“A child educated only at school is an uneducated child.” - George Santayana
It is important to differentiate here between literacy and education:
- literacy is typically described as the ability to read and write;
- Education in its broadest sense is any act or experience that has a formative effect on the mind, character or physical ability of an individual. In its technical sense education is the process by which society deliberately transmits its accumulated knowledge, skills and values from one generation to another.
Foundation of Education
The foundation of education is found at the home. The traditions of culture, respect for the elderly, respect for the property of others and other moral values are part of the environment within which our children grow up. In our modern world however, more and more of the responsibility of the education of our children is expected to be at school.
Primary Education
Our constitution guarantees primary education. I propose we introduce a further two year pre-primary care for our children. During these two formative years, children will be given the opportunity to practise their motor skills through sport, and provide an opportunity to learn the basics of music. Not all families can presently provide this necessary training, which includes teaching a child to concentrate, and it must therefore be the duty of the state to give the tools necessary to prepare the child for primary school.
Information and Communication Technologies
Education in ICT (internet and telecommunications) is a must for each and every citizen of Namibia as we progress into the future. Every child attending school should be IT literate by the end of primary school. All children must have the equivalent of the International Computers Drivers Licence (ICDL) or Master in Microsoft Office to pass Grade 10.
The government must put in place an incentive scheme to encourage companies to invest 1% of their turnover on basic computer literacy skills (word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, emails and internet). A possible tax rebate can be offered if a company can prove computer literacy at all levels, especially of unskilled workers. Retrenchment packages should also include a computer training component.
Influence of teachers
I have been asked on occasion to give an inspirational talk to learners at award functions or graduations. The most memorable, and first, of these was for me when I was asked to deliver a speech at the Academic Awards of Dawid Bezuidenhout Secondary School My wife was also a teacher at the school, (and I had finished my schooling there) and had encouraged me to accept this honour. The following is the gist of the speech I gave:
My mother was music and accounting teacher and my wife is an accounting and information sciences teacher. Many of the important people in my life were school teachers.
One of the most important lessons I learnt from a teacher was during my Standard 6 (Grade 7) year when I was 14 years old. Mr. McKelvin was my Geography teacher and till today, I can still distinguish the differences in clouds because he made us lay on our back in the middle of the playground and then pointed out the various types. This was his lesson about life:
“Sometime we find ourselves in a conversation and say something really stupid. Something like rubber is made from oil (rather than from a tree). Now a week or two later, we find ourselves among the same group of people. We remember the mistake we made so we are too frightened to say anything. So we miss the opportunity to participate because of our previous mistake.
Well, you are wrong. The other people also made mistakes, and they are too busy remembering their own mistakes to remember yours!”
This has made me overcome one of the problems I believe we all have, admitting when we have made mistakes – and more importantly learning to laugh at ourselves.
The next life lesson I remember from a teacher was about “asking God for something”. I had a successful career, happy family and most everything money could buy. During this time I prayed to God to help me establish my own business. But, instead of God answering my prayers, I found myself losing some of the wonderful things I had. One of my mentors saw how dejected I was and asked, “What’s the matter?” Upon hearing my story, he replied, “Oh, Milton. God is just making space in your hands for the next present. Your hands were just too full!”
So whenever I face adversity and see my possessions becoming less, I know it is God making more space for that big gift he has prepared for me!
Education in Ethics
In the past the State relied on the Church to provide moral education. This was a duty shared by the parents and church leaders alike. Unfortunately this is no longer the case. Parents and church leaders do not provide the moral framework within the children that will supports the development of a society that puts a high value on behaving in an ethical manner. This must change if we want to fix the mistakes of the past.
Therefore we need to introduce Ethics or Moral Principles as part of the school syllabus from primary school onwards. The purpose is to ensure that we will instil in our youth, the leaders of the future, what is acceptable and unacceptable behaviour.
For a person to behave ethically I mean they should know the difference between their rights, and knowing what is the right thing to do.
Private Institutions of Learning
Our constitution states:
(4) All persons shall have the right, at their own expense, to establish and to maintain private schools, or colleges or other institutions of tertiary education:
provided that:
(a) such schools, colleges or institutions of tertiary education are registered with a Government department in accordance with any law authorising and regulating such registration;
(b) the standards maintained by such schools, colleges or institutions of tertiary education are not inferior to the standards maintained in comparable schools, colleges or institutions of tertiary education funded by the State;
Tertiary education schools are mushrooming all over the country. They provide everything from art classes, computer literacy and business skills. The problem is the standards are not very good, and most students receive a qualification which is not worth the paper it is printed on. Let us look at a typical example and call it the Tertiary Education Academy.
Tertiary Education Academy (TEA)
The owner TEA is a businessman without any qualification in education, after all, the Academy is a business and was started to make a profit. None of the staff members, including the Principal, has any professional training or recognised educational qualification. The lecturers at the Academy are also not qualified teachers.
TEA offers the following courses:
- Typing skills
- Bookkeeping
- Computer Literacy – Microsoft Office
- PC Engineering – A+ and N+
- Software Programming
The Academy also offers Diplomas in Tourism, Public Relations, Business, Finance and Personnel Administration.
The Academy is a very profitable business and they owner is planning on offering further diploma courses.
Great! However, most of the students (and their parents) are not aware that the lecturers are not professionally qualified. Furthermore, imagine the students’ dismay when they find out that none of these courses are recognised by the Namibian Qualifications Authority. Even worse, the diploma courses are not worth more than a Grade 12 according to the Universities.
Now before we start closing all these schools, institutes and academies, let us examine their role in our country.
More and more students are completing their schooling and not finding place at the University or Polytechnic. Their parents or care-givers cannot afford the study fees in other countries, so these students have to look for employment. Having no marketable skill, they often do not find employment and become one of the unemployed.
The private tertiary education institutes offer the students an opportunity to gather knowledge about business and prepare them for gainful employment.
So what can we do?
We need to have a body that actively encourages that “the standards maintained by such schools, colleges or institutions of tertiary education are not inferior to the standards maintained in comparable schools, colleges or institutions of tertiary education funded by the State”. The NQA must be publicise the names of those that are registered and meet their standards. Furthermore, the NQA must be given teeth to close down those who do not meet the standards set within a period of time.
Life-Long Learning
Are you satisfied with what you have achieved in life? Do you want to climb the ladder of life even higher? Are you going to sit in an old age home at 60 and watch the world go by?
Today we recognise that finishing school or university is not the end of our learning experience. Think just about computers, cellular phones, etc and how much you have had to learn over the past decade to stay up to date with just having a life. How more so if you are in an ever changing working environment?
This demands from you an approach where you take charge of your career, rather than the old-fashioned view that a career is what happens to you. Remember also, once you turn "60", it no longer means you have nothing to contribute to your society.
Take the challenge every year, and choose something new to learn. Here are a few examples:
- Another language - how many of us will be able to talk with our Chinese counterparts as they ever increasingly extend beyond their boundaries?
- A musical Instrument - even the drums can be learnt by those (like me) who say they cannot carry a tune
- Computer program - Project management is all the rage and it will take you less than four days to master a software package such as MS Project
Maybe you have other interests, maybe even a hobby such as origami or bonsai, just as long as you keep them brain cells working.
For interest sake just type in "life long learning" in the Google Search engine. So remember, even if you do not consider life long learning, there are many other (your probable competitors) who do. Have a look at this link for some great ideas: http://www.newhorizons.org/.
Remember, you are never too old to learn.
“We must encourage [each other] once we have grasped the basic points to interconnecting everything else on our own, to use memory to guide our original thinking, and to accept what someone else says as a starting point, a seed to be nourished and grow. For the correct analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling but wood that needs igniting no more and then it motivates one towards originality and instils the desire for truth. Suppose someone were to go and ask his neighbours for fire and find a substantial blaze there, and just stay there continually warming himself: that is no different from someone who goes to someone else to get to some of his rationality, and fails to realize that he ought to ignite his own flame, his own intellect, but is happy to sit entranced by the lecture, and the words trigger only associative thinking and bring, as it were, only a flush to his cheeks and a glow to his limbs; but he has not dispelled or dispersed, in the warm light of philosophy, the internal dank gloom of his mind.” [i]
Traditional or Protean Career Paths
This topic is more suited in Human Resources where we discuss the control of career path becoming more and more the responsibility of the individual (protean) rather than the company. In the traditional model we join an organisation from the “cradle to the grave”.
I would ever like to put the thought forward that in our teaching model we do not do to provide career guidance with a true understanding within the education system (teachers, ministry, etc.) of what careers are available in the real world.
For example, within the next five years, every Ministry, Company, Artists or VIP will have to make use of Social Media Account Managers. This is very much like a Public Relations person – however they must manage the online or virtual presence of the person, business or brand. Sometimes the person can be specialised in a specific platform, for example Facebook Account Management.
My suggestion is that just as there are doctors or lawyers invited to present to children possible career paths, we must identify new careers that have come into existence in the past five years and will make our children marketable within not only Namibia, but the whole world.
This will also lead to innovation and entrepreneurship by encouraging our youth to think about jobs that have not even been created yet – but exists because of the technologies they use in their everyday lives.
Most of the tools becoming popular today are in fact not particularly new. They are just a computerised, connected method (tool) of doing what we have been doing before that has now become part of the mainstream.
[i] Plutarch, On Listening to Lectures