Tuesday, May 20, 2014

I weep for the future generations of my country...


Dear diary,
It is heart breaking, the fact that most Tanzanians cannot reach the international literacy average. Yet year after year our education slips down the list of important matters to be addressed head on. For a long time now I have tried to look back trying to pin point the exact moment when our education system started to fall apart. When it did become a cancer that is threatening the future of our nation and no one cares to find the cure for it. I am not sure when, but what breaks my heart even more is the fact that our leaders would rather sit in the parliament coming up with theories rather than action plans to change the situation


 Perhaps it’s a just “math” and other science subjects that most Tanzanians have never been good at. Perhaps it is the teaching language in our schools or maybe it is the syllabus we use. These are just some of the many opinions our leaders use as an excuse as to why students performances is becoming poor and poor. What no one seems to notice is; low performance is not limited to science subjects nor is it limited to secondary schools where the media for communication is English. As hard as it might be for anyone to believe; there are pupils who finish primary school and pass their national exams without knowing how to write or read. The question is.... how did they do the exam and pass?? Apologists will never get tired of finding excuses as to why this and that happened, but what they don’t seem to get it the “why” is not as important as “how and what” can be done to improve the situation.

Those who went to school on the 1990s or even before that would agree with me, education used to be important back then, teachers used to be more committed to educate students than doing businesses to sustain their families, schools used to be places where one will gain more knowledge on development, growth or new invention. But now days the education is more about cramming and passing exams. Everyone seems to forget education is not about passing exams but what you remain with after you have graduated. Our government is bent on making exams even easier for students to pass instead of improving the education system and methods. It is more determined in producing graduates who have big certificates but  little brains...


Dear diary, I weep for the future generations of this great nation, the generation that the government would opt to remark national exams to improve the results (does it even make sense? I mean how do you remark the exam to improve the results? Put a tick where there was a cross before?).  I weep for those children of ours who will be taught in Swahili from primary school to higher learning institutions, our poor government is limiting their employment opportunities to a country that is already flooded with unemployment... oooh what is even worse is their second option ; teaching everything in English form primary school to higher learning institutions, using teachers who cannot express themselves in English, the teachers for never passed form four National Exams because English language was too difficult for them to build the foundation of language.

I weep for those children who go to school to use a book that says 2x5= 25 and the teacher are too busy to notice since they are busy selling candies to students so that they can get food for their families. I weep for  more than half of all Tanzania children the will be chosen to join ward secondary school because these schools have no teachers, no classes, no laboratories, no libraries and yet they are expected to compete in the competitive economy of East Africa. They are expected to be the leaders who will take this nation to the next level.

Can’t anyone else see that the principle reason for decline and fall of our education is ignorance?  Our education is ignored; we have built more schools but we have fewer classrooms and no teachers. No laboratories and no libraries, yet the government will help to improve science education by giving full sponsorship (in higher learning Institutions) to science students. The question that I keep asking myself is, if a house has a really poor foundation can you improve it by roofing it with the most expensive roof?? And By the way who are these science students that will be sponsored, are they children from the poor family who never knew what a chemistry teacher look like or are they the children of the wealthy part of the country who went to study abroad and came back to sit for national exams??

Can’t anyone see the few teachers we have in these school are ignored to the fullest?? They are the only people who can change the future of this nation yet they have no salaries, no houses to live or even means of transport to get to work? Can’t anyone see that one teacher cannot teach a class of 200 students and make each and every one of them understand what he/she is teaching?



The more I listen to our leaders the more I weep for the future generations; all suggestions to improve education are based on selfishness, little thought for the future of children of the poor. I fear for the future of this nation, a nation that was once united being torn apart between the haves and the have nots because of our education system. The haves will send their children to expensive private schools( almost all our leaders already do this), to get the first grade education while the others will be stack in ward secondary school where there is basically nothing to learn for more than half the time you are in school. The children of the rich will come back; rule the millions of other young people who are alienated and with no hope of improving their children’s future.  

I see two societies, living side by side, in the same country, one preying over the other with no mercy. I see the foreigners coming to our countries taking all the good jobs in our own country while majority of us remain unemployed due to poor qualification. I see limited thinking, low exposure and poor decision making that might put this nation in a great danger....... I see the beginning of the end.




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