Fixing Uganda’s education system should not be about revising curricula
Prof. Francis Fredrick Tusubira
I was Investigated. Yes, no kidding: I was investigated when I was still lecturing in electrical engineering at Makerere University – a long time ago to those still in the thirties and early forties. I see minds jumping to what has become a sad common challenge: Aha! Sex for marks! No, hold your guns and let me explain. I was investigated because I was accused of not lecturing. Not that the gravity of the offense would be any different in my book.
A committee of my peers was set up to conduct the investigation, and they came up with a very strange finding: yes, I was NOT lecturing, but the students said they were learning much better than before. I was exonerated. And I applauded my peers: they focused on substance rather than being diverted by form.
What really happened? We were getting some of the best brains admitted to engineering as students, brains moreover that had gone through the then holistic education systems. Why try to teach them instead of guiding them to learn? At the start of each term, I started splitting the course into topics along with Students Teams to match. Each Team would research their topic and then present and debate with their colleagues while I listened in, stepping in occasionally only when absolutely necessary. I was totally amazed by their ability, enthusiasm, insights, and delivery. I had the opportunity, through this approach, of contributing to a generation of confident thinking engineers. Of course some of them must have hated the approach – after all I was reported – but I was vindicated by the outcome. To the consternation of many students, I gave open book tests which contributed to the final mark: I told them I was not teaching them to remember, but to think. I hope some of the (not so young now) engineers recall those days with a bit of nostalgia.
What is my point?
My point is that fixing our broken national education system should not be about revising curricula or changing names of subjects or indeed reducing them, something we have perfected into a yoyo act over the last 40 years. Transformational change requires a totally new approach to education that focuses on empowering students to be creative problem solvers with self-learning abilities, rather than creating memory athletes who remember all the answers without understanding any of them. This in itself requires a new breed of teachers – those with sufficient confidence in their own intellectual ability not to be threatened by not appearing to be the source of knowledge. Getting such people to teach will naturally require corresponding recognition and compensation.
My point is that a good teacher shines their light beyond where they themselves have ever been so that the student can explore and go even further. A good teacher does not confine the students into the limitations of their own experience.
My point is that we must get rid of the current education system, structurally designed in the colonial days to produce people who are conditioned to following standing orders and set processes. That worked for my generation to some extent, a limited extent: we were still a colony. Not even the most visionary leaders can hope to transform our country with the current system of education: the colonial state of being is created by the system of education, not by who is at the national helm. We need to start creating thinkers, people who can keep up with the pace of knowledge and change, not to remember it all, but look ahead of it to see and seize the kind of opportunities that are driving development in the many countries we are trying to emulate with explosive failure. The national media must stop the orgy of glorifying meaningless examination results that actually entrench national beliefs in our broken education system, and rather do some in-depth articles that can guide the country back to the correct path.
My real beef is actually not with the government or the press because, wherever we are, we have one common denominator: we are all parents. We sacrificing the future of our children and our country so that we can glory in the short-lived frenzy of our children getting “good marks” regardless of the quality of education. We cower inside with shame as we fund the machine of corruption on which ride leaked examinations and falsified results. We point the finger of blame everywhere except at ourselves.
Be the one to go against the tide. Do what you believe to be right by your children. Be willing to be investigated.
