OP-ED: By Mwalimu-Koh Moses Blonkanjay Jackson (MsEd, EdM)
Education Engineer & Education Emancipation Advocate
PHOTO: The Author
Thinking Thoughts
In my thinking thoughts, I reflected the recent state of the nation (SOE) speech by Liberian President Joseph Boakai whereby he averred the Liberian Education sector is “spiraled” and identified “lack of access to quality education” as one of its key nemeses. He hence declared his government’s commitment to revitalize the system from its deficient condition and dysfunctional state. I intuit rebranding the sector as “spiraled” is an understatement because the sector is also shackled and grossly unequally yoked and needs emancipation. I therefore posit that the way to revitalize the sector is to unshackle it, equally yoke it and emancipate it from the slavery of over-zealous intruders.
To be Shackled
My Brabbies, to be shackled is to have heavy chains on your ankles with locks and keys so you cannot walk straight or escape. During the days of slavery, slaves transported to the Western world from Africa were shackled as they took the long journey across the Atlantic Ocean. During our days at Walker # 2 and G. W. Gibson Elementary Schools, we were constantly reminded by our expatriate Bible teachers that we were shackled by sin. The White missionaries compelled us to voluntarily join a Christian program referred to as Liberian Approved Workmen are Not Ashamed or LAWANA for short. There was a popular song the White missionaries coerced us to sing as our commitment and assurance they had won us over from our sinful shackled lives to Jesus Christ. The song went something like this:
Shackled by a heavy burden ‘Neath a load of guilt and shame.
Then the hand of Jesus touched me, And now I am no longer the same.
Chorus
He touched me, Oh He touched me, And oh the joy that floods my soul!
Something happened and now I know, He touched me and made me whole.
The song said our sins were the chains around our ankles and we were bound for hell, but Jesus touched us and made us whole and set us on our ways to heaven.
You see, LAWANA always had some kind of refreshment like bread with luncheon meat, short bread with magarine butter, biscuits, and kool-aid juice to offer, so we were only complying and singing that song for our stomach and did not care “fusah” about the wordings about “Jesus touched me.” In our pretense to please the missionaries, we sang with so much passion that you would never believe that no sooner had we left LAWANA meeting than we returned to our “bad boys” statuses; acting rude to girls, cutting PE classes, disturbing the class, stealing corn bread and cinema roll crumbs from the cafeteria kitchen, and stealing copy books and pencils. God forgave us long ago!!
To be Unequally Yoked
In Apostle Paul’s Epistle to Corinth, he admonished them to refrain from making friends with people who were not like minded. He noted in 2 Corinthians 6:14-18: “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?
During Paul’s days, farmers used yokes to hitch two oxen or cows together to drag the plow or machine, and till the soil or plow the field. The yoke was a wooden board placed around the necks of the two cows to move the plow. Now, both cows had to be equal in size and strength because if you matched a small cow to a bigger cow, the bigger one would drag the smaller and the burden would be on the bigger, the impact would not be perfectly felt.
To be unequally yoked is like a classroom teacher who takes female student as serious sex partners. It is also like asking Liberian Lones Star football team to play Liverpool or a sociology major serving as district education officer. So, Paul was saying, do not confuse apples with pears and do not place square pegs in round holes.
Back in the Day Liberian Education
Truth be told, back in the day, Liberian education was top-notch. A huge number of foreign students, teachers, and professors flooded the sector because of its efficacy. Parents preferred public over private schools not for financial reasons but due to quality. Liberian students who went student exchange programs returned with excellence while those who sat examinations such as the SAT, GRE, Fulbright, Dag Hammarskjold Fellowships, WAEC, and other tertiary batteries passed in their number. Teachers and professors who ventured to teach, prepared themselves adequately because Liberian students were academically engaging. Back in the day, the sector produced scholars and individuals whose services after schooling were exemplary. There was a more robust attitude towards education policy management; school was a culture in which students, parents, and teachers coalesced to ensure discipline and proper learning.
During our days at Tubman High school (1970s), a teacher could arrest you from the street during school hours if you did not possess a valid excuse. He could punish you and “fusah” you or your parents could do. Back in the day, when schools sent seniors to the National exam (WAEC) it was a serious competition and pain. St, Patrick’s High, St, Teresa Convent, CWA, and Monrovia College all came together to monitor and compare their performances with Tubman High seniors. We did not camp for weeks, nor pay flexibility fees but when we sat in the exams hall, you could hear a pin drop or a needle roll. Oh, what a joy it was for your name to appear on the national Exam pass lists of schools, back in the day.
Current Day Liberian Education
Straight talk. The current day education sector is rotten to the core. In current day education, there is no discipline among students and teachers. In addition to seeing students in the streets during school hours, there is a de facto day, called “Super Friday” where students converge on beaches during school hours for all kinds of mundane and lascivious activities including narcotic drugs and alcohol consumption. The government, school authorities, and parents are aware but have reneged in taking decisive steps.
Every year, there are investigations regarding collusions in WAEC and WASSCE examinations; high school graduates cannot prepare simple application letters; the diction of college students is wrought with defects. There is a proliferation of substandard schools and accompanying huge number of unqualified teachers. Unethical teachers extort money, gifts, and sex from students and parents connive paying bribe to teachers for their children to receive fake passing grades.
At the college level, students are matriculated without due diligence; applicants are coerced to bribe before admission, as prospective graduates struggle to compose simple one-page reflections. If the question, at what point did our education begin to “spiral” and become dysfunctional were asked, the response would be because it became shackled, unequally yoked and in slavery when over-zealous inept education managers intruded into its operations.
Unequally Yoked with Unqualified Teachers
The education sector is unequally yoked with people who have no clue about pedagogy but are teaching. According to the MOE Annual School Census 2019/2020 report, 50% of the total approximated 60,000 documented teachers in Liberia are not qualified to teach. There is no functional accreditation or licensing system; there is a huge number of teachers who do not have high school certificates. Secondary level teacher quality is poor, with only a third of secondary teachers having the minimum qualification for their positions, which requires a university degree or “A” certificate as prescribed by the education policy. Despite the statistics, the sector has surrendered the self-actualization of children to people who continue to dish out poisonous pedagogy to our children.
Shackled by Misplaced Education Managers
The education sector has been shackled with heavy chains and locks. There are some over-zealous so-called scholars among us who carry a fer-fetched unprofessional notion that as long as an individual possesses a degree or went to business college, they can serve as education leader or Minister of Education. So-so lies and fallacies. Those are the ones who are holding the sector in slavery with shackles on its ankles. Truth be told, although those misplaced education leaders may possess degrees in accounting, management or sociology and believe those are skills required to manage human behavior, policies, and systems, they lack capacity to foster pedagogical communications at the international and national levels. Instead of staying at the profession for which they acquired their degrees, they audaciously occupy educational leadership positions and shackle the sector with their chains of ineptitude, and lack of capacity.
Unshackling and Equally Yoking the Sector
My Brabbies and fellow teachers, we must not relent to hold President Boakai responsible for the commitment he made to unshackle the sector and make it equally yoked. To accomplish this, there are certain requests we must present to the new government. Among these are attacking the nemesis of education with unimaginable aggression and unfettered willpower; never again appoint people who are not educators to head the sector because of partisanship, friendship, tribal relationship, and familial ties because they do not possess the requisite experience and credentials. Education cannot be managed from behind a desk loaded with a huge volume of policy papers, because it is a science and an art.
Now, as this nation-state navigates its way towards an improved state of affairs, the perfunctory role of its leaders is to apply wherewithal to ensure its future leaders are adequately endowed with requisite skill sets to catalyze holistic development. This is why the new government must unshackle the sector and emancipate it from slavery conditions of low teacher salaries; poor access to education; unbalanced education qualities; corruption in high places in the sector. While it might not be possible to re-hatch the “back in the day” status, I posit the UP led government can take baby steps towards those lofty by achievable goals. The sector must be emancipated. This should be the mantra; this should be slogan; this is our hope and expectation as educators..
H.E. Boakai’s Spiraled Education Sector
For the sake of my Brabbies, to spiral is to get twisted, deficient, and to go down from good to bad. H.E. President Boakai was therefore saying our education sector has become a “kpa-kpa-kpa” system that is twisted and has gone down the drain. It has turned from its “back in the day” status to this current rotten mismanaged so-called “modern day” status.
President Joseph Boakai did not just realize the rottenness and spiraling of the education sector this year. When the Unity Party government, led by President Sirleaf and VP Boakai were in charge, they declared the whole education sector a “total mess” that required overhaul. Albeit, instead of positioning the relevant lieutenants and technicians to conduct the overhaul, partisanship and consanguineous relationships overwhelmed the appointments and beclouded the vision.
When CDC Government led by President Weah and VP Jewel Howard Taylor assumed leadership, the situation became worse with all and sundry incapable education mangers taking the helm of leadership, and ruthlessly bridling and cluelessly driving the sector down the spiraling situation that President Boakai mentioned. Today, we have a spiraled education according to the President, whose metamorphosis began as far back as the first UP led government under President Sirleaf and VP Boakai.
Now that the UP has returned, will appointments of education workers be “business as usual”?, whereby family ties, tribal relationships, and partisanships take preeminence or priority space while quality educators sit on the fence and observe in awe and indignation?
Now that the Unity Party has resurfaced into its own UP-led Ellen Johnson Sirleaf “messy education” which morphed into a George Manneh Weah “spiraled” rotten education sector, what is afoot?
Now that the First Citizen of the Republic of Liberia, Joseph Nyumah Boakai has acknowledged the rottenness of the education sector and rebranded it as “spiraled” every teacher and education leader will be all ears, all eyes, and all heart, to behold how wherewithal and quality workforce will be positioned. We will see whether education leadership appointments, as usual, will be based on family ties, tribal lines, and partisanship while we remain lurking and waiting for another six years in agony and sympathy for our sector.
That is the charge to keep, by the UP Government, or else the result would be an education sector that is shackled with a heavy burned, unequally yoked with all kinds of “Yama Yama” people and overly spiraled as H.E. Boakai directly rebranded.
The Benediction
My Brabbies, we educators must look forward to a brighter day with much anxiety; let us not lose hope because a day is coming when the sector would be finally emancipated from intruders. A day is coming when we shall take control of our discipline for which we burnt thousands of midnight candles. A day is coming when the sector will be unshackled and yoked with only its equals.
To those ends, we educators hereby place the times and the fate of the sector over the next six years in the hands of H.E. Joseph Boakai and the Unity Party-led government. On the last day of the 365 days, times 6, we hope to look back and say, ”Yes” our time with this new group was worthy. Join us now in the first stanza of the hymn, “My Times Are in Thy Hand (Note the last stanza)
My times are in thy hand, my God I wish them there
My life, my friends, my soul, I leave entirely to your care.
place them there.
My times are in Thy hand; Whatever they may be;
Pleasing or painful, dark or bright, As best may seem to Thee.
My times are in Thy hand; Why should I doubt or fear?
My Father’s hand will never cause; His child a needless tear.
My times are in Thy hand, I’ll always trust in Thee;
And, after death, at Thy right hand, I shall forever be
I am simply Thinking Thoughts!!!!
About the author
The Rivercess scholar, critical thinker, and founder of the Diversified Educators Empowerment Project (DEEP), Mwalimu-Koh M. Blonkanjay Jackson holds a Master of Education from Harvard, and Master of Science in Mathematics Education from St. Joseph’s University; he is a Yale University Teachers Initiative Math Fellow and UPENN Teacher Institute Physics Fellow. The Rivercess man was a part-time lecturer at the UL Graduate School of Education and the Cuttington Graduate School of Education. Mr. Jackson served the government of Liberia diligently for four years and returned to private practice as Development Specialist and Education Engineer. The Mwalimu-Koh can be reached at 0886 681 315.