Work to protect, not to frustrate USE

OFWONO OPONDO

SAYING IT WITHOUT FEAR OR FAVOUR

LAST week the President of the twice-failed Uganda Peoples’ Congress (UPC), Miria Obote, castigated the Universal Secondary Education (USE) and concluded it is “doomed to fail.”

She said USE, like the Universal Primary Education (UPE) that has been implemented for nine years, is “sub-standard, cheap and populist education,” but she offered no viable alternatives or even another model that when implemented, could ensure that every young Ugandan gets a useful education.

Miria’s unhelpful criticism is not different from those that are waged earlier by other groups against nearly all NRM programmes including politics, democracy, government, army, and economic since 1986 yet the results are here for all to see.

Miria and her family who had for two decades refused to return to Uganda alleging the NRM was a murderous and monolithic dictatorship, were humbly brought back by a crude hand of fate when her husband, Milton Obote, died in October 2005.

While UPE and USE have challenges which require addressing, the public, especially the millions of innocent, needy and vulnerable children and families benefiting from the programme, ought to be protected from un-warranted criticisms particularly when the critics offer no alternatives.

There is need to protect UPE and USE like it was done for mass immunisation in Buganda, where an elite section from Mengo had opposed and tried to frustrate it by sowing false rumours that the vaccines contained substances meant to sterilise Baganda children.

While the critics are at liberty, experience from our old places of worship offers very good lessons because although they were all humble places without chairs and desks or exercise books and pens, the constraints did not prevent knowledge reception.

The critics, many of whom are rich like Miria, are at liberty to send their children or dependants to places like Eton (UK) and Groton (US) to study under affluence. And, by the way, the mere fact that one attends affluent education does not mean they will be successful in life. Obote and President Yoweri Museveni managed to be presidents albeit with different performance levels despite their humble backgrounds.

Secondly the critics ought to know that UPE, USE, mass immunisation or the provision of public safe water points, modest as they may look, are far beyond the reach of many Ugandans for whom they are intended. The programmes are not meant for the well-to-do, and that does not mean they have to be of poor quality.

The massive response to all these programmes is testimony that there are millions of Ugandans who would otherwise remain eating mangoes and looking after tiny goats in the bushes, chasing birds from rice fields, picking garbage skips on the streets or having their human rights abused while working as domestic servants.

There have been criticisms that UPE and USE brought massive numbers into the school system, which compromised the quality of education. While this may be true, it is just a convenient excuse for many elites and parents who want to fail the system because surely a child who has interacted with a teacher or other pupils is better than the one who has stayed at home fetching water.

But now that there is massive response to UPE and USE, Miria would appear a little more serious if she had called on the Government to enact laws compelling all parents to ensure that children at least finish primary school.

She could also ask the Government to abolish or relax regulations on centralised, expensive and exploitative feeding system by schools, in addition to abolishing school uniforms in rural areas where every child is well-known. Indeed she could propose that schools move away from the elaborate school uniforms like dresses and trousers in preference for simple and affordable means like head or wristbands.

Elected leaders, especially MPs and councillors, should consider setting up voluntary community education monitors. These will ensure that corrupt headteachers and school boards do not impose illegal, exorbitant or unnecessary charges as they have been doing. Such charges will frustrate and scare pupils and parents from attending school.

As Miria and the critics politick, let them remember these words of wisdom from leaders across the globe. These are from John Adams to Adolf Hitler and Mao Zedong in the last century about providing universal education to citizens.

Adams said in 1765: “Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people.” While another US president Thomas Jefferson in 1816 said “Enlighten the people generally and tyranny and oppression of body and mind will vanish like the evil spirits at dawn of day.”

In 1924, as Adolf Hitler forced every child to school, he told the Germans: “By educating the young generation along the right lines, the people’s state will have to see to it that a generation of mankind is formed which will decide the destinies of the world.”

Lyndon B. Johnson told the US Congress on January 12, 1965: “Poverty has many roots, but the taproot is ignorance.”

And when he launched compulsory education on March 22, 1958, Mao told the Chinese: “In history it is always those with little knowledge who overthrow those with much learning and we must send every Chinese child to school.”