adminFredrick Mandizvidza
Mankind is favoured with the talent for organising itself and its socio-economic activity far above any other creation. The quest for modernisation through an industrialised economic formation is one activity that distinguishes human beings from any other creation. Through demonstration of sophisticated capabilities for achieving advanced socio-economic development, societies involuntarily locate themselves in a perking order. The more modern an economic architecture is, the higher the standards of living enjoyed by its citizens.
In this matrix, a citizenry endowed with a higher order of talent, dexterity and sophistication to creatively innovate and manipulate leading-edge technologies to rapidly offer the most exciting and latest scientific solutions to global problems, edges out rivalry in today’s globally competitive world.
Nations that embark on a deliberate journey towards self-organisation and capacitation through systematic human capital planning, development, talent identification and maximum exploitation of their national talent to achieve the highest impacts in targeted fields of human activity, tend to gravitate towards economic prosperity faster than others.
Thus, the major differentiator between successful and unsuccessful economies is their respective peoples’ ability and agility to organise themselves and exploit collective and innovative talent anchored on cutting-edge technologies to scientifically resolve both man-made and natural problems.
Such an advanced level of organisation manifests itself in the form of industrialisation. In that context, industrialisation is high level human activity that is attained through high level strategic human capital planning, development, training and deployment.
Preparing a robust human capital for industrialisation is a task for the most foresighted and requires meticulous fulfilment of critical fundamentals in the process. It is of paramount importance for citizens, particularly the academics, to make an extra effort to appreciate the complex dynamics of this phenomenon as it unfolds to achieve an industrialized or knowledge economy before laying criticism against it.
Ushering in a dispensation like the STEM-driven industrial revolution, whose impact, by its nature, is historic, does not only call for unprecedented boldness, but also demands the handing down of a shared vision with exceptional clarity, to mobilise a critical mass of support for its successful implementation.
Opposition to STEM education
Claims that there are many unemployed STEM graduates roaming the streets are abounding and yet they are without any substance. This school of thought posits that the 2016 A-Level STEM Initiative is a “misplaced effort”, hence a “waste of resources”.
The anti-STEM movement further advances the notion that since Zimbabwean universities have been teaching and training students in disciplines of pure sciences, therefore, the country’s education system has always been stemitised. Clearly, if all these assertions were true, then the need for stemitising our education system would not arise.
The majority of the stakeholders must understand the STEM-driven industrialisation’s guiding philosophy, roadmap and the anticipated endgame.
Obviously, some will need it explained in simple layman’s terms, whereas others will only understand it after its drivers delve into a long process of untangling the deep and complex paraphernalia attendant to this important matter for the country’s prosperity.
I am convinced that with the failure by some stakeholders to appreciate the dynamics of the STEM-driven industrial revolution, the risk of losing them in the process is high.
There is also a section of our society that is of a predominantly technical mindset and will only appreciate matters presented, laid down and explained in technical dimensions.
Efforts must be made to accommodate the concerns of this group too. There are also others who, naturally, never appreciate what is going on, no matter how clear issues are spelt out.
They operate in the negativity default mode. For the sake of this and other related groups, the drivers of this STEM-driven industrialisation revolution remain obliged to tirelessly provide the needed clarity at every turn of this critical journey in the history of our country.
However, it is also natural that when driving such a grand human endeavour, there will always exist a segment that, for known or unknown reasons, resolves to vigorously, deliberately and conveniently refuse to understand any explanation, regardless of the clarity with which its vision is articulated. In academic terms, the existence of such an opposing remnant is a healthy part of a dynamic dialectical and academic discourse.
Their important role is to keep burning the flame of academic conversations around the matter at hand. This way, all minds are kept open, alive and engaged.
However, a close analysis of our education system reveals that there seems to have arisen a section of people who conveniently choose to forget that one of the many purposes of an education system is to adequately prepare its products to become relevant citizens, wired with capabilities and competencies for socio-economic problem solving.
Isaac Newton once argued that a good knife is one that is “fit for purpose”. Upon further interrogation about what he really meant by that, he offered a simple but thought provoking response: “It is one that cuts well.” Therefore, Zimbabwe’s human capital’s fitness for purpose only measured in its ability to resolve the country’s socio-economic challenges.
Application of cutting-edge technologies in solving practical socio-economic problems is the hallmark of STEM. Application of the latest technologies impact on the types of degree programmes in universities.
Thus, degree programmes vary in content and utility value, depending on the technologies embraced by the respective institutions at the design stage of their degree curriculum. Invariably, the relevance of their graduates to society will differ although all of them have Bachelor’s degrees in basic sciences.
Therefore, properly educated and trained graduates from a good system of education are fit for purpose, which is about solving problems through application of cutting-edge technologies. They create tools, platforms and algorithms with which to unlock socio-economic logjams of their nation; they create value and wealth from the country’s resources.
They are useful in the different spheres of life for which they are trained and educated. Properly trained engineers resolve engineering problems.
They don’t contend with the sight of perennial potholes, urban water logging and unending traffic jams. Well trained agronomists resolve agricultural challenges faced by their country. We wouldn’t be having hunger stalking our people on an annual basis if the country’s agronomists were fit for their purpose.
Adequately skilled economists are those who are sources of solutions to the country’s economic woes in all their complexities. The failure to re-engineer viable economic models is testimony to the shortcomings embedded in our system of training and development. Cadres educated and trained for a knowledge economy operate in the digital dimension and not in the analogue dimension.
Likewise, if Zimbabwe system of education is to be twitched a notch higher, it would have a rich scientific base which could also be easily demonstrated by a high scientific output driven by its scientists. In fact, the evidence of a high density of scientific (i.e. properly stemitised) human capital must speak for itself through prolific research and innovation output.
The generated knowledge must be protected by a robust intellectual property rights framework to ensure that it is exploited for the maximum benefit of the country. There must be a system in place by which the finest of our researchers, scientists, engineers, inventors and innovators are not only recognised, but are also incentivised, attracted and retained for the country to enrich its pool of these experts.
Our IHL must boast of teams of high profile world class scholars, scientists, inventors and innovators. In fact, the hallmark of a good stemitised education system is the competitiveness of its universities and populace in advanced research and development and patenting.
In any case, the degree of relevance, currency and appropriateness of any education system is demonstrated by the quality of solutions its citizens provide to problems based on the appropriateness of the chosen technologies.
Any system of education that is grounded in bookish and elaborate theoretical convolutions with low knowledge yields divorced from socio-economic problems only mimics a dog chasing its own tail.
Graduates moulded by a good education outfit have the ability, insight and foresight to ably read national agendas, pursue national priorities with a passion and to think solutions that fit in the framework of the national vision and beyond. So, if this were true of our education system, then Zimbabwe wouldn’t have many of the challenges it is currently saddled with whose solutions squarely reside in the STEM domain.
Zimbabwe must never be lulled into scientific and technological dormancy on the grounds that she has one of the highest literacy rates on the continent because high literacy rate is not an end in itself. This is just a necessary but not sufficient condition for the industrialisation of the country.
Fortunately, such a dummy cannot sell to Zimbabweans. Instead, we must view high literacy rate as a golden opportunity that we must grab and up the game into the scientific and technological domains anchored by advanced research and development.
Fredrick Mandizvidza is the Chief Executive Officer for the Zimbabwe Manpower Development Fund (ZIMDEF) under the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education, Science and Technology Development. The article represents his personal views. He is a doctoral scholar of Technology Entrepreneurship and can be contacted on [email protected]
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