For What Purpose is Education?

Jacob Waiswa
Peace and Conflict Center
P.O. Box 7062,
Makerere University
Kampala-Uganda
jwaiswa@arts.mak.ac.ug

For the rural and semi-urban populace in Uganda, education is a luxury. It is a cost foregone in order to meet other basics like food, water, clothes, and shelter. What matters to the strategists today is the fact that he or she earns to live a meaningful life. If he or she has a source of money, then that is great enough.

Even for the middle class category, attaining a minimum of a certificate or diploma is satisfying while the highest honors like masters degrees and doctorates are preserves of the very rich or those that have been chanced with necessarily information infrastructure to apply for funding.

As a means of coping with the education difficulties, the major yet decent options for very many young people have been on-job training and entrepreneurship which constitutes the large informal sector.

The question however remains: what about education or life after school? At the end of the day, who is he or she? What contribution does he or she make to society? And is there job satisfaction?
Despite the challenges involved in achieving higher education, the time and costs of attaining it, nothing or very little will be obtained from the very expensive and time-consuming goal of attaining higher education.

That is so, because at the end of the day, graduates fail to apply the knowledge and skills obtained at universities and colleges. All they are left with are honors that they obtained bachelor degrees, masters and doctorates, or their higher grades.

Through weak recruitment processes, which ignores vital professional support skills, organizations and company get raw deals. Neither can the employees effectively and efficiently deliver to the expectations of their employers nor have the passion and desire to perform the jobs put before them.

In an experiment, 20 graduate students were asked to sign a petition against a contentious issue –in which the unusual examination format required students to answer four (4) questions rather than the usual three questions –without altering the usual three hours allocated for the sitting rather than retreating to murmuring, expression of displeasure, condemnation of the examiner, and giving in to repercussions that may arise like re-sitting the paper.

A volunteer developed a petition template and asked all aggrieving students to sign on it in support the idea of that the examiner either marks the best three questions only or scraps the fourth. The outcome was amazing which significantly represents the true nature of education system in Uganda. 3 students signed the petition (2 males and 1 female).

Within just 10 minutes, the one female asked to delete her name off the petition form. 5 males out of 2 females played a waiting game showing readiness to sign petition only if other students signed. 6 females out of 0 males feared repercussions from the examiner, 2 females out of 0 males said the man knew what he did was wrong but went ahead to do it, 1 male out of 0 females reported no change in the situation –regardless and vehemently opposed petition strategy, 1 male out of 0 females opted to fight the petition claiming it was irrelevant, while 10 others were unsure whether to sign or not.

The nature of the academic program was one that trained conflict transformers not conflict builders as it was noted when majority students preferred to let the conflict stand and to chose a negative label to permanently nurse against the examiner.

The African culture is also to blame: it promotes more of fear of senior citizens rather than respect. Most Ugandans would choose to suffer at the expense of their leaders’ sins rather than use available means to rid the nation of the bad leadership for sustainable peace.

Even the leaders know how effective instilling fear in their subjects can be so to administer according to their will. It is only the fearless yet respectful who make good friends with them, while the fearful yet disrespectful make permanent enmity and hatred for their leaders.

More males than females are willing to cooperate in order to change undesirable situation. Till now a petition in Uganda is seen as disrespect for the leaders. The principles of democratic governance and human rights are only read, not practiced. In Uganda teachers and professors are demigods –who are much respected as they have the means to determine academic future of their students. In fact one professor was once quoted saying: ‘I am the alpha and omega.’

Education in Uganda is not providing us the quality human resources we need. It has to be an obligation of organizations to retrain its labor force -considering their desired abilities and competence evidenced recruits through practical sessions -as better option than ‘vomited’ products through merely recruitment test. Academic democracy and governance needs to be developed in Ugandan schools and universities to enhance health student-professor relationship and collaborative learning and development.