The fact that the overwhelming majority of Malawians since Free Primary School Education was introduced are prepared to assert that children have to be sent to school, in order to benefit from the social aspect, has alerted me to the fact that the arguments in favour of school might not be based upon logic, and has led me to question the validity of that other great pillar of the school system – qualifications.

In fact, this is an issue to which I have been giving an increasing amount of thought of late over the Bright Malopa and Phillip Bwanali issues.

It becomes clear to me now that qualifications and education are two distinct things in Malawi, a country led by the so called learned president Dr Bingu and that they are more or less mutually exclusive: if you want to be awarded a qualification, then you have to put the pursuit of knowledge to one side, and if you wish to really study a subject (or to master a particular skill) you have to temporarily forget about qualifications and concentrate upon the work that you are doing. Read me rightly , this is exactly what is our politicians tend to expose to our children at every level of education in Malawi .

This brings me back to view the education system that we have from an abstract angle.

During the colonial rule and early years with Dr Kamuzu you may as well distinguish that Schools were fairly focussed on education, and had relatively little interest in examinations and qualifications: the fact that someone had attended a particular school or college was more significant than the piece of paper that they were given when they left. This is evidenced by the quantity and quality of their knowledge on all matters let alone the flavoursome speaking of English. However, the problem with this system was that it was elitist and excluded the majority of our parents because their parents were either poor or because they were of the wrong religious beliefs; I believe it is therefore undoubtedly a good thing that it was forced to change with Kamuzu progressing to strict education policies . Unfortunately, the change has been badly managed, and instead of bringing education to the masses, it has created a hybrid activity . I consider this as the pursuit of qualifications , which is neither work, nor training for work, nor education; worse still, it is not even enjoyable. Its sad.

Today , our country is full of MSCE , Diploma, Degree holders who cant read their own qualifications.

Our education involves learning materials, simply so that you can repeat it to the teacher or examiner, irrespective of whether you agree with it, find it interesting, or understand it. It is a system that gives too much power to the teachers, who are able to pass and fail students on a more or less arbitrary basis, and has created a process in which compliance and lack of initiative receive the greatest rewards , with the result that the rewards themselves have become of dubious value.

I wary that our education system is prone to becoming detached from reality so especially within tertiary education because the lecturers or people awarding the qualifications do not themselves earn their living in the fields for which they are examining others, and it plays upon people’s weaknesses instead of encouraging their strengths. Because we are often told that unless we get various qualifications we will be unable to find work, we will be poor, we will have no status in society, etc., we become fearful and lose our belief in ourselves and our ability to succeed on our own merits. We also come to believe that in some way life itself is unfair: if you simply do what you are told and learn a lot of things that not even your teachers believe to be true, then you will do well, but if you try to express things that you believe in, you will fail.

These are the worst possible ideas to instil in young people as they are about to embark upon life, and it must make anyone outside the education system, such wonder what value these sort of qualifications really have, and what is the best way to approach them.

Having considered the Malopa issue carefully, I have come to the conclusion that our president Bingu is full of ****. Read me carefully.