Education without ubunthu is dead

Morris Mtisi
SOCIETY must aggressively push for an agenda to influence new curriculum pundits not to forget moral rearmament in the schools, says this writer and columnist.

At the NASH conference at Troutbeck in June last year, one visibly emotional pastor politely confronted, challenged is a better word, Honourable Dokora on the question of a deliberate inclusion of moral rearmament in the curriculum.

“What kind of curriculum can a country design without including teachings of moral rearmament from the Bible?” the pastor asked. He was visibly agitated.

The answer he got was cryptic “nonsense!” as he continued to receive remarks of subtle ridicule and scorn. Not surprising. Such is the nature of mankind. Most intellectuals despise unscientific knowledge and Scripture and given the opportunity would prefer not to be so ‘naïve’ and mentally unsophisticated as to proclaim the reality of Christ, Jesus and the Bible in human life. Fundis, those who acquired doctorates in high levels of Philosophy, Psychology, Mathematics, Sciences and the whole paraphernalia of academic sophistication do not subscribe to any religious fanaticism or sheer idiocy, especially in public. That is not on, those familiar with the expression will know. You will forgive me for the generalization because not all fundis despise the Word of God. There are many who know that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, and they understand that mental superiority is a gift from God. Those are the lucky ones. But how many are there?

If society continues to push the morality-in-schools agenda to the back burner, and curriculum reviews continue to pay lip-service to the issue of Ubunthu, our children will curse us for allowing them to be a generation of intelligent fools, prostitutes and free slaves.

It is the purpose of this article to lead a debate on the serious need for a new curriculum which begins to realize that an education system that does not systematically and aggressively address character building is worthless for nation building.

Ellen G. White (2009-Education) says, “Our ideas of education take too narrow and too low a range. There is need for a broader scope, a higher aim. True education means more than the pursuit of a certain course of study. It means more than a preparation for the life that now is. It has to do with the whole being, and with the whole period of existence possible to mankind. It is the harmonious development of the physical, the mental, and the spiritual powers. It prepares the student for the joy of service in this world and for the higher joy of wider service in the world to come.” If this is not better than our education mission statements and visions, nothing will ever be and we will never learn.

She (Ellen G.White) continues, “The world has its great teachers, men (and women) of gigantic intellectuals and extensive research, men and (and women) whose utterances have stimulated thought and opened to view vast fields of knowledge; and these men (and women) have been honoured as guides and benefactors of their race; but there is ONE who stands higher than they.” Ipapo manje! There at this point is where education systems led by atheist philosophers and psychologists anchored on hard religious skepticism find a serious problem. If an education system develops leaders in politics, trade and commerce, leaders in business, in enterprise through an education that concentrated on academic or intellectual development at the expense of positive influence of character, that system nurtures a present and future riddled with all forms of corruption: prostitution, lawlessness, hatred and daylight terrorism.

“It is the work of true education to develop this power (power to think and to do things responsibly), to train the youth to be thinkers, and not mere reflectors of other men’s (and women’s) thoughts. Instead of confining their study to that which men have said or written, let students be directed to the sources of truth, to the vast fields opened for research in nature and revelation. Let them (students) contemplate the great facts of duty and destiny, and the mind will expand and strengthen. Instead of educated weaklings, institutions of learning may send forth men (and women) strong to think and to act, men (and women) who are masters of and not slaves of circumstances, men (and women) who posses breadth of mind, clearness of thought, and the courage of their convictions,” writes Ellen G. White.

Is our education in Zimbabwe organized and planned on this premise? Food for thought!

It is the hope of this writer that those privileged with the task of designing school curricula take a cue from such profound wisdom from writers of spacious vision and stop hiding in the crevices of their own intellectual arrogance and limitations.

A sound education provides more than mental discipline; it provides more than physical and vocational training. “It strengthens the character, so that truth and uprightness are not sacrificed to selfish (and corrupt) desire,” Ellen White says. She says a sound education fortifies the mind against evil.

Now, if that is not Ubunthu, what is it? We talk about higher education in Zimbabwe. What education can be higher than this?

Many students in Zimbabwean secondary schools and high schools up to university colleges, study Divinity and either pass it with As and Honors Degrees and doctorates. How many of them end up divine? If the answer is ‘none’ or ‘very few’ then something must be terribly wrong with the method and purpose of study.

It is this writer’s honest belief that whatever line of education the new curriculum may choose to take, it must never forget the sincere purpose of arriving at the truth of life where students are brought face to face and in touch with the unseen, INTELLIGENCE that is working in and through all; where the minds of students, indeed of mankind, are brought into communion with the mind of God, the finite with the infinite. In this communion is the highest level of education.

Yet the learned man’s ignorance and intellectual arrogance is marred and weakened, obliterated if you like. “His mental capacity has been lessened, his spiritual vision dimmed,” asserts Ellen G. White. And she speaks the truth.

The object of Education must be to restore in man (and woman) the image of his (and her) Maker, to bring him (and her) back to the perfection in which he (or she) was created, to promote the development of body, mind and soul, that the divine and purpose in his or her creation might be realized. “This is the object of education,” says Ellen White.

I make no apology in agreeing with Ellen G. White. The system of education instituted at the beginning of the world, in the Garden of Eden, was meant to be a model for mankind throughout all aftertime. It was the schoolroom, nature was the lesson book, the Creator Himself the instructor and Adam and Eve representing the human family were the students. If you know the story of these ancestral parents of ours, what role model did they become? They lacked discipline, ubunthu and brought everlasting punishment to the human race. Pakashaiwa hunhu nekuteerera navabereki vokutanga vevanhu. Now, is that not exactly what is happening in our schools, colleges and universities? Sheer moral decay submerged in unfathomable sin! Students have today become sinners, not just badly behaved rascals and scoundrels, but wicked enfants terribles in French.

And the worst lesson from the Garden of Eden calamity is ‘If parents, ancestors, lose the sense of morality and lead the enfants terribles campaigns for waywardness; if they are character builders and role models whose own behavior and ideas annoy, shock and embarrass conventional opinion, what will the children do?

When children of such corrupt parents become parents themselves, their own children and their children’s children will no doubt become animals of the wild. Our children have just started. The nude parties and free sexual entertainment facilitated by ICT sophistication have started. They will continue until they move from privately rented houses into the streets of Harare, Masvingo, Mutare Bulawayo and Gweru. They will continue to celebrate satanic music and dances and use school holidays to advance moral decay.

I will do you my beloved readers the favour of sharing with you the system of perfect education instituted at the beginning of the world: THE EDEN SCHOOL as espoused by contemporary prophetess Ellen G. White in the future installments of your Education Page.

If schools receive no mandate from above to directly inculcate self control and discipline through clear programmes of action and continue to shout Ubunthu! Ubunthu! from the terraces like spectators watching a football game, we are done as a nation and there is no future to talk about, no window of hope to talk about, but widows of hopelessness. This will come as the Global- warming warnings fell on deaf ears until today it is almost impossible to arrest it. Today world leaders, 150 of them from all over the world, hysterically gather around one table in Paris to discuss a collective miracle of stopping global warming from annihilating life from the face of the earth.

One day parents and schools will stop the blame game and shout at the top of their voices to discuss the possibility of a miracle of moral rearmament in the schools. Like every human being in serious trouble who calls out to God for a miracle of redemption, society will soon learn to demand moral rearmament from the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education through this new curriculum review on everyone’s lips. I will continue to give you the wonderful insights of Ellen G.

White in the coming weeks and months. Why? Because an education without Godly ubunthu is dead. Simple as that. Watch the space. You don’t have to like this truth.