Marara is an Arabic word, meaning half-cooked meat. Marara is mostly prepared from animal innards, such as intestines, and other soft beef. In pastoralism, there exists a season of fattening known as “duël” in Dinka dialect, where cows are slaughtered for food and more milk gathered.
When a cow is slaughtered, its internal organs and other soft flesh are removed and put on fire for a few minutes. Then, it is disengaged from the fire and eaten half-cooked. This is done so following an experience that marara accelerates fattening more than anything if eaten so and more milk drunk.
So many fatteners prefer eating marara to eating cooked meat. It is a shortcut to fatness. However, marara later becomes the cause of diseases, such as bovine TB and brucellosis.
However, the same thing happens in education. As obvious as the fact that the pattern of education in South Sudan is 8:4:4 (5 or 6 for honours) to mean 8 years in primary school, 4 years in secondary school, and 4, 5, or 6 years in tertiary school, there are some scholars who leap classes in order to get done with education so soon.
Such scholars are more concerned with level of education than are concerned with knowledge. Instead of education passing through them, they pass through education. Scholars who pass through education never pass through education alone, but they also pass through transformation. Such scholars become a cancer of society.
Yes, education is not all about how far you have gone, but how much you have acquired, but the truth that each level of education differs from one another in terms of contents acquired makes this statement somehow untrue. Such scholars are acquiring marara education.
A second group of marara scholars being those scholars whose percentage of commitment to education is inconsiderable or falls below average. They make it to the next class, but their minds are shallow to defend what their papers hold.
A third group of marara scholars being those scholars who entirely depend on cheating to ferry them to the next class or next level of education. This is the majority group as malpractices of examination have widespread across the country.
These scholars are so foolish to the last extent that they cheat exams, stay home with them for days, and still carry the answered papers to examination rooms on the day they are sat for. They are scholars who are so privileged to have been studying during the days when the system of education is deranged to the nebulous point. As long as they continue cheating, they are acquiring marara education.
A fourth group of marara scholars being those colleague-less scholars who think their money can buy for them certificates or degrees and that, they should not sit in class to study. They buy certificates or degrees, struggle to authenticate them, and use them to seek jobs.
A fifth group of marara scholars being those scholars who drop out following an assumption that what they have acquired is enough to make them dine on one table with academic extremists. Dropouts without this assumption are exempted. All those scholars acquiring marara education are referred to as pseudoscholars meanwhile those scholars who acquire quality education are referred to as euscholars.
The acquisition of education should be class by class, with a climactic commitment devoid of malpractice. The biggest part of quality education depends on principled self-learning as a scholar who aspires to leave behind a shoe into which no one fits.
The author is a medical student, University of Juba.