Sense of purpose will save our failing education system

The debates about the quality of our education have been raging for years now. These debates have manifested themselves in multiple ways including debates about the proliferation and value attached to honorary PhDs.

The causes for this troubling state of affairs have been found in different places. To some the root cause is the medium of instruction and these point to various studies which show that learners taught in their own languages perform better compared to those who learn through an adopted medium of instruction. This despite data showing that our education system is failing way before learners end up with English as a medium of instruction.

There are learners who somehow are considered to have ‘passed’ their primary education, who join secondary schools despite their inability to master the basics in reading, arithmetic or writing. Secondary school teachers, where these leaners spend four years, are expected to accomplish something their counterparts in primary education could not with seven years of teaching.

To others the causes are traced in the poor learning environment ranging from underqualified teachers to lack of enough classrooms and teaching materials. This logic, partly drives the never ending efforts of building classes each calendar year through the country as well as giving priority to education-related subjects in our universities.

Others think it is a generational thing, and these are older folks who are increasingly becoming a minority. They look back and see a time when ‘education was education’. These find all sorts of problems with today’s learners.

To them, correcting the current failures requires going back to the basics; a nostalgic, glorious past. These also blame the government and the many changes-which have been confusing and misleading at times-to the education curriculum, the textbooks, to the policies.

These further point to the ever changing criteria for learners to pass a certain level of education where there have been times the decisions made were based quantity; the numbers of those who are claimed by official statistics to have ‘passed’.

All these fail to include other two elements of these debates. There is the role of parents/guardians and their place in their children’s education. These, due to their fast-paced lives have relegated their roles in relation to the education of their children to the care of others from home helpers to teachers.

Children grow up in the environment where they have not seen a single parent read a book or even a newspaper at home throughout their young lives. These young learners compete with their parents for screen time or game time.

Worst case scenarios are those where parents are almost absent from the learning of their children, instead focusing on earning a living, with their only duty to their children being making sure that they pay school fees.

The other element has to do with those in decision making positions. Few of them trust the education system they are entrusted with managing. These range from government officials to politicians, both from the ruling party and from opposition parties.

Almost everyone has either taken their children abroad for a better education or has sent their children to private schools where better attention is paid to their educational needs compared to public schools.

It is common to hear stories of those who went to school in the 1980s or before that they went to school with a prominent person’s daughter. Those stories dried up with the liberalization of education where those with the means were increasingly isolating themselves in their search for better education opportunities for their children.

Expecting those with the least investment in the education system to reform it for the best is dangerously misleading.

However, the biggest problem with our education system is that it has lost a sense of purpose by being largely based on acquiring academic certificates but little skills which are crucial to anyone surviving or leading a better life post-school. This is why almost everyone with the means desperately fight to get an honorary degree from almost never heard of colleges and universities or outright briefcase higher learning institutions.

As a society we have learnt to cut corners in almost everything.  This mentality has not spared our education system where we are focused on results and not the quality of what our children are learning in schools. To reform our education system, it is imperative to find a purpose which that education is expected to fulfil.

That would be a good place to start.