Providing a good education for young people of Matabeleland is a human right, and contingent to a good education system. Good education systems are pivotal to what and how young people are taught in schools and institutions of higher learning. Young people’s active participation in their learning is essential to the creative mind; education is not about obeying orders, clipping wings of individuality and exerting conformity; it is not about competition and more than achieving good grades; it is the empowerment and optimisation of individual abilities for the greater good of society.
The education system is a pivotal system that, if designed with deeper consideration for our future, will facilitate the successful integration of our values system into other societal structures and the scientific world. The successful adoption of societal systems to the education system is crucial for the viability of our whole ecosystem.
A cultural revolution is required that will see formal learning spaces transformed into liberating zones in which children can fully explore and flourish. Classrooms must not be indoctrination chambers where children are taught what to think not how to think. They must not be torture cages where young people are systematically sanctioned for expressing their individuality or refusing to conform to unreasonable impositions.
Educational reforms with a nuanced focus on progressive education will be pivotal in the building and empowerment of Matabeleland society. We regard the active participation of our young people in how and what they learn as indispensable to shaping the region’s education system and the future.
If we agree that education must amplify who we are then the importance of using local languages as main languages of instruction in the education process cannot be understated. Language is not only a tool of communication but also empowerment and cultural identity.
Through language thoughts run and out of it they grow. If scientific concepts can be taught and learned in Japanese, Cantonese, Hindi, English, German, French, they surely can be delivered and learned in Tsonga, Swahili, etc.
We must not betray the intellectual ability of our children by setting limits to their understanding and expressions of their world by imposing upon them an educational system that supresses and excludes their lived experience and cultural identity while promoting everything foreign to them. What we have for an education system is but an advertisement of Western values.
An education system that welcomes proud toddlers out of Matabeleland communities, hosts them for at least 16 years only to escort out of its gates ignorant whitewashed graduates with little to no intellectual recognition of their cultural identity will never be a tool of empowerment.
For an education system to be a long-term investment to society, its graduates must be the cogwheel of its future development; they must be creators of positive change in their communities, and they must invest time in finding solutions for challenges faced today and proactively mitigate future threats.
On the contrary, graduates who lack a depth of understanding of their communities, who downright reject everything associated with their communities and disrespect core value systems have no role in the critical appraisal and improvement of local trends and the future.
No successful nation has ever done so on the back of walking away from its core values and language. It is not a coincidence that all successful nations use their native languages as primary languages of instruction in their education systems and other societal contexts. Everybody, bar Africa, understands the importance of cultural identity in empowerment.
Progressive policies will see education being an effective tool of empowerment in the region. We are clear that in a diverse region like Matabeleland, using isiNdebele and English as the two main languages of instruction in education is of itself a source of conflict, and we owe it to the next generation to change that. We believe the adoption of multicultural policies that explicitly recognise cultural differences will be essential in the conflict management in our culturally rich, ethnically divided region.
We want the education system to be reflective of the territory and communities within, and even more significant, it must be a projection of the needs of our young people. BaKalanga communities must be able to look at the education system and see themselves, the same applies to Nambyans, Tonga, Sotho, Venda, Xhosa, amaNdebele, and others.
Every society must take ownership of its education system so that it does not create a parallel universe and, out of its learners, surrogates of other societies’ value systems; we must promote learners’ active participation in their learning. We must pay attention to young people’s inclination, use local languages to deliver lessons, and respect cultural identity. Education must empower and never be a tool for the control of individuals. We must ensure our education system is one of the pivots that facilitate the integration of our various societal structures and scientific development and future.
MTHWAKAZI INDEPENDENT 