admin
Perspective Stephen Mpofu
COULD Zimbabwe be on the threshold of an exciting new era with university and college graduates in work suits leading the masses in shouting “Hurray! Hurray!” all the while leaping over decomposing carcasses of underdevelopment in various, critical areas of the economy?
Education review meetings just concluded across the country posit a scenario whereby graduates with hands-on experience will in future elbow away into the shade academic mummies vegetating in positions they have no business occupying, telling them: “move over, chum, move over.
“Here we come bearing magic wand-know how to turn around the fortunes of this country from a status of underdevelopment to one of development for the benefit of all in this nation.”
The government is set to announce a final draft on a new curriculum in March, according to Professor Paul Mavhima, Deputy Minister of Primary and Secondary Education, earlier this week.
Prof Mavhima said that after the last consultative review meeting held in Masvingo on Monday, experts drawn from universities were now analysing and putting together input collected during the consultative process with contributions weighted in favour of education with a bias for self reliance and hands-on experience.
At present many of the thousands of graduates that Zimbabwe’s educational system churns out into the job market lack skills that would commend them for key roles in spearheading social and economic development — a situation that does not augur well for the success of the country’s new economic blueprint, the Zimbabebwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation.
Zimbabweans flex their necks touting themselves as the most literate nation on the African continent. Sadly enough, however, the high literacy rating has nothing to show for it on the ground in practical terms as white-collar-job-graduates cannot set themselves up in business and many cannot fit themselves into a market where self reliance as well as practical experience matter the most.
As a result scores of graduates on whose education the government spends taxpayers’ money go abroad in search of new fortunes there but end up as cheap labour in jobs fit for less educated people while back home the country remains in great need of skilled personnel to drive the economy forward.
Indeed, is it not an irony of ironies that with a five star educational system Zimbabwe has to depend on foreigners coming into the country to mine and process minerals for export, when locals ought to have those skills developed in colleges and universities?
Why, for instance, should Zimbabwe’s diamonds be cut and polished in foreign countries when that process should long have been undertaken locally with secondary industries set up to engender industrialisation?
An education that does not prepare inhabitants to take control of their rich mineral and agricultural produce such as tobacco, for example, by turning them into finished products for export with value addition is decidedly faulty.
Although done for a bad reason — to prevent blacks inundating white collar jobs — education in colonial Rhodesia in a way emphasised an important element that prepared Africans for self reliance on leaving school.
Wood work, brick laying and to an extent agriculture, enjoyed equal importance with academic subjects in many schools with the result that Standard Six graduates not bright enough academically to proceed with their education found careers as carpenters or bricklayers so much so they supported their families using those practical skills.
It is such practical skills that have the potential for a poor country to transcend its status as a less developed state.
One might say that a decision by the government to replace unqualified teachers with those that possess teaching degree or certificate qualifications should serve as a warning to workers who do not possess qualifications for the jobs they hold down to embark on programmes, perhaps part-time, that give them requisite qualifications to remain in those jobs.
Time might come – who knows — when people in key positions in government as well as in the private sector might be required to justify with relevant skills or experience why they should not vacate their jobs in favour of those whose skills have been tried and tested with positive results.
As is the case with all transitions, the move over from a purely academic to a skills-oriented education might cause initial headaches, or indeed provoke resistance from white-collar job enthusiasts, but birth pangs always precede profound joy with the arrival of a new baby in the family.
Online Reporter