Focus Media (Kigali)
30 November 2008
editorial
Other than Congo war issues or highly unjust arrest warrants for officials of our government we have a long-standing crisis, albeit one we share with many other poor countries. Unfortunately we do not even seem to realize we have this serious crisis, let alone its magnitude and its implications to the future (or lack thereof).
We are talking about the appallingly poor education systems which (logically) can only continue to produce literate but very poorly skilled, very poorly informed school leavers or "graduates" the overwhelming majority of whom-on top of the aforementioned deficiencies-barely, or totally are not equipped with the necessary life skills to, say, get through an oral or written interview to land that all important job; to set up one's own enterprise; or even for something as simple as holding one's own in any polite conversation.
Now, the fact being that the overwhelming majority of us unfortunately are products of the same appalling education systems we are talking about, it is difficult to register that most of our little children or our younger sisters and brothers are receiving very poor "education" that cannot do much to contribute to a better society in the future.
A few of you reading this might say, what do you mean? We have our good jobs and we are doing fine and we don't need any of your put downs of the education systems that formed us.
The appalling fact with those of us who reason like this is that we aren't even aware one of the main purposes of an education system is to produce a better overall society for tomorrow. No. Most Rwandans-as indeed do most Africans-see education solely as the end means to secure employment in a government agency (with get-rich-quick thoughts swirling in their minds), or in a big NGO, or in a bank or in other big private companies where the pay is good.
Failure to get such employment of course means lowering this already unbelievably low bar to aspirations to work "anywhere so long as you have an address from where to look for a better job."
There is nothing wrong in looking for a job of course-what is wrong is the mindset we get from our so-called education systems that getting onto someone's payroll is the only way to go-so much so that you will find very many individuals in our so-called tertiary education institutions whose sole purpose is to get "dipolome". And so get a job. Hopefully.
To repeat a hackneyed phrase, we are a society of job seekers instead of job creators.
Of course there is no society where everyone is an entrepreneur or self-employed but our mentalities are so oriented to looking for jobs that creativity has very little place on this continent. Hence our top crisis.
Without evolving into creative, problem-solving societies we are condemned to live forever as poor, dependent countries looking for aid from prosperous western nations that are utterly contemptuous of us. (Nations, if we may add, that long ago became rich because of their creative, enterprising, hard-working citizens who are that way mainly because their education systems trained them to be so).
But what we should find truly alarming (and sadly many of us don't) is the fact of our beggar nation status. The Minister of Finance negotiates an aid package from Britain, or the European Union, or Japan or China and we happily clap our hands. We do not think, oh thanks to these good foreigners but for how long can we live like this? What if there is a recession in the rich world (as indeed there is now) and suddenly the aid flow reduces to a trickle? How long can we go on depending on the whim of others for our national livelihood?
Only a better educated, better-rounded citizenry can get a country out of such problems. Can our leaderships on this continent begin to think in such terms? Perhaps a few here and there can. We hope.
In the meantime let's leave you with a few things to ponder. We have not conducted a proper scientific survey about how well-informed most members of our society are, but we asked a few "educated" individuals some basic-knowledge questions and here is what we found out:
One or two of them could not immediately tell which country is to the south of Rwanda.
Almost everyone we talked to thinks the sun revolves around the earth and not the other way round.
None of the ladies or gentlemen we talked to know what the Solar System is (that is the sun and its nine planets and their moons). Naturally we couldn't expect any of them know which is the biggest planet in the Solar System (Jupiter).
Quite a few spell loose to mean lose, chart to mean chat (the Internet-savvy among them) moses to mean Moses and so on and so on. Quite a few have no idea of punctuation, or of grammar in whatever language they might write.
How can we have a knowledge-based society with such poorly informed people anyway?
That no doubt would be a good subject for a government cabinet discussion as a way to initiate a wider discussion about the long, arduous task of putting in place a better education system.
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This is happening because president Kagame's mind is more and more focused on DRCongo resources instead of sorting out basic issues that will help Rwanda to have efficient management system for the future. As long as all of you are trying to get a quick "qualifiction" (dipolome)to work in those new companies that are looting, ransacking, illigally trading on DRCongo minerals, nothing will move smoothly. You are now "Quick Business People" and your vision so limited to see the future. A day is coming when those multinationals causing havoc to DRCongo will leave and all of you will then notice the bad track where president Kagame is putting you now. It is obvious that president Kagame would like to be a "New Mandela" in today's Rwanda but not in invading, looting, stealing, ransacking DRCongo's minerals. Being an instigator of both "the 1994 Rwanda genocide" and the actual "DRCongo genocide" he does not deserve any honour at the international level. ***Remember that DRCongo has now lost more than 6,000,000 people*** for Rwanda to get the so-called "new investments and prosperity.
Teachers are the backbone of the education system. If they were given the support they deserve and more than a pauper's wage that does not even allow them to send their own children to school, there would be hope. But then again, is the government really interested in educating the population???
This is happening because president Kagame's mind is more and more focused on DRCongo resources instead of sorting out basic issues that will help Rwanda to have efficient management system for the future. As long as all of you are trying to get a quick "qualifiction" (dipolome)to work in those new companies that are looting, ransacking, illigally trading on DRCongo minerals, nothing will move smoothly. You are now "Quick Business People" and your vision so limited to see the future. A day is coming when those multinationals causing havoc to DRCongo will leave and all of you will then notice the bad track where president Kagame is putting you now. It is obvious that president Kagame would like to be a "New Mandela" in today's Rwanda but not in invading, looting, stealing, ransacking DRCongo's minerals. Being an instigator of both "the 1994 Rwanda genocide" and the actual "DRCongo genocide" he does not deserve any honour at the intrenational level. ***Remember that DRCongo has now lost more than 6,000,000 people*** for Rwanda to get the so-called "new investments and prosperity.