Famous physicist Albert Einstein once said: “everyone is a genius but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, then it will spend the rest of its life thinking it is stupid.”

Modern-day education in many parts of the world does not only make fish climb up a tree, but also climb down. Millions of learners going through school are operating like robots.

Many children swim upstream in class and never discover their abilities and are forced to think they are stupid and useless simply because they never have an opportunity to find their gifts or even discover themselves and only rate themselves based on exams.

There is need to change the status quo if education is to benefit the 21st century and create valuable solutions. The current system does not only kill creativity and individuality, but facilitates loss of self-confidence and is intellectually-abusive to young children. The society rewards children who excel in exams but this does not necessarily mean their intellect is the highest.

The basis of evaluation for success in school just hasn’t changed over decades. Emphasis on competitive instead of collaborative learning is dangerous to the current generation’s ability to create valuable solutions.

So, is the current education system preparing students for the future or the past? The system where students sit still in neat rows, raise hands to speak, are given a break-time to eat, work for eight hours a day, are told what to think and later made to compete for an A which determines their quality and success at early stages of life is dangerous to the future.

Science is clear that no two brains will ever be the same and every parent who has two or more children will confirm that claim. So, why are learners treated like they have a similar brain? Even doctors don’t prescribe similar medicine for all their patients.

In a class of 100 learners, each of them has different needs, strengths, gifts, dreams but they are taught the same thing in the same way. This is to condemn our children to a future cycle of unsustainable livelihoods.

If we can customize healthcare, cars, computers, etc, then it’s our duty to do the same for education, upgrade it, change it and focus on working to bring out the spirit of every student.

Sure, math is important, but no more than art, dance or politics. Let’s give every gift equal chance. This sounds like a dream but countries like Finland have shorter school days, teachers earn a decent wage, homework is nonexistent and they focus on collaboration instead of competition on who gets an A.

Cleus Bamutura,
c.bamutura@yahoo.com.

Why Uganda should embrace EITI mechanism

Oil revenues are among other sectors that Uganda is banking on to drive its Vision 2040 of transforming the Ugandan society from a peasant to a modern and prosperous country within 30 years.

Now that Josephine Wapakabulo is at the helm of Uganda National Oil Company, I hope she can convince the government to join the Extractives Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI).

EITI is a global transparency and accountability mechanism where oil and mining companies publish what they have paid to governments and governments, in turn, publish how much they have received from the companies.

Fortunately, Uganda is lucky because the region is littered with many examples where EITI is making wonders. Liberia embraced EITI in 2006, and since then, the country’s rankings on transparency International’s corruption index have improved tremendously.

For instance, Liberia climbed from the 137th position out of 158 countries in 2005 to 97th position out of 180 countries in 2009.

EITI affirms that management of natural resources wealth is exercised in the interest of national development. EITI ensures that all stakeholders have an important and relevant contribution to make – including governments and their agencies, financial organizations, investors, and non-governmental organizations, etc.

We appreciate the ministry of energy and some NGOs such as ActionAid for coming out to alert Ugandans on the recent developments in the oil industry. But that is not enough; government should welcome EITI principles in form of legislation.

Kennedy Musekura,
kennedyndeze@yahoo.com.

Kasese MPs acted amateurishly

Following clashes in Kasese recently, I think political players there owe the public an apology for having fallen short of exuding political maturity.

I am particularly disappointed that while these leaders have access to mainstream and social media, none of them has used these platforms to provide an unbiased discourse about the root cause of these rather hideous events.

The major specialty of these ‘misleaders’ has been to severely condemn the emphatic response of the state while deceitfully shielding themselves from taking responsibility in these events. The acts of confrontation between the cultural institution and the state were completely unnecessary and avoidable. So, what went wrong? Why was there even confrontation in the first place?

The ‘misleaders’ are very fast to duck out from such questions. These misleaders, most of them fresh on the political scene, ignored the recurrent conflict perhaps out of inexperience in tackling complex political challenges. It was, therefore, disingenuous for local members of parliament to impute that the state acted without giving reasonable chance for further dialogue.

Now I hear people say there ought to be “negotiations” between the cultural institution and the state to absolve the embattled cultural leader from facing murder charges.

If the state has credible evidence against the cultural leader, I find it dubious and subversive for any group to hold in contempt Article 21(1) of our constitution which emphasizes that “All persons are equal before and under the law in all spheres of political, economic, social and cultural life and in every other respect and shall enjoy equal protection of the law.”

Edgar Kiiza,
Student of business.

Makerere University closure destructive

While defending President Museveni’s knee-jerk or malicious closure of Makerere University, the minister of state for higher education, John Chrysostom Muyingo, promised the university “will rise and shine again.”

But I want to tell Muyingo that the people in the 30-year-old regime who have brought Makerere University to its knees cannot be the same people to make it rise and shine again.

It is unfortunate that many seemingly-responsible Ugandans, including religious leaders, do not realise or see that whatever the Museveni team touches in the name of improving it ends up in ruins. We all see the Nakawa and Naguru estates ruins, the Nsambya Uganda Railway quarters ruins, the Shimoni Demonstration School ruins, etc.

It is not the first time for Makerere University to be closed under the NRM leadership. But this time it was done out of abuse of power; and whenever and wherever there is abuse of power, there is destruction.

Therefore, the continued closure of Makerere is not for its improvement but systematic destruction. Likewise, the unexamined and sudden closure of Makerere has devastated the lives of many. Small and medium businesses inside and outside Makerere such as food canteens had to close shop and employees were sent home.

Even the management of the branches of the four major commercial banks on at Makerere – Crane, Centenary, DFCU and Stanbic – are now without business.

Raymond Otika,
Kampala.

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