The need for education reform in Uganda

Having attended school in Uganda, Norway, Sweden and the United States, I had a great opportunity and experience to look back and reflect on my first fifteen years of education in Uganda. Throughout those years, I never had that rare moment of epiphany or felt necessary to reflect on the system in which I was being nurtured. However, after stepping outside the box and instantly hitting a brick-wall, I came to the conclusion that a lot could have been different had the entire education system in Uganda been changed, if not overhauled.

During my first encounter with education in the western world, I was simply envious of the luxury of having school buses pick up students from their homes– something that reminded me of the five miles I had to walk as a 4 year old to and from nursery school five days a week. This inevitably points to the issue of lack of access to education as well as limited services and resources. Still there has been some improvement since I was in nursery school in the early 80s. Schools are more accessible in the urban communities as well as the available choice of boarding schools where students reside within a school campus. However, many students in Uganda still endure a long way to school every morning particularly in the rural communities.

Attending Red Cross Nordic United World College in Norway immediately exposed me to students from many different countries. It was a very diverse community and I didn’t have to look further than my room on campus which occupied five of us, from- China, Turkey, Norway, Argentina and I from Uganda. It didn’t take long for me to find out that I had to answer questions about my country. Where are you from? What is your country like? How are your schools? What is unique about your culture? What is the foundation of the economy in your country? What challenges are the people of Uganda facing today? What is the political situation in Uganda? What would you like to change about your community/society? And of course like every Ugandan I was asked about the whereabouts of former dictator Idi Amin.

As these questions and many more continued to rain on me, I found myself drenched and stuck in the Eliza Doolittle conundrum, the character in Bernard Shaw’s play “Pygmalion”.During the colonial and post-colonial education set-up, the idea is to transform the poor, bad mannered, illiterate flower girl -or African in my case- into a duke/duchess. It is hard to fathom that we were punished at school and often spanked by our teachers for speaking our native languages. The choice was simple, either you speak English, or you get spanked. The fifteen years of painstaking regurgitation of education material under the tutorage of my version of Professor Henry Higgins were meant to elevate my social status and enable me to ‘speak the language of Shakespeare, Milton and The Bible’.

Behold, I was finally at the stage where I could show off my learned skills and demonstrate that I could fit in the western world. Unfortunately the script was flipped before my eyes. I was instead required to add diversity to this melting pot of cultures and unique experiences. The cracks in the wall were becoming visible; I was a product of an education system that denied students the opportunity to explore their environment, community, culture and challenges facing their communities.

My parents shipped me off to boarding school at age seven where thousands of other Ugandan students are completely cut off from the realities and needs of our society. It was the best of times in some ways with the friendships, net-working, independence and relationships we created. However, it was also the worst of times when it became clear that the ultimate goal was to groom students for a white-collar lifestyle. The long term consequence has been psychological deruralization—with education becoming a vessel that has expanded the rural-urban division. Ugandans who sail through the current education system eventually feel out-of place or misfits in their own rural communities. This has been a particularly damaging phenomenon because the fabric of our economy, society and livelihood particularly agriculture has a foundation rooted in rural communities. Millions of Ugandans with high academic achievements are stuck in urban centers trapped in the cycle of unemployment and poverty. Others persevere to seek greener pastures in the western world because they have skill-sets that are not applicable to the needs of their community. The question we should be asking at this juncture– how do we go about fixing our education system to equip Ugandans with the tools to explore, optimize and flourish in our nation?

Dr. Daniel Kawuma works as a pharmacist in the United States. His goal is to increase awareness about some of the issues affecting the developing nations and contributing to the never ending disparities in the world. The mission is to continue laying the path to the ideals of peace, justice, understanding and cooperation and to implement these ideals through action and personal example.

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