Much has been said in recent days about how His Excellency the President Mr. Mokgweetsi EK Masisi’s push to be a “jobs President” is being stymied by some unbecoming mysterious forces. Be that as it may, it seems extraordinary that all of a sudden there are new jobs galore in the civil service given the 7,500 figure that was recently bandied about.
Assuming that the above is not as dissembling a stunning revelation as one might suspect that it is, it should still be asked, now much more broadly, whether we have the necessary skills to create meaningful jobs fit for a modern world economy. The American philosopher and educational reformer John Dewey crystallises the challenge for President Masisi and the country thus: “Education is not preparation for life. Education is life itself”. For the visionary, this is a befuddlingly scary proposition. Now, it seems pretty clear to me that a lot of work has to be done to sort out the mess occasioned to our education system in the last couple of years. If President Masisi truly wants to set this country on the path to prosperity, he needs to rejig the education system to be able to produce jobs that are competitive locally and internationally.
It is actually very polite to say that our education system is in stasis. The damage to this engine of growth is far too great such that successive governments may grapple to right the ship for decades to come. We must also cast aside for a minute the dire physical state many of our public schools are in and instead admit that the output is not fit for a modern day economy. Progressing incompetent scholars from primary school to senior secondary school has done a lot more harm than good. This appears to have been a politically convenient decision masked behind the populist statement that “no child should be denied an education” rather than a realistic one intended to address economic growth challenges.
The above approach may have been deemed a brilliantly clever political plan but it continues to be a waste of these learners’ time which could perhaps be better spent in vocational institutions or some other form of education. The goal of our education system seems to be one that is aimed at creating dependent citizens, unable to think for themselves. Recently a teacher at one of the local senior secondary school shared the frustration they have to deal with in the form of students with no basic reading, writing and mathematical skills. We need not go back far in time for evidence. One just has to consider the 2017 BGCSE results where 24.05% of the candidates obtained grade C or better, a decline from the 25.46% attained in 2016.
It is all jolly well to say that no child should be denied the chance to go further when BGCSE results are no longer an exhilarating sight but a spectacular shambles to be honest. Obviously, they also compare very unfavourably to the above 90% pass mark that private schools consistently attain thereby continuing to widen the gap between the rich and the poor because the bulk of scholarships go to the former cohort.
The other niggling matter, particularly in respect of top achievers that are awarded scholarships to study outside the country, is that there appears to be no plan to harness their talents for the benefit of the local economy. When they complete their studies, what happens to them for instance? They simply vanish into the international arena which, admittedly, is not necessarily a terrible thing. When they do surface in Botswana either we do not know that they are around, or if we are aware, we haven’t the foggiest idea what to do with them. As an illustration, I have heard of a Pediatric Critical Care Specialist, apparently the only one who is a Motswana, who came back to work here but is currently not doing so fully because the authorities have no room for her. The treatment of such professionals is an astonishingly amazing problem whose origin is a mystery given that we should ordinarily be an organised country, comparatively speaking. Quite frankly, as a nation, we should no longer accept the issues concerning the education system. We have been badly bumped about and shaken to bits for far too long along this most foul road.
I am also quite certain that folks in entities such as Botswana Innovation Hub, Botswana Investment Trade Centre, Statistics Botswana, Botswana Geoscience Institute, Botswana Institute for Technology Research and Innovation, Botswana International University of Science and Technology, Botswana University of Agriculture and Natural Resources and maybe the University of Botswana as it seems to have been denuded of its worth overtime, will agree that there is potential for creating a lot of cutting edge jobs but that this nation does not have the adequate approach to harness potential opportunities.
Therefore, it should concern His Excellency the President that becoming a knowledge based economy may not be possible in the short to medium term. Peter Drucker in “The Effective Executive” describes the difference between the manual worker and the knowledge worker: “The manual worker works with his or her hands and produces goods and services. In contrast, a knowledge worker works with his or head, not hands, and produces ideas, knowledge and information”. So, a knowledge based education, clearly, is much like an arts education which President Masisi knows only too well. Its stock in trade is the ability to think, analyse and integrate information but this time immediately grounded on some very unique specialisation. We must concede though that as a country, we have never been successful as manual workers in the manner described by Drucker and given the state of our education system, even the knowledge based economy phase is going to pass us by because we are not prepared for it.
Boitshepo Bolele writing in the Weekend Post of Saturday 05-11 May 2018 under the heading “Educating for the 4th Industrial Revolution” takes Drucker’s exposition further that “one of the imperatives of the 4IR is human capital enhancements to be able to meet the knowledge and skills requirements. This puts demand on knowledge production and innovation applications of knowledge. Also, changes in reading and learning habits need educationalists to devise new technologies. The rapid pace of emergence of Industry 4.0 requires that Education 4.0 also leapfrogs from the current Education 2.0 framework (internet enabled learning) to Education 3.0 (Consuming and Producing knowledge)/4.0 (Empowering education to produce innovation). Clearly, therefore, creativity and inquisitiveness stimulated in proper and internationally recognised universities are the true purpose of education. I am unable, to be honest, to place Botswana with any measure of confidence in the phases highlighted by Bolele. However, if we are able to move apace, innovative and cutting edge careers will come naturally.
News by Debswana that it will now be in production until at least 2050, compared to around 2030 which was mentioned in the early 2000s, means that we will continue to have at least one revenue stream to keep the economy stable. Such news should, however, not lull us into a false of security but give us a window of opportunity to cure the education system and prepare our children for the future.
In the meantime, given the skills deficit in the country, calls for “elders” to retire here and now or for the retirement age to be lowered for the youth to take over in order to address the problem of youth unemployment might be premature, if not misguided. Therefore, while in countries like Japan the retirement age has been extended because of an ageing population, in Botswana this may have to be done because of our inability to build up the necessary skills when we had the time.
John Piaget, Swiss philosopher and scientist, seems to have been forever right when he said that “the principal goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done”. Regrettably, our authorities have allowed the proliferation of tertiary institutions that offer the same menu of traditional courses. Therefore, if we do not move in Piaget’s direction, we will continue speaking of unemployed graduates and “new jobs” that have sprung up when we are in truth referring to existing positions that were not filled in the past, for one reason or the other. However, if President Masisi is able to straighten the education system, it will be one of his enduring legacies. It is a ticklish business that will require a lot of patience from many quarters since this particular President appears, generally, to have been handed a poisoned chalice. He has a lot on his plate to be fair.
*Ga ke a rongwa. These are my personal views.
