A state may buy 3000 buses, 500 new trains, 3000 police cars, make 1000 new roads, and build 100 new schools and 4000 housing units.
It will not change much. New things don't change much when there is no new way of thinking. Wealth without education tends to wastage and poverty.
Thats the thing about education. The purpose of education is to teach how to discover, invent, harness and manage resources, or wealth. Human resources, informational resources, material resources, financial resources, technological resources etc...how to deploy them
We have two problems
1. Those who are in charge of the nation's wealth neither have nor value education; so they do not know how to handle and deploy resources.
For instance, time is a resource. It is one of the most important resources in the history of man. One of the largest differences between the developed world and Africa, is the understanding of the importance of the time resource. How that 10am is 10am, and never 10:05am or even 10:01am
"Ahn, ahn, I was only 15 minutes late now! Do you know where I'm coming from?"
As long as we still think that way, no matter how many new things we acquire; we cannot prosper as a nation. A school that teaches maths, english, arts, science, philosophy, technology etc; but does not teach punctuality; has not taught anything.
It is not normal to finish eating corn and throw the cob inside a bus or taxi or by the roadside.
It is not normal to shunt a queue.
It is not normal to arrive at 8:10am when you're to be there for 8:00am. It isn't just 10 minutes, it is abnormal.
That is, if we want a civilised society. New transformers and new airplanes cannot give us this, if our thinking remains the same.
I'm telling you that the difference between the first world and the third world is as simple as an airplane that is billed to leave at 6:44pm MUST leave at 6:44pm; while in the third world, 9pm and we are still waiting, 'gisting', and giving excuses.
It is lack of education that makes a people applaud a government for injecting 4000 buses into its transport system. Oh wow, see new buses! They are trying o.
It won't change much. They will still go the way of every new thing introduced in the past. Waste and dilapidation...
But when you see a transport system with departure times. For instance; departure times are 6am, 6:30am, and 7am. Then we have just arrived.
This is why we have thousands of new corps members joining and leaving the youth corp several times a year, with nothing much to show for it in the states: all that brain power of fresh graduates; and all that man power of youth. No program, no continued concerted banding of skills and potentials to effect lasting change. Waste.
Ah, the second problem
2. Those with education think education is wealth. They don't know the purpose of education. So they finish school and are looking for a job. They don't know they have just gotten the keys to harness resources. They don't go into politics, into government, into markets, into religion and faith systems, into community organisation, into sports and entertainment. They sit in an office somewhere and divide their education from all these things. They do the minimum such as attending church were religion is concerned, and voting where politics is concerned (very few, even at that). They leave these things mainly to those whose minds have not been primed by a robust education, instead of going in there to train them not just to gather and store up resources for waste, but to harness and develop them to build a community, a state, a nation.
The school is the foundation of civilisation. The home is the foundation of society and the school is the foundation of all meaningful civilization. It takes properly educated and learned folks invading all aspects of life for things to get better. That's why our parastatals last had a form of life in the 70s when the whites were still here. It's not because they were white. It was because they were educated.
That's why there was such a strong revival of Christian faith in that time; because all the young men who were receiving a call from God were well educated: Reverend Tunde Joda, Pastor Adeboye, Pastor Kumuyi etc were highly educated to the postgraduate level and successful doctors, mathematicians, lawyers, architects, and in other fields; and several effective ministries grew out of campus. Little wonder Paul wrote two thirds of the new testament and was able to deploy grace to the Gentiles.
Fast forward to today when many young men enter into ministry because they are not excelling in education or as an alternative to hard smartwork and a quick road to wealth. What do we have? Many NEW churches, making little impact.
Yes. We are presently in dire need of the re-education of an entire generation.
*E. UzoPeters*
