Education the-way areas that lack even the most basic of amenities . Among those who are sent there , some simply do not report for work . Others report , spend a short time , and secure transfers to better areas , usually by bribing the officials responsible for effecting transfers . Both factors leave glaring gaps in teaching . Elsewhere , teachers will stay at the schools to which they have been posted , mainly for purposes of earning salaries , but spend ample amounts of time away from their duty stations , teaching far fewer hours than they ought to . Usually , this happens when some teachers find ways to supplement their meagre salaries , such as riding motorcycle taxis ( bodaboda ) or teaching in more than one school . If elected leaders are vigilant enough to check , these malpractices are easy to stop . However , they are so common one cannot but conclude that local leaders are simply not paying attention , or that they are simply unable to measure up to the demands of leadership , including holding service providers to account . Suffice to say that in countries where governments retain a degree of supervisory control over local authorities , and where public-spiritedness is the dominant value , things of this sort do not happen or where they do , corrective steps will be taken to address them . It goes to show that creating autonomous local authorities which are supposedly accountable to members of the public by virtue of being elected , regardless of context , is not the magic bullet against poor service provision that experts usually assume it is .
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The Separation of Arts and Sciences Is a Colonial Poison
Ndayisaba Gateka
Art sciences are despised in favor of the natural sciences in many African societies . In fact , this trend has been obvious during , and especially after , colonization in many of our African nations . The fear is that the African child who takes art subjects won ’ t be exposed to as many opportunities as the one who studies natural sciences . For the African middle class , that is truth . Is it though ?
Education has always been one of the pillars for every people . Along with politics and economy , it has been the thing that , even to this day , is attacked and taken over during foreign occupation . This is the oldest strategy used in occupation . To appease the occupied people ’ s innate sense of revenge , the occupant tames the occupied mind by exposing him to information that either legitimizes alien presence or distracts him with “ serious matters ” that divert him from thinking about the actual occupation .
The processes used in the colonial destruction of the African education paradigm is fascinating . Turning minds into muscles and praising the biggest muscle . That is the colonial education in a nutshell . All the curriculum was structured around one word : Labor . Why ? Because that is what was needed from the African . The very few who tried to think of education as something that should transcend labour was reminded in the strongest of terms that they had gone beyond their pay grade and charged for trespassing .
Consequently , almost half of African countries celebrate every year a president killed by that colonial system , a victim of trespassing . His crime was that he was a laborer who wasn ’ t supposed to possess the ideas he had acquired , not through education but through the accident of experience , trials and tribulations – struggle . They had failed the education system because ideas , rather than labor , are the forbidden fruit of the colonial education system . Even more forbidden were ideas that defended African interests . To this day such ideas are forbidden and the penalty for having them exists but varies .
The very education system most of us grew up in , fighting every day to be the best in it , was de-
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