Education
We Can Fix Our Education Systems , the Covid Response Has Shown Us What Is Possible
Alice Bayingana
Africans shut down all schooling and return to the drawing board in order to correct this problem ; however , we can start by taking a page from the health equity movement and , first , understanding how certain barriers conspire to keep the most vulnerable among us from accessing education and , by extension , denying them the knowledge and skills they need to thrive in this world .
The movement for global health equity has done a great deal to move us towards a reality where all people have access to good health . The strength of this movement lies in understanding that our health systems are deeply flawed ; they will not work if they do not recognize that what keeps people from good health is neither natural phenomena that we must accept , nor is it individual failures . On the contrary , it is inequity born out of histories of subjugation and resource extraction that favour the obscene wealth of some while rendering many vulnerable to ill health and premature death . It should be obvious that the idea , applied by the health equity movement , that in order to make progress towards good health for all we must focus on the most vulnerable and meet them where they are can , and should , be applied to all other inequities we identify in our systems .
Consider education . Education systems in Africa , not unlike its health systems , were built to reinforce hierarchies and indoctrinate indigenous people into participating in their own oppression . It is not so crazy , then , that after the end of formal colonization , Africans were left with institutions that were centred around colonial activity both in their physical locations and in their goals and methods . It would , of course , be absurd to suggest that
Western volunteers who have flocked into Africa en masse to build schools and teach show that one of the longest-running barriers to education access on the continent has been infrastructure . We have all heard of the “ gaps ” in the education system . One such gap is the lack of adequate classrooms that can fit our growing number of young people ; another is the shortage of teacher training schools which makes it difficult to train qualified teachers fast enough ; there ’ s another shortage : of basic materials like computers ( even access to pens and paper in the recent past was a serious concern ). Less acknowledged , but equally important , is the lack of content in indigenous languages that has made fluency in a colonial language a standard requirement for teaching and learning .
So , is overcoming these “ gaps ” in education impossible ? If this past
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