TIME TO TALK ABOUT THIRD WORLD EDUCTION 1.0

“The Gambler” in Kenny Rogers’s popular song of the same title was a shrewd individual?who made a life career out of reading people’s faces. He could tell what card the opponent held by looking at how he held his eyes. There are people who swear they can tell whether somebody is well educated or not, by looking at the look of their faces. They boast how their eyes cannot be fooled by a scare crow of a man hiding in an expensive suit and pair of shoes.?An educated man in rugs cannot fool them either.

It then appears that although education does its magic deep inside the thick skull of the human head, some tell-tale signs manage to seep to the surface, and these can be detected by those possessed of gambler type eyes and bend of mind.

When in business mode, Mr. Gambler’s mind works at the speed of a glance. Be that as it may, here is an elaborate slow-motion re-run of his method.

-???????It is education that has enabled this lady with short hair to read, comprehend, and place this article into perspective

-???????The job this lady with a necklace does is owing to education

-???????Education has influenced the way this be-spectacled lady is holding her eyes

-???????This body posture and manner of walking projects education and style

-???????Education had a hand in setting time of marriage for this fast talking lady but why is there a problem in holding tight on to the marriage??

-???????Education underlies and dictates the manner that this lady with large front teeth engages with other members at the exclusive members club

-???????Education has contributed positively to the level of income in the village this mother of two comes from.

-???????I see here a lady with rimless spectacles who sees the world through glasses tinted with education

-???????This lady with a designer bag has the demeanor of one with several fat bank accounts, no less than three.?

An ordinary sound mind may need a long questionnaire and supplement that with interviews, Google, and textbooks to extract data in the above regard, and some more time to draw a proper conclusion. At the end of it all, the likely conclusion is that other factors aside, a Sub-Sahara African country endowed with a critical mass of the well-educated and properly employed has good prospects to catch up with the likes of South Korea, Singapore, and Israel, in the foreseeable future. Blah, blah, blah. Not so Mr. Gambler.?

Apart from reading people’s faces, Mr. Gambler also can read people’s countries. From just one glance, his mind will analyze relevant evidence in the twinkling of an eye and come up with a verdict or advice on surviving. Such advice or verdict he keeps to himself, unless given a bottle of whisky and a light for his cigarette. In his mind, a coin has three sides: head, tail and “X”, and his stock answers follow a pattern governed by his assumption about a coin:

-????????Head of the coin verdict- Your country is on the morning train from nowhere to

somewhere.

-??????Tail of the coin verdict (this somewhat echoes the wit and eloquence of the one?

????????and only Professor PLO Lumumba) -Your country is on the lunchtime train to the

????????lunch table of the more advanced countries, not to have lunch, but to be the?lunch.

-???????“X” side of the coin- verdict pending

Sadly, and inexplicably, Mr. Gambler has given the tail of the coin verdict. Why so?

Education in parts of Sub-Sahara Africa has interesting perspectives. It can be argued that in the space of about eighty years, education is largely responsible for a socio-economic transformation of a magnitude that took a thousand years to attain in other parts of the world. In that space of time, we have computer experts whose recently deceased or still living grandparents started life as nothing more than hunter-gatherers, nomadic herders, and agrarian folk with primitive tools.?

In the face of the big jump, a developmental expert would then map out a conducive environment with a raft of leveraging factors and pre-conditions such as:?

-???????????The economy is at the verge of take-off to lower middle-income status

-???????????A large majority of citizens have optimism and confidence for the future

-???????????Education pays, and employers match qualifications with responsibilities an?

compensation.

-???????????There is no discrimination based on gender, ethnicity, or other subjective

? consideration in all the sectors of employment.

-???????????There are policies and measures in place which ensure that no region of the

?????????????country is disadvantaged as regards access to education, business, and?employment

opportunities.

-???????????There is easy movement of labour in the country and economy.

-???????????The economy is not dominated by one or just a few well performing sectors?

-???????????The politics and national policies are stable, predictable, and focused on peace and general prosperity.

Why did Mr. Gambler, reading from the same page, overlook the promising signs to give a tail of the coin verdict??

By setting aside other factors and focusing only on education, let us do in slow motion a number of selected considerations that Mr. Gambler’s mind would juggle before giving the whisky induced verdict.???

-If Mr. Lionel Messi was born in some of the countries in Sub-Sahara Africa, he would be enrolled in a school to be taught religious studies, song and dance, and crop husbandry before he could board the morning train to somewhere.

-Some people in the know once calculated that Wayne Rooney was earning from football in one month what he would have taken seven years to earn, as a teacher.

-Some young men from Sub-Sahara Africa board the morning train or swim across dangerous seas in a move to escape from nowhere to somewhere, yet young men from elsewhere come to occupy the vacuum and prosper in no time.

-In a Sub-Sahara African country, a brilliant and hugely popular and influential comedian is reported to have been advised by the mother to quit comedy and look for a “proper” job to indicate he had gone to school.

-There is a rural place in Sub-Sahara Africa where the common joke is that if someone threw a stone blindly across the fence, chances are high the stone might land on the thick skull of a professor. This is owing to an inordinately large proportion of residents who have excelled in high learning.?

The question is, why should an apparently well place country be on the lunchtime train to the lunch table of the more advanced countries, not to have lunch, but be the lunch? In Mr. Gambler’s mind, the well-educated people simply add spice to the lunch, and nothing has changed. How come? Why??

Looking at the broad picture at a glance, breakthroughs in general advancement and education are more associated with some parts of the world rather than others. Sub-Sahara Africa appears barren in advancing knowledge, technology, innovation, and the global commerce. Steering clear of the super heavy weight division made up of the likes of Germany, France, USA, Russia, China and Japan, we may cite the category of counties who regularly make it to the lunch table of advanced nations to eat lunch, not to be the lunch. Among these are Singapore, Israel, Mauritius, Indonesia, Taiwan and South Korea. None of these is in Sub-Sahara Africa.

It cannot be denied that the likes of Singapore or Malaysia prioritize education as an indispensable requirement to board the lunch time train.??Still, the highly educated may be modest proportion and throwing stones would be less catastrophic. Could it be that education is not used as a dress for scarecrows? It must be so because these countries vibrate in terms of coming up with cutting edge innovations which drive technological advancement,??wealth creation, value addition, and trade. Sub-Sahara Africa is a contrast in that a large part of the economic burden overwhelmingly rests on the shoulders of, and moves forward on the feet of people with low education or none at all. The footprints of the highly educated are rare along this path.

Question : What is your verdict and advise for survival Mr. Gambler?

Answer 1: No country can board the train to have lunch with advanced countries if the education system educates and trains the hen to do what an uneducated and untrained dog is able to do.?

Answer 2: Avoid situations where your engineers have innovated but their contributions are covered by a heap of scrap metal and plastics.

Answer 3: Avoid situations where sound strategies proposed by your agriculture professionals remain buried under a heap of manure.

Answer 4: Avoid situations where the national good swirls in a thick dust of misguided politics and parochial interests.

Answer 5: Avoid situations where your educationists design sound progarammes that remain buried in a heap of chalk dust.

Answer 6: Avoid situations where your scholars publish knowledge that remain concealed under piles of confusing books.

Answer 7: Avoid situations where your highest academic credentials are used to dress up scare crows.

Answer 8: Make sure that your brightest minds are not used to spice food in lunch tables of the advanced nations.

Answer 9: Eliminate possibilities that your best brains will board the morning train to somewhere.

It is not hard to find countries in Sub-Sahara Africa which continue to implement a curriculum that is not reflective of valuable native knowledge and heritage; does not address current and emerging realities; does not localize the global;??and which only produce spices for the lunch table of advanced economies.

After decades of trial and error, and without prompting by Mr. Gambler, Kenya has arrived at the conclusion that it needs to shift from Third Word Education 1.0 to a competence based curriculum (CBC) 2.0.?

Question: What is the secret to surviving Mr. Gambler?

Answer: A country playing the education card gotta learn to play it right:

-know what to keep from the past: know when to implement new thining; know what to implement fast; know when to run with a programme; know what to bring from the world; and know what to walk away from.

At a glance, and in the twinkle of an eye, Mr. Gambler says the ideal should be to adopt two guiding principles:?

-No need to educate and train hens to do what a dog can do without education or?training.

-Apply the IREDA principle.?

IREDA is an abbreviation for?Identify, Reinforce, Equip,?and?Deploy?as?Appropriate). The slow motion version of it is as follows.

-IREDA people with clever fingers

-IREDA people with clever looks

-IREDA people with clever tongues and voices

-IREDA people with clever legs

-IREDA people with clever personalities

-IREDA people with versatile cleverness.

-IREDA people with clever influence and leadership

-IREDA people who can read people’s faces and countries

IREDA is a long-term value chain. It goes with national policy and programme responsibilities that start from but go beyond the core education function.

Identify, Reinforce?and?Equip?runs from kindergarten to tertiary education.?Equip, and?Deploy?as?Appropriate?starts from secondary school to job employment, business and self-employment prospects in all sectors of the economy.

Question: Now what do you say Mr. Gambler?

Answer: Time to talk about Third World Education 1.0 is over.