By Robert Onsare
Research conducted to unveil the disparity in graduates output revealed that Asians countries and to a larger extend African countries perform better than their American counterparts at primary level, from selected schools.
However, with the passage of time, tables are turned: American graduates are far placed to face the world than their Asian and African counterparts combined.
The research further revealed that Americans have higher self-esteem, confidence to march out and conquer the world in comparison with the rest of the world.
The research explained why Americans have treasured an educational system that is anchored on learning and by doing that has been able to produce trend setters in innovations and entrepreneurship.
The hall of entrepreneurs, inventors, scholars, writers and leaders contains brains which were ignited to belief that they had the potential to succeed in whatever they threw their passion.
And the reverse is true. Great brains have gone to a waste as they were subjected to a people bent to pull them down through mechanical teaching, endless criticism without an ounce of appreciation, and those driven by egocentrism. This is what Competence Based Education and Training (CBET), holistic education that encompasses the harmonious development of the spiritual, mental, social and physical aims to respond to.
While having an interview with one of the engineering lecture in our local university, the don lamented that most students who pursue engineering are A students, excellent brains from bests schools with immense dreams. However, by the time they are graduating their dreams and self – esteem has been stifled out.
The don added that the graduates march out to secure any job that can put food on their table and to survive through the streams of life to uncertain future which they feel they are not the architecture. What unfortunate testimony?
How can parents, teachers and guardians come to terms with the indispensable place of love and concern, encouragement and appreciation in the learning process of our students in all levels of learning?
How can all educational stakeholders come to term with the fragile balance that must be well founded and executed – discipline, pushing students as robots without love is as destructive as love without discipline?
The global ground has shifted. Graduates are supposed to be job creators as opposed to job seekers. Self-examination by our education system and educational institutions is important to nurture graduate who can register a feat in scholarship, innovation, career proficiency and entrepreneurship.
How can we ingrain assurance in our students to harness their potential and talents as they respond to prevailing challenges of unemployment, moral degradation, diseases, poverty, leadership crisis and institutions that need to be scaled to a higher orbit with the available resources, opportunities and challenges?
Success in the present world is coded by innovation and value addition, coming up with new methods and technologies, skills and knowledge in problem solving.
This calls for creative minds, thinkers but not mere reflectors of other people’s ideas, students and graduates who have insurmountable appetite to acquire knowledge turning challenges into stepping stones for success.
With this reality we will bury academic dishonesty of any form and the copy and paste syndrome that has become a new normal.
The traditional jobs afforded by the government have shrunk to exhaustion thus leaving a vast room for thinkers to carry the day.
Back to the power of encouragement for the students, let me use the example of Thomas Edition who teachers said he was “too stupid to learn anything”. He was expelled with a recommendation to go home where he might be of use in domestic responsibilities.
Although Edison’s mother had a humble education, she encouraged him that he was as good as any other and taught him how to read and write. He went ahead to read from the nearby public library. Books ignited his brains. This marked the birth of another genius, inventor, of the bulb and more than 1,000 patents.
My favorite author, Ellen White, says: “In the common walks of life there is many a toiler patiently treading the round of his daily tasks, unconscious of latent powers that, roused to action, would place him among the world’s great leaders.
The touch of a skillful hand is needed to arouse and develop those dormant faculties.”
The Writer is a trainer at Kisii National Polytechnic, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Department and a post graduate student at Multimedia University of Kenya. Contact: robert.onsare@gmail.com
