COLUMN: Investing in knowledge and science
Institutions of learning are supposed to provide a modicum of validity, verification and accuracy to all forms of cognitive idealism.
POLOWKANE – The core business of any academic institution is predicated on three distinctive functionalities – teaching and learning, research and innovation and community enlightenment.
The pursuit of education is actually a prestigious engagement of community enlightenment and societal advancement.
Schools, colleges and universities are historically designed to bring refinement, validity and accuracy to the discourse of knowledge.
Beliefs, feelings, suspicions, perceptions, hearsays and gossip are untestable emblems of unrefined knowledge.
Institutions of learning are supposed to provide a modicum of validity, verification and accuracy to all forms of cognitive idealism.
An idea, just like suspicion, is supposed to be tested in order to gauge its logical factuality and experimental validity. Academic curriculum and syllabus content must serve as a catalyst for knowledge accumulation and scientific discovery.
Is the country’s basic education curriculum mainstream relevant to the pursuit of scientific abstraction and knowledge discovery?
Does the ‘write-and-pass’ pedagogic system contribute to the mastery of science, innovation and epistemology?
Is our tertiary education system modelled on a proper foundation of knowledge production? Why are the throughput rates at most colleges and universities mysteriously lower than the 50% threshold? Is the current teaching methodology instrumental to the advancement of scientific innovation and knowledge production?
South Africa’s Gr 1, 2 and 3 learners perform relatively lower in numeracy and literacy tests when compared to their counterparts in Uganda, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Nigeria, Botswana and Ghana.
The country’s idling pace of industrialisation and innovation is painfully reflective of our compromised education system. Human beings are presently living in a dynamic era of scientific innovation, hence a great need for an intellectual reset.
The most crippling problem in our education system is that politicians, rather than specialist experts, are seized with developing educational policies.
Academic outputs and research proficiency determine the systemic failure or greatness of any nation.
Science, research and innovation are specialist niches, and not political appropriations. Our misplaced and misguided education policies are shovelling our country deeper into the dungeons of shame and failure.
