Why Geniuses Are Becoming Extinct In Africa!
We are all born creative geniuses until school systems stifle it!
“There is sufficient scientific data to show that a thirty-year-old is not as intelligent as a child before he even enters school. The only reason we look smart is because we have more information than the child, which we try to show off through instruction.”
The conversation about the importance of formal education is not new. Many have argued that education is the key to success, while a myriad of circumstances, have proven that one can be successful in life without necessarily having a formal education. So, what is the importance of education anyway if one can be successful without one?
That is entirely a rhetoric. With the current unemployment rates spewing across the continent of Africa, it is pertinent to have this conversation at a deeper level.
Agreeably, a college degree remains a minimum requirement to qualify for a job opportunity. In fact, many western countries have adapted apprenticeship as opposed to college degrees. Why so? The job market remains quite competitive, and you will need to assemble a variety of skills, qualifications and experience in order to stand out from other candidates.
Gaining initial experience in an industry, and then deciding which degree to pursue, if one ends up going university is a formula that has worked for many, as they got the opportunity to explore the real world and discover their own potential, before committing to a degree!
Education is no doubt, important to everyone. But what really is education? Remains a pertinent question, that I will answer by saying what education is not.
Acquiring more information is not education, neither is it a measure of intelligence! This is the looming crisis in our education systems in Kenya and many countries across the continent of Africa. The education systems have been wired to only condition the mind into areas and things that are presumed will have someone make money. It is a system designed to create a workforce to drive the economy, and does not focus on the fundamental aspects of the holistic growth of human beings.
Education contrary to what the systems offer, is meant to decondition the mind to think dynamically, liberally and intelligently. Intelligence must not be influenced, but inflamed.
The education systems in Africa and other parts of the world are doing more harm than good to children, to an extent that students are even committing suicide when they fail to pass examinations; thinking that they are total failures in life.
Sadhguru, the great Indian philosopher, said it more elaborately:
“What a child needs is inspiration, not just information. We need to take away the idea of instruction from the teaching process.”
For many years the mode of instruction towards teaching and raising children, has been the order of the day. Parents and schools have been raising robots! The introduction of the Competence Based Curriculum here in Kenya, for instance, which focuses on the holistic growth of the child, allowing them to think and make decisions for themselves, has been met with great opposition by a huge percentage of parents and teachers who are victims of the instruction-based curriculum.
“You think you need to instruct someone only if you have assumed they are of a lower intelligence than yourself, which is a serious mistake. Instead of instruction, we need to empower teachers to inspire and transmit what really matters to them. Then, a child would surely sit up and listen, and every school system could become a fruitful process,” the philosopher reiterates.
We must redesign our education systems if human beings are to enhance life in a way that no other creature can; which is our divine purpose here on earth.
Otherwise, the statement; “We were born intelligent until education ruined us”, shall remain a philosophy to reckon.
