Please permit me to hazard a rejoinder to an opinion article contributed by your venerable guest columnist Sipho H. Showa on the January 17-23 2021 issue of Sunday Standard titled “Aggressive Focus on STEM necessary Post Covid-19.” The superbly written article calls for “unbridled investment” in STEM education. Showa makes special mention of the disciplinary areas or career alleyways in banking, finance, insurance, educational planning and jurisprudence. He reckons such subjects or disciplines may be instrumental in facilitating “expansive application of the country’s development agenda.” Showa, who seems to have been mesmerised by the scientists he works with, claims that a lot of people have been ‘exasperated’ by COVID-19. I doubt aptness of the word ‘exasperation’ in relation to the psychological impact of the current global pandemic.
Showa also spouts another piece of prejudice that exposes him as a careless thinker when he writes, “The COVID-19 situation dredged up a memory from university when science-based students would refer to those from other Faculties as ‘Others’.” Showa seems to have bought into this bigoted view. The guest columnist, I dare say, is perfectly and dangerously out of order. It is utterly unscientific to look down on scholars who are not in one’s discipline. It is not a sign of emotional intelligence to stigmatize any area of study. Such thinking is unhelpful in the battle against global pandemics. Advocating ‘epistemic apartheid’ is dangerous. One may stress the importance of science, technology, engineering without denigrating other scholarly pursuits. Arrogance will not help our situation and it is utterly irrational and inhumane.
Showa seems to be unaware of the more holistic and transdisciplinary educational approaches or strategies of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics) or even better STREAM (Science, Technology, Reading, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics). Given his elitism and seemingly apolitical take on education, he may not have heard of Education with Production. Wake up and live and read Aldous Huxley’s (1932) Brave New World or Kenneth Koma’s Education in Black Africa: The Naked Truth. Thought leaders will surely benefit from diversifying and upgrading their minds to appreciate that innovation has a home at the intersection of “Liberal Arts” and “Technology” streets as exemplified by great Renaissance figures such as Leonardo Da Vinci who ably operated at the convergence of Arts and Science. Innovation can be better fostered by appreciating that science is an art and art is a science. Current and progressive educational planning and practice integrates and infuses the four Cs, namely creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration.
Anyone who has studied the Humanities must be in a position to consider life in its variety and complexity. The lessons taught by a basic BA degree should offer anyone a repertoire of intellectual skills that allow for all-round development and flexibility of mind to further facilitate training in readiness to operate in the boardroom, the courtroom, the editorial office, the diplomatic arena, the surgeries of doctors, chambers of the public service or bureaucracy. Wide and deep reading of literature is a sure-fire countervailing force to the narrowness, prejudice, limitation and bad mental habits.
I charge Showa with the offence of advocating “disciplinary decadence.” Lewis Gordon in his book Disciplinary Decadence: Living Thought in Trying Times (2006), characterises as a situation in which “a decadent scientist criticizes the humanities for not being scientific; a decadent literary scholar criticizes scientists and social scientists for not being literary or textual; a decadent social scientist sins in two directions-by criticizing either the humanities for not being social scientific or social science for not being scientific or social science for not being scientific in accord with, say, physics or biology. And of course, the decadent historian criticizes all for not being historical; the decadent philosopher criticizes all for not being philosophical.” (p.33). Such thinking militates against thought. We will perish if each one of us makes a fetish of his or her own discipline or area of study. We are doomed if lawyers start undermining differently trained professionals for not being hired liars. Bankers or Corporate executives dare not look down upon poets for not getting fat out of fleecing people. Silos must fall! Let us not reify any intellectual or scholastic endeavour. If we go that route the knowledge game will soon be over. To effectively combat the challenges that bedevil us it may be necessary to make concerted efforts to transgress disciplinary borders and boundaries and to guard against segregating epistemes and quarantining knowledge(s). The fight against COVID-19 and any other pandemics or any pressing problem necessitates multi-sectoral and transdisciplinary approaches. Imagine a band in which the saxophonist disrespects the drummer, the vocalist looks down upon the pianist, the lead guitarist disparages the bassist! Each musical performer must contribute to the good of the whole band. Free musical expression of each band member should act as the basis for the free expression of every member.
Yes, the world will always need doctors, physicists, chemists, computer scientists, data analysists, experts and researchers in technical fields but the world stands to benefit from painters, chefs, clowns, gossips, novelists, jugglers, (etc.) end of thinking capacity. Education and training must foster discovery and not this business of cover-ups in which nation-states train spies, torturers, crooks and so-called patriots skilled in stealing one hundred billion of Pulas from the mouths of babies. I make no apologies for writing like someone whose reproductive organs have been crushed by big books.
*Tiro Sebina is teaches Literary Theory and Criticism at the University of Botswana.
