Opinion / Columnist
'Half-baked' graduates - quantity without quality counts for nothing!
30 Jan 2015 at 15:43hrs | Views
Most of the thousands of students churned out of the country's tertiary institutions are half-baked and do not have the requisite industrial skills required of them, Higher and Tertiary Education deputy minister Godfrey Gandawa admitted in Parliament.
What a criminal waste of humanity; these "half-baked" graduates (for no fault of their own) are no good to society and to themselves. They are nothing but a burden to the nation; they either become Zanu PF thugs or join the MDC herd for being "half-baked" means they are born to follow blindly without ever asking where they are going. Because of their ignorance they will be exploited wherever they go, without doubt their life is just one long nightmare!
In the late 1980s I interviewed some "O" and "A" level graduates for semi-skilled worker positions and I was shocked. When I asked them what is a verb or Pythagoras Theorem the standard answer I got was "We did not do that in School." All these students had done 11 or 13 years of formal education with passes in English and Maths whose content had been watered down so much the students learnt nothing but they all had very impressive school certificates!
This week "A" level results came out and there was an impressive 95% pass rate with many schools registering 100% pass rates. I wonder how many of those 95% know what a verb is!
University graduates were no better. I met a First Class Honours UZ graduate of Politics and Administration and she thought Iran was in West Africa! This was at the height of the Iran – Iraq war! She was one of Professor Jonathan Moyo's students; that says it all, there is no need to say more.
After independence Mugabe showed a great deal of interest in education, schools sprouted everywhere like mushrooms. This was one of the good things the tyrant has ever done for the country; sadly he did not have the requisite intellect to get it right. He was obsessed about quantity and totally indifferent to quality.
So for the last 35 years the nation has been chaining out hundreds of thousands of all these "O", "A" level and University graduates who are literate, Zimbabwe boosts of its 91% literacy rate, in that they can read and write their own names and know all there is to know about education with reproduction. There talk of issue condoms to students to reduce the number of students falling pregnant.
Many people in Zimbabwe are malnourished and so many students go to school in an empty stomach and have nothing to eat at school. Instead of providing the students with a bun and half a pint of milk for lunch; oh no, give them one of those three-in-pack condoms. They even have a choice of the flavour they want - banana, strawberry, mango, etc. Of course it is impossible to concentrate on something as abstract as a verb much less what some Greek mathematician dreamt of in his bath when there is the very important decision of what fruit flavour condoms to ask for.
If all the students think about is food and all they do is make love is it any wonder they have very little time and energy left for their homework!
What a waste of human talent; what good are all these "half baked" graduates to society and to themselves other than to become corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF politicians and thugs?!
What is the point of having an impressive "O" level certificate, after 11 years of formal education, but not know stuff one should have learnt in primary school, after 7 years of formal education? We are not fooling anyone but ourselves, with all these hundreds of thousands of graduates, all half-baked and useless!
We need regime change so we can completely overhaul this failed Zanu PF education system designed to mass produce "half-baked", over-sexed and utterly useless graduates only to throw them on the Mount Everest high mountain of the unemployed! We want any education system that actually teaches students useful stuff they need to improve their own lives and that of society. We must end this criminal waste of our children's talents and the nation's future by an education system designed to gratify a tyrant completely obsessed about quantity. After 35 years of this mind-numbing madness, the tyrant has completely failed to grasp the simple and common sense reality that quantity without quality counts for nothing!
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Wilbert Mukori - zimbabwesocialdemocrats@gmail.com
What a criminal waste of humanity; these "half-baked" graduates (for no fault of their own) are no good to society and to themselves. They are nothing but a burden to the nation; they either become Zanu PF thugs or join the MDC herd for being "half-baked" means they are born to follow blindly without ever asking where they are going. Because of their ignorance they will be exploited wherever they go, without doubt their life is just one long nightmare!
In the late 1980s I interviewed some "O" and "A" level graduates for semi-skilled worker positions and I was shocked. When I asked them what is a verb or Pythagoras Theorem the standard answer I got was "We did not do that in School." All these students had done 11 or 13 years of formal education with passes in English and Maths whose content had been watered down so much the students learnt nothing but they all had very impressive school certificates!
This week "A" level results came out and there was an impressive 95% pass rate with many schools registering 100% pass rates. I wonder how many of those 95% know what a verb is!
University graduates were no better. I met a First Class Honours UZ graduate of Politics and Administration and she thought Iran was in West Africa! This was at the height of the Iran – Iraq war! She was one of Professor Jonathan Moyo's students; that says it all, there is no need to say more.
After independence Mugabe showed a great deal of interest in education, schools sprouted everywhere like mushrooms. This was one of the good things the tyrant has ever done for the country; sadly he did not have the requisite intellect to get it right. He was obsessed about quantity and totally indifferent to quality.
Many people in Zimbabwe are malnourished and so many students go to school in an empty stomach and have nothing to eat at school. Instead of providing the students with a bun and half a pint of milk for lunch; oh no, give them one of those three-in-pack condoms. They even have a choice of the flavour they want - banana, strawberry, mango, etc. Of course it is impossible to concentrate on something as abstract as a verb much less what some Greek mathematician dreamt of in his bath when there is the very important decision of what fruit flavour condoms to ask for.
If all the students think about is food and all they do is make love is it any wonder they have very little time and energy left for their homework!
What a waste of human talent; what good are all these "half baked" graduates to society and to themselves other than to become corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF politicians and thugs?!
What is the point of having an impressive "O" level certificate, after 11 years of formal education, but not know stuff one should have learnt in primary school, after 7 years of formal education? We are not fooling anyone but ourselves, with all these hundreds of thousands of graduates, all half-baked and useless!
We need regime change so we can completely overhaul this failed Zanu PF education system designed to mass produce "half-baked", over-sexed and utterly useless graduates only to throw them on the Mount Everest high mountain of the unemployed! We want any education system that actually teaches students useful stuff they need to improve their own lives and that of society. We must end this criminal waste of our children's talents and the nation's future by an education system designed to gratify a tyrant completely obsessed about quantity. After 35 years of this mind-numbing madness, the tyrant has completely failed to grasp the simple and common sense reality that quantity without quality counts for nothing!
---------------
Wilbert Mukori - zimbabwesocialdemocrats@gmail.com
Source - Wilbert Mukori
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