Africa-Press – Namibia. WE PERCEIVE education as a tool that members of society are given to prepare them for current and future challenges. In its foundational stage, it teaches the individual the basic social norms so that they can co-exist with society in harmony. This can be referred to as an individual-centred type of education. The other attribute of education is meant to empower the individual to play a role in preserving his or her kind and we refer to this as the society-centred element.
The latter is the most difficult one to acquire and has two sub-classes: • the lowest format is predominantly a mimicking one. The individual is given the nod for being able to regurgitate or recite information told to him or her by members of society. Being literate, the mere ability to tell one letter from another, is one example of this type of education. Recipients would only have acquired information and not necessarily knowledge.
• in the second sub-class, the recipient is expected to show the ability to improve and modify the available body of knowledge and actually push the frontiers of knowledge further. The recipient is expected, through logical deduction and inference, to link seemingly unrelated pockets of information and come up with new knowledge. We call this functional literacy. It is the sublime objective of any education, because it is the only tool that humankind can use to ensure self-preservation. Self-preservation happens when humankind has put in an effort to achieve equilibrium with the ecosystem and environment. The tautology is that self-preservation presupposes that the pace at which the given species change is equal to the speed at which the ecosystem and its environment change.
How do we ensure functional literacy, or rather, how do we overcome functional illiteracy? Functional illiteracy refers to: • the ability to tell one letter from another, yet being unable to combine the letters and come up with an original text or story
• the ability to regurgitate information, while at the same time being unable to link seemingly unrelated pockets of information
• its common occurrence is the habit of calling for assistance and advice on how to do things one has never seen done before. The habit of seeking consultants on everything is a common manifestation of this feature.
We have a social contract (through the pactum unionis) and an intergenerational contract, both of which have, at their core, the objective of preserving our kind. Therefore, education that ensures that we banish functional illiteracy is the only meaningful one. Functional literacy is not a fortuitous by-product, but the key objective of any meaningful education. Any decline in the education system’s ability to make the recipient functionally literate invariably leads to a failure to achieve the objectives of the social contract. What elements of the education system lead to a failure in reaching the objectives of an intergenerational social contract?
• High student/teacher ratio
• Large average class sizes
• High teaching loads
The chief benefit of a low student teacher ratio is that it enables a cognitive approach to teaching. It accommodates/presupposes different information communication styles as necessitated by the fact that every student is unique. By packaging the information in a recipient-specific format, the output would be a crop of students with a greater ability to:
• Understand foundational concepts
• Connect the dots
• Process, internalise and interpret information, thereby converting information into knowledge
• Apply the acquired knowledge to modify and improve things SUBLIME OBJECTIVE
The key objectives of an inter-generational social contract is the preservation of the kind and improvement of the living standards. In a nutshell, ideally a better tomorrow, or, in the worst case scenario, no deterioration in living standards.
Hence, the key objective of education not only enables recipients to tell one letter from another, which is mere literacy, but functional literacy (the ability to process information into knowledge, coming up with relevant and ingenious solutions to problems).
At the lowest level, an inter-generational social contract requires that we should see to it that humankind’s living standards do not deteriorate. At the higher level, it places the responsibility for ensuring an improved living standard, for posterity, on the shoulders of all members of society.
Education is an indispensable tool in achieving societal objectives, and can be a blunt or worthless tool if it does not enable the recipient to become functionally literate. Education should transition from the mere effort to combat illiteracy to the sublime objective of combating functional illiteracy, i.e. making education problem-solving oriented and placing an emphasis on innovation.
Education should inculcate an inquisitive mind-set so that when recipients see a system, their attitude should be ”how can I make the system more efficient or optimal”.
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