Introduction
It is not long ago that I, together with the generation I played with, believed that if a pregnant woman eats eggs then the baby she will conceive will have a bald head. If you were dreaming at night and in that dream you were either flying or crossing a lake, then you were pre-destined to have a long life; plucking out your milk teeth and not throwing them on the roof of your house while yelling to the crow to give you a white one meant that you won’t grow a replacement for that tooth.
While a good number of these beliefs were carefully calculated by the older generation to instill discipline in the younger ones, many of them were simply a manifestation of the massive ignorance of our people in those days.
Some of them were taken so seriously that the whole village would be gripped with fear upon their manifestation. For example, a persistently hooting owl at night had to be scared away by throwing a burning log of fire at it, as its hooting signified that someone on that compound will die soon.
A shooting star (which is really a speeding meteorite catching fire upon entering the earth’s atmosphere due to heavy friction with oxygen) meant that the demise of the chief or a prominent elder in the village was imminent.
From the earliest times, we have been so wrapped in superstition and the fear of things we did not understand that we failed to utilize our true potential. Our brains were used only for the very basic things of life: eating, knowing the farming seasons, playing some ancient games, devising theories in relation to the gods or astronomical events (the solar eclipse was an epic one with crazy explanations that would drop your jaw if you heard them today) and of course, playing the greatest game ever invented in the whole universe, sex.
Progress in other countries
Our counterparts from other countries were a little quick to break out from this blanket of ignorance and started achieving intellectual feats that cracked many age-old mysteries. For example, while I and my friends were flabbergasted at night when we gazed upon the moon, wondering whether it was a woman or a rooster on its surface, the United States of America had already sent men who actually set foot on its surface and took back study samples to better understand this alien world. And this was done decades before I was even born!
In our younger days, stars bewildered us. What are these tiny, twinkling dots in the night sky that sometimes seem to make patterns? Why do they only show up at night? Where do they go during the day? We wondered. Our more educated friends from other parts of the world already had answers to these questions and were making headway into further discoveries which would have momentous consequences in real life.
The progress that other countries were making in the acquisition of knowledge was having direct positive results on their development. More branches of knowledge and specializations were opening up, leading to unprecedented employment opportunities for their citizens; new machines were being invented which simplified daily life by improving quality, reducing effort, and quickening the pace of work.
No room for genuine education in Malawi
While the spread of this education revolution has also reached Malawi in recent times, I feel that we have not taken hold of it by the horns and made the most of it. If we had, I am sure we would not have been among the poorest country in the world. I am sure we would have played catch-up-quick and competed with many countries on a global scale.
Instead, what we have been able to accomplish with education is to reduce it to a mere tool that brings a person a paper so that they can get a job. From our earliest days, this has been our perception of education. Our parents drummed this perception into us in their unceasing entreaties and advice when we were being playful or troublesome in school. And who would blame them? They were only products of the same limited view with which education was received in the country.
Poor education standards
The many universities that have sprouted everywhere like an uncontrollable disease, have championed this view of education with their deplorable standards. Many of them are so motivated by a need for quick returns on investment that no lie is too big to tell to the National Council for Higher Education (NCHE) in the quest for accreditation.
Things are set up quickly. No forethought, customization, or innovation is applied in the conceptualization and implementation of academic programs. No thorough research is conducted to make sure that the programs on offer are aligned to the country’s current and future needs. Curricula are copied from existing universities and pasted into new ones with no adaptation at all, save for dates and names.
The true purpose of education is not understood by either the lecturers or the students, let alone the founders of these universities. As such, the students bear along with burdensome lectures, struggling to finish assignments on time. Where they feel they have no will left to do school work, they hire someone to write assignments and, more shockingly, even final-year projects on their behalf.
By the time they finish, most of these are no good for the hands-on industry. No research skills, no problem-solving skills, no motivation to learn more… For the sake of keeping their jobs, they will learn the basics of it and do the average of what they’re required of. But that’s it! No more. No wonder even the industries are failing to grow.
Education is not a priority in Malawi
Consider an average Malawian home. What are some of the very first things that a family buys whenever they start getting some revenue? What is the first thing you are greeted with when you enter an average Malawian home? That’s right; a flat-screen TV so that the husband and can watch English Premier League, the wife can watch Zee World (or, in the worst-case scenario, Big Brother Naija) and the kid(s) can watch funny and exciting cartoons on Disney Junior or kindred channels.
The number of houses that prioritize setting up a home library over an entertainment unit is somewhere close to zero.
Facebook or WhatsApp forums that are dedicated to sharing general knowledge or new discoveries are almost non-existent. What you will most likely see on people’s phones are chat groups for jokes, heckling about political affiliations, gossiping, sharing breaking news (mostly fake), sports, fashion, and so on and so forth.
As a nation, we are not making deliberate efforts to pursue knowledge for its own sake.
How often do you see adverts for public lectures or national debates in mainstream media? Almost none. Such things that would stimulate the public’s intellect are not there.
Does knowledge exploration lead to economic development?
Yes, it does. The Apollo program which eventually led to the first human beings setting foot on the moon obviously sucked billions of dollars from the American people. The primary aim of the mission was to EXPLORE the geology of the lunar highlands. A staggering $40 billion was invested in this exploration. This, in today’s economy, would translate to over $300 billion or over 154 trillion in Malawi Kwacha.
Many of us would freak out at using such huge sums of money just to explore an apparently barren land like the moon. At the current state of affairs, this money would finance the whole Malawi budget for 154 years. Instead, John F. Kennedy decided to use this money in the pursuit of knowledge.
Several studies have been conducted to find out the economic benefits of the Apollo investment. Consistently it has been found that for every $1 invested in the program, about $10 was returned to the economy over the period of a decade. This is because Apollo resulted in high-end tech jobs, Research & Development projects, a lot of kids inspired to venture into Science, and so on.
This is why President George W. Bush the senior said that "the Apollo program provided the best return on investment since Leonard da Vinci bought himself a sketchpad”.
The case of 15th Century Holland
When Holland divorced herself from the protectorate of Spain in the 1800’s things took turn for the worse economically for the Dutch. Spanish ports and ships were no longer available for them.
To survive and flourish, Holland built her own ships through partnerships with the private sector. These ships sailed to almost all corners of the world to acquire commodities and sell them at a profit. These voyages, though primarily motivated by economic pursuits, had powerful elements of scientific exploration and a quest for knowledge – discovering new people, plants, animals, etc. The Dutch made deliberate efforts to pursue knowledge.
In contrast with many “enlightened” countries of the time, Holland encouraged freedom of thought and tolerance for unorthodox views. For this reason, many people who fled their countries due to censorship found a welcoming home in Holland.
The intellectual prowess of 17th century Holland is attested to by the number of legendary and pivotal figures who emerged and flourished in this country around this time; Spinoza, Descartes, John Locke (a political scientist whose views influenced the founding fathers of the United States), Vermeer (the great painter), Leeuwenhoek (the inventor of the microscope), Grotius (founder of international law), Christian Huygens (please read about his accomplishments), just to mention but a few.
It was during this time that Galileo Galilei, under persecution from the Catholic Church for his proposition that the Earth moved around the Sun and not vice versa, was offered a professorship by the University of Leiden in Holland.
The sailing ships needed improvement and this encouraged technological advancement. But to advance in technology required the freest pursuit of knowledge. Therefore, Holland became the leading publisher and bookseller in Europe, translating works written in other languages and permitting the publication of works proscribed (forbidden) elsewhere.
Thinkers were challenged to reconsider generally-accepted views and eventually showed that many of these views were fundamentally in error. Through this intellectual evolution, Holland made it possible for us as humans to extend our vision to the world of atoms as well as that of the galaxies. Yes, the microscope and telescope were both invented in Holland.
The world owes Holland for much of the progress that has been achieved in recent times.
Why the pursuit of knowledge?
1) Rationality
One of the most frustrating things you will come across in everyday life in Malawi is how irrational people approach things and subjects. Many people rush to make assumptions and conclusions on issues that they haven’t fully investigated. From there, undesirable actions are taken. Instances of this are easy to bring out, especially in the political arena.
Errors in reasoning (fallacies) abound. Communication skills are a big problem.
On the other hand, if we can help our people to employ the simple technique of scientific investigation in their pursuit of knowledge, I believe it would be easier for them to use similar approaches in trying to identify facts of a matter such as:
- withholding judgment until all information is gathered
- listening attentively to the other side of the debate
- making sure that their decisions are not prejudiced.
With this approach, many undesirable consequences would be avoided.
If you hear what people speculated to be the causes of the bloodsuckers crisis mentioned above, you would laugh at the absurdity.
Is that all? No, there is more. In 2019 I happened to have the privilege of finding myself in the presence of two University Chancellors who were discussing why certain colleges of the University of Malawi were more prone to violent activities than others. They both agreed when I suggested that it could be due to the different levels of engagement with the school content.
2) National Progress
It is quite clear that the first people to walk the earth, whether you believe in evolution or creation, had so much to learn. They had to figure out how their environment operated and stay alive in it. Survival depended pretty much on how accurate this knowledge was and how faithful they were to act on it.
Since then, the advancement of the human enterprise has been, largely if not entirely, based on knowledge. Those who know more excelled more. Ignorance is a terrible thing for any living thing, especially human beings. Don’t get me started on giving examples, I think we are on the same page here. For even the God of the Bible attributed the perishing of His people to nothing but the lack of knowledge.
At what levels of development would our country be if many of our citizens were discovering solutions to common problems? Power blackouts, which are killing many businesses than we know, would have been a thing of the past; we would have been able to find sustainable ways of creating meaningful employment for our young people who are eating the bread of idleness; by now we would have mastered the science of harvesting rainwater to make use of it as we see fit all year round; food insecurity would have been a thing of the past.
3) Mitigate the effects of idleness
Ellen G. White says that idleness is the greatest curse that can fall upon a man; for sin and vice follow in its train. I am sure you have also heard the old adage that talks of an idle mind being the devil’s workshop.
Back in 2017, houses were broken into, ambulances were being stoned and people were being killed as they were suspected to be bloodsuckers or vampires. In the thick of this crisis, the United Nations sent the UN Department of Safety and Security (UNDSS) to investigate the situation. The report that the UNDSS compiled upon completing their investigation was quite interesting. It indicated that the main source of this crisis was illiteracy and idleness in the affected areas.
Due to high levels of unemployment and school dropout rates, people’s minds are barely occupied. For this reason, they’re always looking for something to engage in; something to keep them “busy”. Their lack of knowledge prompted them to make such a conclusion that they have bloodsuckers in their midst and take irrational courses of action upon these conclusions.
No real knowledge is useless
There have been social media discussions regarding the practical use of some of the stuff we used to learn in primary and secondary school. Particularly, people have been pointing out that learning parts of a grasshopper was such a waste of time as that kind of knowledge leads nowhere. In general, the study of nature has been despised in favor of the study of things such as technology, entrepreneurship, and any other field that seems to bring direct revenue.
While I do concede that as a poor country, we need to set our priorities in terms of what we teach our learners to help us get out of the poverty trap, I believe we need not ignore the other fields that might seem useless. Here are the reasons why:
- Survival of the human race does not depend on economic prosperity alone. We can have all the money in the world but if we cannot find a cure for a certain epidemic, we will be wiped off the earth. The discovery of such cures will not depend on money as much as it will depend on wits and knowledge. The recent Corona Virus pandemic which brought the world to a standstill is a perfect example.
- Nature holds the keys to the universe: I believe that if we can understand nature to the fullest, we will be able to crack many mysteries to our existence. Charles Darwin spent about 28 years in the field studying nothing but birds and discovered the game-changing theory of evolution. In 1897, Amos Dolbear discovered that the chirping of a cricket can be used reliably to measure temperature just by studying that insect for a prolonged period of time. The study of nature might actually be the route that will bring us to the discovery of solutions that will be unbelievable in a few years’ time if we dedicate the time and resources.
- The study of the sun led to the discovery of Silicon which is the basis of the technological revolution
Inculcate the kids’ love for knowledge: Children are naturally inquisitive about their surroundings. They will ask questions like, why is the sky blue? Where does the sun go at night? Why are plants green? etc… All these questions are apparently simple but their further explorations will reveal momentous answers to the world of nature. Allowing students to study the basics of nature such as the anatomy of a grasshopper at a young age will keep their flame of curiosity burning and turn them into objective scientists of tomorrow, ready to discover solutions to problems that confront the world.
Conclusion
Our nation is engulfed in a blanket of ignorance. The commitment to give our people true education is barely there. This helps explain why, in the midst of heavy educational budgets, meetings, initiatives, and players, the quality of education in our country keeps dwindling.
Now imagine this: by the year 2050 the Malawi population will be around 50 million. If a majority of this population is uneducated and ignorant with no skills to make rational decisions, start their own businesses, or get employed, what kind of humanitarian crisis awaits us? Won't people start killing each for no apparent reason at all?
In a society where ignorance and idleness abound, the value of a person’s life diminishes. A true conception of what a person might accomplish is lost. People can be killed for the most trivial of matters such as differences in opinion or beliefs. People’s animal passions come out in the open and manifest their full effects. History is replete with examples of such occurrences in nations.
If we do not take bold, decisive, and determined steps to provide reliable education to our people, such is the fate that awaits the country in a few years to come.
I hope that champions will rise up to steer this ship away from that iceberg.
