An analphabetic society, a society riddled with high rate of illiteracy, its borders and dimensions defined by superstition and myths modern and ancient. is a huge ponderous monster of a hulk, slouching in sloth, a hurdle formidable and impenetrable. A gigantic giant dull and stupid, a society without a niche in the fanciful world of romance, its idle pen contributing not a paragraph worthy of being called artistic to the literature of the macabre or the supernatural. Yet with a large number of dreamers, idealists, men with uncouth and bizarre imaginations and fanciful concoctions bordering on mediocrity and nothingness. Men with superstition as their sacred creed ignorance as their doctrinaire brand.The tower of ignorance their temple of worship. The tangible world appears intangible to them. Their corporeal bodies they are apt to deny and replace it with an immaterial one that can not be seen. The real world of science and rational thinking to them is unreal, a mere shadow. The world of matter real and substantial, tangible, indisputable evidences scatted before them is something they quickly over look as they imagine their very bodies to be immaterial. The natural world is filled with monsters vicious and atrocious, ghosts and witches able to wreak havoc and mischief, nature spirits and in animate objects vested with immense powers. Rivers are imagined to have eyes and ears, mountains and dark forests houses some of the most terrible creatures of the world. Natural phenomena becomes the outlet in which the gods unleash their vindictive anger and punish weak and erring humans. A person denied education and left to rot in the pangs of ignorance quickly finds an alternative in subscribing to the unproductive and retrogressive, poisonous and decaying mental idling exercise of believing in and entering the dark “unreturnable” crypt of illusion, of unreal entities and ideas childish and improvable only mentionable which succors vain ideas from vaporous brains.
When the number of the uneducated rises it becomes a serious social menace which few people are able to see. Mostly, it is treated as a minor social issue and before long, it gains strength as ignorance itself is a disease and begins to sap the brains and the thinking capabilities of its victims and though they may look healthy and strong outwardly, they are in effect dead souls without hope of regeneration. The very people who are known to be the forces responsible for the growth of the society becomes the stumbling blocks to its progress and development. They assume the status of different species in the social setting speaking in a different language and acting contrarily to the societal norms. They become vulnerable and with the fierce capabilities of zombies they are poised to bring to fruition any destructive idea that some one may conjure should it come to their doorsteps. They feed on rumors ravenously and lies, hearsays quickly becomes their means of dissemination of information. There is no border line between fact and fiction. They decide based on their volition whether to accept information as factual or not. No commonsensical approach is adopted to analyze it in the commonest of situations to establish its veracity or meaningfulness. Every situation is interpreted based on some ones whim and hardly can an error be identified and corrected. Information are misunderstood and misrepresented. Good policies become ineffective in their midst as the application itself is something out of their reach. The uneducated masses without a concerted effort to continually and systematically address them with current issues lives in a time capsule. They walk and interrelate with all the forces and factors of the society but they are in actual fact a different species on their own. With wide staring eyes but hardly can they see. They appear comfortable happy to move about but every minute there are things that goes on around them, information and ideas that they are forever separated from, not privilege to hear yet they are not cursed with deafness.
A society that fails to educate its citizens educates them in high sounding illiteracy, in superstition and dire ignorance. The very society they draw mediocre sustenance becomes a huge prison of vicious proportions. The country itself becomes the slave master and enslaves its people. It becomes a detrimental force that holds its own people in eternal darkness of retrogression. An agent sponsoring the destruction of the people.
Politicians and policy makers, educationists and social commentators always inundate media houses with the bizarre fact that more than 85% of the population is immersed in illiteracy. In effect, they tell us that literacy rate has dropped woefully and points a bleak picture for the future of the nation. They present various schemes and strategies to combat such an unfortunate social menace. A brief response will come in to change the educational structure as has been the tradition and that resolves the problem of high rate of illiteracy? Some of the policies they implement to resolve the problem itself becomes a problem, augments the already worsening situation and plunges more people into the very situation they were trying to resolve. The well intentioned idea becomes another issue that will require years of resources to understand its negative effect in the social system.
Illiteracy and ignorance is very broad and addressing such issues should not be undertaken in a miniature conference room somewhere far from the people. How can you resolve the problem of an uneducated person if the solutions you propose he is not even privileged to see or hear? how do you create or make an impact when you broadcast ineffective jabbering of confused and confusing impracticable theories and policies to yourself away from the humble folks who people the countryside? Those who need it badly.
Where do the policy makers and educationists educate their children? Abroad of course! How do you see the effect of the experiment you set in place if your kids are not allowed to partake in it? Who should sacrifice his efforts and his life for a system that is not well grounded? only meant to see if it can work better than a previous system thought to be ineffective.
We do not combat ignorance and illiteracy by employing battering hammers, axes, tridents and halberds and hitting it until the tower of ignorance crumbles down. Neither can the numerous erection of nice educational structures in any way address the problem of illiteracy.
The fact of the matter is that we should come to the realization that there is a crisis situation in our educational system. The educational system is unjustifiable and too elitist. Most of the problems we are facing now was generated by the same system. The people we are apt to point as unable to receive education or received but a little of it is the working of the educational system.
Too much emphasis is laid on impracticable theories and the syllabuses riddled with numerous obsolete ideas that has lost touch with reality. Modern teaching techniques and tools of learning are missing in the educational system. Ancient notes that served in the past are as vibrant as ever. They are tossed to desperate students who need certificates badly to devour and enter the job market to manage businesses and firms but not to create one.
The mode of entrance itself is another contributing factor and how we perceive education. We are yet to approach the modernist interpretation of education as training and nurturing of talents and not only imparting systematic knowledge to a select few. Everyone is capable of receiving knowledge and utilizing it. Modern research in neurology and cognition points out in unequivocal terms, that each and every one of us has his way or approach of learning and acquiring knowledge and understanding issues. Assuming a monotonous way of teaching, a one dimensional approach thinking that everyone will understand it as it is, is a futile self-deceiving method and approach that mars the progress of tuition.
The educational system priority is to concentrate on the select few who are thought to have distinguished themselves and deserve better. What is the justification in educating a select few and the majority left to wander outside the precincts of education and to howl and be at the service of the educated ones.
Another factor that seems to endorse illiteracy as a natural phenomena we must contend with and not waste our breath is the intellectual narcissism and elitist and self-satisfying attitude of the few who are intellectually endowed. They come to view their education as a special privilege that separates them from the people. They view their education as giving them a special place in the society and according them distinctive classes.
Where ignorance is bliss, it is folly to be wise. When one is fortunate to receive education and sees it as a special tool that he must clinch to never letting go for others to benefit, then by virtue of his erroneous and selfish attitude, that single persons inability to spread his knowledge and experience deprives hundreds and thousands of people education. It is when we dissociate education from the limitations of the particular to that of the universal that we can boast of achieving meaningful educational success.
It comes as no surprise to see people who claim to have acquired good and quality education to succumb to the whims of those they claim to be dancing in superstition. Erroneous ideas are so potent and seducing that when one is not cautious may yield to its illusions. Most of the times it is the so called uneducated ones who control affairs because naturally their ideas reaches a larger number of people than wig wearers with their spectacles beneath their noses chanting their qualifications and explaining the nature of events to them. Rumor brewed by their fellows possesses more truth than a well conducted research approved as accurate. Those they accord much respect to is not an honorable minister with his material convoy nor a professor hidden in a crypt on campus but remote ancestors that they have dim recollection of. The men of artistic predilections that the educated ones accord great respect and reverence as heroic figures are but pigmies to giants in their estimations. Those they hold in high esteem and dread are not sources of knowledge but entities that elicits their irrational side and incites their fears.
So in effect, when a systematic approach is not taken to carefully address the issues of illiteracy and a concerted effort made to salvage the lots who were not able to acquire education it will continue to be a factor of our retrogression. A sword of Damocles hanging in the hall of academia. If those who acquire knowledge make it a habit of imparting it to those who are less endowed, and the education system cleared of all the erroneous methods and education deemed not as a special privilege but a basic human rights that symptoms of progress will eventually rear its head.
1 comment:
I find this post revealing in many ways. We have become a people who do not care about anyone else but ourselves.
We cannot wait to hold on to foreign praisers who have nothing better to offer us. Indeed, the system we inherited is an education meant to make a slave of the recipient unless he or she awakes to save the self from such damnation.
What should be a blessing has become the song of the cretinising mind. Sad. The selfish ones now leave our shores with their family to the land of those who bequeathed the corrupted system to us. That is where the system exists in its purest forms. But what did we expect? Those few of us who know of this madness are still few.
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