The importance of education

Takudzwa Ronald Sambona-Youth Interactive Correspondent

It is only through education!

I fervently stand for education. 

Here to present my case on why I believe education is the only way to our nation’s salvation.

Thank you for awarding me this opportunity to share my perspective on the importance of education to our national unity, peace, and development. 

I am also a testament to how important education is, simply by being able to read, write, and share my little knowledge with you, just to mention but a few. 

Education is the roadmap to the greater things ahead for the future of our precious country Zimbabwe.

Without wasting much of your time, allow me to get into the gist of my speech. 

The great late African president, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela once proclaimed in one of his speeches, “It is only through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, the son of a mine worker can become the head of the mine, that the child of farm workers can become the president of a great nation”.

I stand before you today and the Almighty God as a humble son of my mother who is but a great teacher to both her children and students. 

She has managed to send us to top-notch and well-established educational institutions in this nation. 

The likes of which include my school, St John’s Chikwaka High School. 

Because she too understands all too well that, it is only through education that either of her sons or daughters can get to become the President of Zimbabwe in the future.

As a sovereign republic whose founding values emphasise the nation’s diverse cultural, religious, and traditional values, education becomes the bedrock upon which those constitutional values are established. 

As seen by our current education system, we are already laying the foundation for a much more culturally inclusive, religiously tolerant, and traditionally unbiased learning environment that’s fit for all children. 

All this is fundamental in accelerating progress towards fulfilment of Agenda 2040 by creating an Africa fit for children. And education is the only way toward that vision!

One of the founding provisions of Zimbabwe as outlined in the Constitution is the recognition of the equality of all human beings and gender equality. 

A people not ready to defend their founding values deserve a master. It is only through education that people attain and safeguards their freedoms, but it is through ignorance that we become slaves of the masters of poverty, tyranny, drugs and substance abuse as well as gender-based violence. 

We say no to be slaves in our nation, but we say yes to education. The only weapon to defend our freedom and future.

It is by education that we create a new set of leaders of this generation who will heed the call of the Prophet Isaiah, to undo the heavy burdens and let the oppressed go free. 

It is only through education that we make gender equality and women’s emancipation the first order of business and the first legislative agenda.

Our Government inherited a racially biased education system at Independence in 1980. A system that offered fewer and lower quality educational opportunities for the majority of the citizenry; especially school dropouts, young adults, and women. 

Even though provisions such as the non-formal education policy and adult literacy programmes such as ZABEC have been made to make quality education accessible to all, challenges continue to exist still within our system. 

Challenges such as drug and substance abuse, teenage pregnancies, early marriages, and even cases of violence among students not only themselves, and also with teachers.

Fortunately, these are challenges that collectively we can solve. But first, will you join me in that historic quest for educational transformation and modernisation to meet these common enemies of mankind against human progress? 

My humble solution to all this can be put into a motto: “Let’s Go Smart and do it now!” If only we could open our education system up to technology and the use of mobile devices in our learning institutions, maybe we can hit the right balance between the past and the present. 

And in that revolutionary step transform our education system into a system better designed for the future.

Will you, take that step with me in making education more digital and smart? 

And together we can bring the future into the present.