Overhaul our education system

* Parents want good grades, teachers pump learners with facts and the students cram COMMENTARY Our education system is far behind the times. Something must be done soon. It is very common to hear frustrated employers asking: "What is wrong with these graduates?" Apparently some of these brilliant aspirants strutting our streets with colourful certificates and bulging curriculum vitaes (CVs) are a total let down. Employers have resorted to retraining them if possible or to look else where for competent employees. The problem is not Makerere or any other institution for that matter. It is the education system right from when the child goes to nursery school. I cannot tell when it all went wrong for I constantly hear of the good old days when a graduate was worth his salt. For a long time we had only one university and we believed that Makerere was the only gateway to prosperity. Needless to say as the numbers of students increased, competition stiffened for the few scholarships to an unhealthy level. This led to a chain of reactions. Teachers learnt to pass students without failures. Achebe said that when man learnt to shoot without missing the birds learnt to fly without perching. This is very true in our education system. You see, parents demanded "grades" not education. the word was Makerere. The teacher complied and delivered the students safely through the famous "gate." How? Your guess is as good as mine! I am not going to talk about the massive malpractices yet, I will instead talk about the slow systematic strangulation of learning, of educating the child. You see, learning involves instructing, explaining, discovery, imagination, encouraging creativity, slowly coaxing and creating new ideas within the child and making those ideas part of the child's life. As you have noted this is a tedious process and does not necessarily produce colourful grades. It produces confident people, those that take initiative, that think for themselves, who are assertive and take decisions, ones that are not afraid to make mistakes and ultimately creative people. But you see this is not in the long term. In the short-term parents want grades. The teachers (God bless them) deliver. They pump children with facts and the children cram. To understand this properly, imagine feeding a child who does not chew or digest but just swallows wholesale. She stores the food in the stomach and when time comes, she throws up. Is this child nourished? Literally children get ballooned with facts, not knowledge by the time of exams and on paper they throw up! Makes you sick, doesn't it? The hype has finally seeped down into the nursery school. I know it is hilarious but don't you dare laugh. Early Childhood Development experts tell us that children do not learn academically until the age of six. But we do take our three-year olds to glittering nursery schools and cough up a hefty sh300,000 a term. When the nurseries realised they had to account for their astronomical fees, they started teaching the lower primary syllabus. They pump the babies with facts. Imagine a newborn fed on a steady diet of posho, cassava, corn and beans and then you will know what happens to your child's mental health. We have the only system that interviews P1 children on math, English, science on paper! One wonders what happens to those that fail? They become nursery drop outs! Needless to say, our system is exhausted, tired and spent. But worst of all, it is very predictable and not challenging at all both to the teachers and students alike. It does not suit the country's changing climate any more. It must be constantly reviewed to suit the social and economical changes. The musty concepts of the 1960s are only retarding our students' potential such that they do not ably drive the country forward. Is there an office for standards in Education? Is it in operation? Something must be done now. otherwise the gap between the education system and the world of work will grow even wider. The writer is a secondary school teacher. Ends.