Addis Ababa — Presentation of Noah Samara Chairman and CEO, Yazmi USA, LLC eLearning Africa 2015-Opening Ceremony
Your Excellencies, Distinguished Delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen, good evening.
I am honored to be in this city where I was born and raised in a family where my father was a teacher before joining the OAU, now the AU. I cannot help but wonder about this serendipity that has me speaking in Addis, on the subject of education in a forum taking place at the AU.
Coming to this event, the past came to me in the form of a cherished memory. I was 8 years old. It was at this season, 50 years ago that I said something to my father which prompted him to teach me about atoms and molecules.
“Actually,” he said, “they’re very easy to understand.” He sat down and transported me to a fantastic sub-molecular universe populated by emotionless neutrons, frantic electrons and opportunistic protons. I entered a spectacular place that was totally stable at one moment, utterly chaotic in the next. I learned this fantastic, sub-molecular universe was all around me – in every rock, every leaf, and every drop of water. Unbeknownst to me, I was holding this universe in my hands. The insight blew my mind.
I had lots of questions which my father answered fully and patiently.
I must tell you I enjoyed my childhood so much that I haven’t committed my experience to memory. Today, most of my childhood is a happy blur.
But I clearly remember that impromptu physics lesson from my father. What I remember most is how the roles of father and son receded. We became two individuals bonded by his passion to teach and my budding passion to learn. The connection during the lesson was communion.
I was awestruck at what I learned and at how it was taught. In retrospect, I should not have been surprised in the least. My father had taught physical science and life science for over 30 years throughout Ethiopia before he joined the OAU.
Soon after my physics lesson in our living room, I saw my father teach physics to a classroom full of teenage boys and girls. He described the interplay of atomic particles in terms that left those students breathless; they sat silent and rapt, anticipating his every word.
What I had experienced in our living room was happening in that classroom. I saw him reach and teach 50 to 60 students, each as enthralled as I had been at home.
Like all great teachers, my father did not just fill the minds of his students. He opened, expanded, and sharpened their minds.
To experience the craft, the passion and the love that great teachers share with their students is to understand what the American philosopher and author, John Dewey, meant when he said, “Education is not preparation for life. Education is life itself.”
You are probably familiar with the notion of flow in modern psychology. I am certain you have experienced it. Flow occurs when you are completely absorbed with the activity at hand. It is a state where one is so focused on an activity that nothing else seems to matter. Nothing: not time, not food, not ego. Flow stands at the intersection of action, thought and bliss.
A quality education builds each student’s sense of concentration and self-discipline, the very qualities that enable us to experience flow in higher thinking. Flow is one of the finest experiences that one can have in life; it is oxygen to the soul. John Dewey was right: Education is life itself. There is nothing we could give the children of Africa that could possibly be more powerful, more enduring, more liberating than the experience of flow.
We know the stakes for Africa’s children is life itself. We also know Africa’s challenges to deliver flow:
- Last week, news outlets reported on the widest survey ever undertaken to measure student performance in mathematics and science. Of 76 countries in the survey, the highest position of any African nation was 64th. African countries were at the bottom of the rankings.
- At the top was Singapore, followed by four other countries of East Asia.
- Last month, a BBC report stated that a 100-year gap in educational standards separates industrialized and developing countries. Poorer countries have average levels of education that many Western nations achieved 100 years ago. Regarding average levels of attainment, the BBC called the disparity “a massive gap.”
- In 2012, a paper from the U-S-based Brookings Institution said out of Africa's nearly 128 million school-aged children, 17 million will never attend school, and another 37 million will learn so little while they are in school that they will not be better off than those kids who never went to school.
Such are the facts that define education in Africa. And they say: “Facts are stubborn things.”
But stubborn as facts may be, we have bent them to our will, whenever the stakes are high and our commitment adamant.
Not so long ago, consumers had to reckon with the “fact” that a mobile phone weighed nearly two pounds, was the size of a brick and – in today’s money cost over nine thousand dollars.
As you can see we have bent this fact to our will with cheaper, lighter, watch size mobile phones.
Not so long ago, it was a “fact” that HIV almost always led to AIDS, and a “fact” that AIDS meant certain death. But as you know we have bent this fact to our will.
And not so long ago, the “fact” that governed every aspect of South African society was… apartheid. But this fact has also been bent to our will.
To label an existing challenge as a “fact,” then cower before it is absurd. Must we tremble at the stubbornness of so-called “facts,” fearing a set of circumstances might somehow rise as a sentient colossus commanding its own sense of power and purpose? Such thinking borders on superstition.
However stubborn facts may be, we have bent them to our will. That is the fact about facts that has defined the human story. We can and have changed facts. And when we succeed we call it progress.
Every time the stakes have demanded it, we have risen to the occasion.
In Ethiopia we have a wonderful proverb: Qäs be-qäs, ənqulal be-əgərwa teheydalech, which roughly means, slowly but surely, even an egg learns how to walk.
Like that proverbial egg, education in Africa – slowly but surely – will not only walk but take great strides. To chart this journey, we can profit from following educational approaches that other parts of the world have successfully applied. Let me suggest four strategies:
Strategy one: Commit to education as a high priority and sustain this commitment. Consider this fact: Singapore and several African nations became independent in the 1960s. At that time, Singapore and these newly-independent African countries had nearly identical levels of educational achievement and GDP. Singapore’s leader, Lee Kwan Yew, made education the highest priority and did not waver from his commitment. Not surprisingly, Singapore today boasts the highest educational standards in the world.
Strategy two: Ensure students have the materials they need. Students need textbooks, and they need reference materials, such as those found in libraries. This is basic. For industrialized countries with highly developed lines of communication and transport, distributing robust educational materials is a straightforward matter of logistics. But for many African countries, providing even the most basic materials is an expensive proposition.
Strategy three: Fit the instruction to meet the needs of each student. Consider a hypothetical elementary third-grade pupil, who reads at the first-grade level yet performs math at the fifth-grade level. His school day is, by turns, frustratingly difficult and annoyingly easy.
National educational systems operate by having a standardized approach to support all students. But at the same time, we must find a way to cater to the unique requirements of students whose needs are anything but standard.
Strategy four: Respect and honor teachers, and give them the tools they need to sharpen their skills. Lee Iacocca, one of America’s best known business executives, observed that “In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers, and the rest of us would have to settle for something less, because passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor and the highest responsibility anyone could have.”
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Iacocca’s “completely rational society” has a name: Finland. There, teaching is the most respected of professions. The cream of Finland’s students become teachers, while lesser students must settle for working as doctors, lawyers and scientists. Teachers in China are held in the same esteem as physicians. The people of South Korea are similarly respectful of teachers. In Finland, China and Korea teachers are honored. Can we possibly be surprised that teachers in these three countries deliver superb instruction to the young people, day-in and day-out?
Regarding tools for teachers to sharpen their skills, I learned from my father that the secret of being a great teacher is that… THERE IS NO SECRET! The best teachers are those who have mastered their subject-matter and incorporated the best practices into their pedagogical techniques.
So, my friends, experience has shown us that four strategies work for national systems of education:
- Make – and sustain – a big commitment,
- Deliver essential learning materials,
- Customize lessons to suit each student, and
- Honor teachers, and help them to excel.
Mindful of the imperative to focus, let me conclude by returning to the phenomenon of flow. We experience flow through activity. So, it is possible to find flow in the activities of harvesting fruit, driving trucks, weaving baskets and sweeping streets.
But when I think of the millions of girls and boys across Africa, I wish them to achieve flow writing code, reading scholarly texts, negotiating treaties, practicing nuclear medicine and – perhaps most of all – finding flow by modeling flow as they teach math, science, humanities and language to fulfill their sacred duty of passing civilization to their next generation.
Thank you for this honor to speak before you.
