Online Reporter
Ronald Takudzwa Sambona-Youth advocate and educator
The battle for education represents a necessary and revolutionary questioning over the expediency, pertinence, and nature of our education system within the digital civilisation rampant with change, wars and technological modernisation at increasingly alarming rates.
This makes me wonder if our education is truly fulfilling its fundamental objectives.
Education at its core is not for oppression, but for liberation!
The sole objective of educational institutions is to enlighten the people, its receivers, to the best possible way of thinking that drives human progress, modernization, and freedom in that era.
Many centuries have passed, many civilisations have been formed and fallen since the invention of education.
What bothers me is not how long education has been alive, but what bothers me the most is, in all that time how many lives have been liberated?
Has education achieved its purpose to the fullest and has it passed magna cum laude in liberating the people?
Or has education failed dismally in defending its founding principles and ideals of liberty and equality for all people?
Even with the miracles of technology and modern democracies, our fellow brothers and sisters all over the world suffer inequalities, severe challenges, and disparities that deny and deprive them the inalienable right to have a quality education.
Billions of people globally are still handcuffed to the harsh manacles and brutal shackles of poverty and ignorance.
How can the people be free without the education? How can we enjoy liberty if we don’t know it exists? Education for liberation, is the way forward!
At a time when the world is tuned to one station and following the same hogwash; shifting focus and investing more in education becomes the first step towards a better future and the ultimate form of securing national interest.
We can’t be engaged in nation building and at the same time assemble armaments to go to war!
We can’t be investing in our education and at the same time pursuing trivial endeavours!
It can only be one thing at a time!
It can only be education and nothing else!
It can only be liberty for our people and nothing else!
We have an important decision to make as a people and we have to make it now.
If all are to enjoy the liberty and equality guaranteed by our forefathers when they etched out our liberal Constitution, then it’s time to be bold and decisive.
Will you join me in taking that bold step?
History has shown that previously great civilisations began to collapse the moment the people failed to take seriously the issue of educating one’s mind and bequeathed totally the personal responsibility to acquire knowledge to someone else.
If we are to progress as a people, it’s high time we realise we are in one way our own educators, therefore being deliberate in acquiring knowledge for ourselves.
In another way, life is our teacher, thus let us be perspicacious enough to constantly extract useful information from our own experiences and other people’s lived realities.
Liberation of the individual, much like liberation of the whole nation, starts with education.
Unfortunately, liberty for all remains a dream as our dear women and girls face never seen before challenges and difficulties in not only accessing quality education, but accessing education in the first instance.
For those women and girls extremely marginalized, the fight for liberty is a double-edged sword.
Even after successfully acquiring that quality education, they still have to convince the world to believe that they are just as much proficient as the men.
Education must not only equip our women with knowledge, but must actually give them the power to liberate themselves and show up in the world with the same confidence and opportunities as men.
This is education for liberation in action!
This should be our ultimate focus in the battle for education so as to ensure liberty and equality for all as provisioned for by Section 3 subsection 1 paragraphs (c), (e), (f), (g) of the Constitution of Zimbabwe Amendment (No. 20) Act, 2013.
Zimbabwe is on the right course towards attaining liberty for all its citizens as our New Constitution is widely recognised as being progressive in terms of advancing women’s rights and the rights of marginalised members of our society.
These efforts to liberalise the nation should be highly accompanied by transformative policies and adjustments in our education system that make the dream of liberty real for all women, girls and marginalised people.
The onus is upon each of us as one people to take focused action towards the future we want for our children and our children’s children.
Education is indeed liberty, but we must fight for that education if need be.
It may be volunteering to assist your local school in performing its functions.
It may also be donating resources and money towards educating those who are disadvantaged.
It may simply be choosing education first in your own life.
These are all real life situations where we are called to step up and fight for education, therefore let us be bold!
No action is ever too small to make an impact.
After all, small actions are invisible until they are undeniable!
