Now that we have achieved political independence, let’s fight for independent minds, through education reforms that ought to prioritize critical thinking skills!
Lusaka, Oct. 24 – It’s shocking to see on Facebook how an average popular Zambian page tends to attract comments only on petty gossip topics! Even in WhatsApp groups, you rarely find debates focused on finding solutions to our various social economic development challenges but on how much someone is bad or good!
This probably, to me at least, is the best description of Eleanor Roosevelt’s famous quote: “Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people!” Where, then, can you place Zambia in this quote if social media were to be the barometer?
We all know that something is clearly wrong but it’s difficult to pinpoint the cause. With all the rich natural resources Zambia has, why is it, at 59 years old, still languishing in poverty? Could it be because of our political leadership’s failure to think on its own, having chosen to rely on external help to solve issues it can solve if independent thinking minds were at play?
“In Africa, we have everything we need, in real terms. Whatever is lacking, we have the means to acquire. And yet we remain mentally married to the idea that nothing can get moving, without external finance. We are even begging for things we already have. That is absolutely a failure of mindset.” – Paul Kagame
Truly so! Today, President Hakainde Hichilema has put the Oppenheimer family sponsored Brenthurst Foundation at State House to advise him on mining. These are the descendants of Cecil Rhodes who colonised us for our minerals. It’s like a farmer asking monkeys to be his maize farm managers.
Also Read: They’re in Zambia to assist HH manage the mining sector.
Going forward, Government must intentionally empower Zambians with the ability to question things via a revised education system. For instance, an educated citizenry will start asking the HOW question whenever a politician says, “I will fix this by 14.00hrs!”
You may want to ask me what I find wrong with the current education system…
Well, the colonial education system on which our current curricula are based had an in-built slant that helped create a mindset of blind loyalty rather than open minds to new ways of independent critical thinking. It was designed to serve the economic interests of the colonisers, which was the primary motivation for colonialism in the first place.
It was not education, but training. Its purpose was not to educate a person to understand the objective limits to the advancement of individual and collective welfare, but to train a person to accept and even administer these limits in an ‘efficient’ manner.
It’s sad to say but a lot of people are intellectually challenged due to this poor education system we have been subjected to hence our persistent calls for education reforms. Despite having their own brain cells, many have chosen to keep them frozen for future use. They are content to practice politics as presented to them by their earthly gods. They can’t question anything.
In other words, our colonial masters managed to hard code our brains such that we still see questioning our superiors as insubordination and judging by the level of political intolerance in the country, one can see that our colonial masters succeeded.
“He who gives you the diameter of your knowledge, prescribes the circumference of your activity. So when your slave master educates you, he does not educate you to be a threat to him.” – Louis Farrakhan
Understanding this will open up our minds to the reality that the idea of the Brenthurst Foundation and Tony Blair Institute for Global Change operating as Advisory Units inside our Presidency from State House does not benefit an ordinary child in rural Zambia.
Our political leadership needs to wean itself from this syndrome of dependency on the West following the recent happening at the United Nations that proved that the countries we hold in high esteem still look at us as slaves who do not deserve human dignity that the West enjoys.
A resolution adopted by the General Assembly on a global call for concrete action for the elimination of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance failed to pass due to a NO vote from permanent members of the Security Council: the US, Russia, UK, China and France. Others who voted against this otherwise progressive resolution yet they claim to be champions of human rights included Australia, Canada, Israel, Germany and the Netherlands. But we still have Africans who rush to the West to seek justice.
Zambia, and Africa as a whole, needs a new political direction. It’s not really replacing Hakainde Hichilema, although in this case it’s necessary, that will solve our social economic development challenges, rather our ability to understand the objective limits to the advancement of the collective welfare of our people today, which is a wrong divisive political system. We had replaced Kaunda with Chiluba, we brought in Mwanawasa, RB, Sata and now we have replaced Edgar Lungu with Hakainde Hichilema but little has changed, if anything, things are worse!
Also Read: The Fallacy of Majority Rule: A call for critical thinking in Zambia.
Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is called insanity. We need to think beyond political patronage to develop this country. Education reforms and a new home bred governance system that must prioritize development over politics of patronage should be high on the agenda!
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Happy 59th Independence Day!!!
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Putting news into perspective
The article is emotive rather than analytical. 1 There is development in Zambia not the zero you are trying to project.
2.The education system has not been stagnant since independence.
3.Morality must be part of politics.