By Malek Arol Dhieu
Since education system was stabbed at the back almost a decade ago, it has never felt well again despite tremendous efforts being exerted to revive it. Right from the Kindergarten Schools to universities, the system of education is staggering and the very contributing factor is the government.
Having looked in to it that malpractices of examinations are not diminishing education much more quickly, the government resorts to withholding the salaries of teachers and lecturers. This has indeed hit hard the system of education as the pain of teachers and lecturers doubles, meaning underpayment and delay in payment of that little salary.
Obviously, the unfaithfulness of the government in education keeps peaking year in, year out because it never causes the authorities concerned to worry if the system of education diminishes as their children are studying in royal schools and universities overseas. All that concerned authorities worry the most is what tempers with their channel of money.
Because of all this, the nursery schools graduate rubbish to begin primary school level, and because of the same reason, the primary schools throw incompetent students and tell them “To hell with the secondary level”. When the secondary level sees that all it receives are devoted believers in cheating, and not in God, it gives them exams as a homework to make sure they pass all and go to universities.
But because an incompetent person of 20 years can’t be refined and although refined, can’t attain a wanted shape, the universities give them a name ‘educated thieves’ and excuse them to go and live by thievery.
The system of education needs a massive reform and this reform includes payment of lecturers and teachers’ salary on monthly basis to divert them from teachers and lecturers who sell exams for survival to teachers and lecturers who respect teaching ethics.
Another form of reform is to make sure professionals in education are the ones being appointed to serve in the Ministry of Education and Instructions because instructions are not given by somebody who has no rich educational background.
Another one being the restructuring of the panel of examiners to make sure it contains setters who set exams in three sets; A, B and C exams, in that, if A exam is rumoured or confirmed leaked, the panel opts for B exam and if B exam is again leaked, it opts for C exam. But these exams are different in terms of complicatedness. This is how our mother country Sudan does it. How about her daughter South Sudan? Is there any daughter who deviates totally from what her mother does?
In countries where barracks are more than schools, education never grows healthily because there are more commanders than headmasters and lecturers. I repeat there are more commands than instructions. Do you know why it destroys nations?
This is because, barracks’ occupants are taught how to revenge whereas school’s occupants are taught how to forgive, and if I may ask, where is that nation which prospered/is prospering because it’s unforgiving? Education saves countries in many subtle ways and so, it should be prioritized as an indirect solution to factors that hinder the growth of the country.
Only a very small fraction of people knows education as all that South Sudanese need to become stable. With education, even South Sudan can delist her name from the last year’s lists she was ranked in as the hungriest and the most corrupt country on earth. In which way, one may ask me? If you do not know that education is the vaccine of corruption and hunger, then begin to begin knowing it from today onward. In your beginning to know, you must go to petrol stations, I mean schools and universities, to fuel yourself with education to enable you know all the ladders of how best education cures falling nations. Among the nations falling, South Sudan leads, and this should be dealt with as early as today because when South Sudan falls academically, all what she has in her belly will break and some of them are so brittle and unamendable that their breakage means their extinction for good.
The author is a medical student, University of Juba. He can be reached at malengaroldit@gmail.com or +211922332811.