe and then follow his laws in their lives. He also concluded that educated people who used reason to make informed choices would ultimately live moderated lives without extremes.
In the 13th Century, Italian philosopher and theologian St. Thomas Aquinas made a successful attempt to synthesize Aristotle’s philosophical views with St. Augustine’s religious views in a famous book Summa Theologiae written in Latin. Christianity shaped the education of the medieval age with the Roman Catholic Church being the fulcrum of this epoch. Most education took place in parishes, cathedrals, monasteries and convents. The reformation also brought with it educators and thinkers like John Calvin in the 14th Century. Then came the Renaissance period when the education in the Arts and music took centre stage. During this period, there was a departure from theological teachings dubbed the ‘queen of the sciences’ to a secular pursuit of knowledge mainly in the arts and music.
The concept of University (Latin - Universitas) associations that students and teachers organized to discuss academic issues helped to birth world renowned centers of learning like the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Paris, Salerno, Bologna and Padua. Suffice to state that these higher centers of learning grew out of scholastic-led revivals of the 12th and 13th Century. They were not merely places where students accumulated knowledge but centers of high criticism, thinking and conferring among students and teachers. This perhaps forms the difference between these universities and the modern type especially with particular reference to Zambia. A University graduate must be a moving think tank and an inestimable reservoir of knowledge due to his heightened intellectual faculties and not merely a person who has accumulated knowledge with a disconnect to reality.
2. The Contextualization of Education
Needless to say at this juncture that in my view it is criminal for a sitting government of any country to fail to provide to its citizenry an education that helps to galvanize people’s intellectual abilities for the betterment of their countries. When a government reneges on the provision of education from kindergarten to university; it becomes the loser much as its citizenry becomes potential thugs, con artists, sex offenders, welfare candidates and outcasts; being in most cases offshoots of a lack of educational opportunities. A government must build educational infrastructure across its breath and width, make it as affordable as possible to the majority of its citizenry then of utmost importance, tailor a curriculum that enables the students to be better prepared to handle the diverse challenges of living in a dynamic world. Some of the nonsense we were subjected to in school have such a disconnection with our status as a third world highly indebted poor country.
The budgetary allocation to education in Zambia’s national budget is so paltry that it makes a glaring indictment on the government. It is scandalous for a country that is in dire need of massive economic recovery to fail to remedy this anomaly of colossal proportions in successive governments after Dr. Kaunda’s government. This made gigantic strides in the educational sector. Most totalitarian and autocratic regimes are known to systematically stifle the rational and intellectual potential of its citizenry through lack of or inadequate provision of education. It is perceived that an uneducated, uninformed citizenry can easily be manipulated by such governments!
I shudder to think that this could be the case in Zambia today! Zambia’s gross domestic product (GDP) at independence in 1964 was higher than that of South Korea in British pound sterling but through strategic realignment and forward thinking the leaders of that developing country have made it one of the leading industrial luminaries of our time. Seoul the capital has over a hundred universities with a special bias towards sciences and technical courses! That’s what a government that espouses rapid economic empowerment does. The government in South Korea invested in its people as the main drivers of economic activity through massive construction of schools, technikons, colleges and universities with special emphasis on mathematics, engineering, and sciences. Inventions like Hyundai products, Sanyoung, Defy, LG, Samsung electronics are testimony to that massive investment in the field of education. South Korea is the largest ship builder and among the world’s largest manufacturers of micro-chips or semi-conductors used in computers and mobile phones in the world today. These products are drivers of the economic success story of South Korean. Its industrial base is second to none and has positioned itself to be a world leader in electronics and engineering fields.
There has been talk as part of the Mwanawasa legacy of massive investments in the field on mining but we fail to realize that it is foreign capital that builds these mines, therefore since there are no laws currently that regulate capital flight from investors by the Bank of Zambia; massive externalization is the order of the day. All we are left with gapping holes in the ground that are breeding grounds for mosquitoes after the copper has been hued out! These investors are not even investing a portion of their mega profits in their operating areas like ZCCM used to do. Roads to some of these mines are almost impassable while they siphon all the profits either to China or India. The government in its National Development Plan vision 2030 has stated that it wants to attain growth levels that will make Zambia a middle income country. In my view twenty-two years is a very long time in which we should aim to be a first income country! Why is the government aiming so low?
John F. Kennedy in the 60s stated that America would put a man on the moon before the turn of the century and they did! If others are aiming for the stars why must we aim at Mount Kilimanjaro? Using all empirical evidence from Central statistical Office (CSO) indicates that at the current levels of growth we may never even attain the middle income status due largely to our lack of leadership and political will. Sectors like education will help us make quantum leaps toward development! The best investment and the most important in the productivity chain is human development in the form of educational and intellectual empowerment.
Knowledge is a defense just as money is a defense. We urgently need a rethink and a remodeling of our educational system to make it comparative and competitive both in terms of our Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) region and the world. As I write, both our universities are closed due to long and overdrawn negotiations between government and lecturers. The irony difficult to understand is the fact that these problems are perennial and recurring meaning they are given a casual approach and not overhauled permanently. The government, rather than demanding huge pay rises and allowances for themselves, should channel the resources to productive areas like education and the systems that support it. We need forward, pragmatic and visionary leadership in this area. We have lacked decisive leadership in the educational arena hence the crises that are recurring every year drawing out the academic calendar of these institutions and rendering education in Zambia rather expensive to both students and lecturers.
Another area of equal importance in these tertiary centers of education is the environment and the state of disrepair of infrastructure. The environment in which learning takes place must first of all meet world health organization minimum standards as well as be inspiring. I don’t think there is anything of the sort in all our three public universities! The quality of the laboratories, libraries, cafeterias, sports and recreation facilities, lecturer theatres and lounges all are in utter state of disrepair! For all intents and purposes, education is an expensive undertaking but the dividends far outweigh the cost of educating our people.
3. The Influence of Education
Education is a center of influence because through it tyrants and saints alike have rallied their constituencies to their cause. The public use of language and information is a common medium of communication with the masses to galvanize and augment popular support. Tyrants like Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and Mugabe were and are masters in the art and skill of propaganda to manipulate the masses through the use of information. The most tyrannical regimes of the world use their governments’ information departments for that intended purpose. Education is helpful even when one has no employment because through it one can access critical information either from the internet, print media, periodicals, and magazines unlike the one who is illiterate. Education gives a person a worldview that is informed, platitudes of criticism that are vital in today’s world. They also afford reliable sources of information, a body of information that is essential to live a full and meaningful life.
There is a popular maxim that what you do not know may kill you! Another one is; ignorance is no defense! Ignorance is costly to Zambia in GDP terms. The ignorant add very little to our economic development. They are not technocrats in any field except hauling timber and washing clothes or worse still idling around or aimlessly roaming the streets. In our own families we have a collective and moral responsibility to educate our children and siblings so that they don’t become dependants and destitute. Education is highly influential as seen in all fields of human endeavour. Presidents, accountants, engineers, pilots, pastors, nurses, doctors, administrators, surveyors, lawyers, teachers and a host of other professionals all have one thing in common - education! Let’s invest in this life altering endeavour that has potential to turn the fortunes of a street kid into one that is affluent and dignified. The potential of Zambia lies with our human develop.
Zambia has a very dismal and embarrassing human development index (153/160), according to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). The index is almost at the bottom thereby engendering systemic poverty, hunger, disease, ignorance and superstition - all byproducts of a lack of education. An urgent reversal of fortunes in the educational sector is in my view and estimation a priority we aren’t hearing much about in the presidential campaigns doing the rounds lately! Every presidential aspirant must give us a detailed and elaborate plan on how to restructure and reposition our educational system to make it relevant in today’s globalized world with competing interests. Our education must evolve into the 21st Century through the efficient and prudent use of cutting edge technologies to make our grandaunts from our public universities and colleges competitive.
I trust that with this short discourse on education as a pivotal driver of economic growth you have been enlightened to petition your member of parliament to ensure that our government makes education a priority as they have agriculture and tourism. (This article was written by Nicholas Mwibawa, Director of Religious Affairs - Our-Zambia.Com)
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