While it is recited like a nursery school rhyme, the ‘education is the equaliser’ philosophy is now ripe for a review.
To take off, let’s hear what Dr Ben Carson, the celebrated neurosurgeon, says: ”I tell students that it does not matter who they are, what colour their skin is, where they come from, or how much money their family has: education is the great equaliser”.
Dr Carson, ”a one-time class dummy” was by the time of writing his book The Big Picture, the director of paediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins, has a great argument or encouragement. That what is needed to qualify as a professional is one thing: the required education.
However, we need to ask ourselves what we do with the stellar achievements that give the children of peasants and titans alike the same platform in life.
While it may be nuanced, there is a need to trace the thinking of students and professionals at different levels. It should also be interrogated whether equality among the educated is the big picture or how professionals make the world equal ought to be the major focus.
In school, those who score grades A and B take themselves and, unfortunately, are treated by teachers as special people because of their perceived or real academic prowess.
Two people pursuing the same education, the same programme, the same grade, from an early age, treat themselves as unequal people, irrespective of their competence and goals in life.
Those taking medicine and pharmacy, though sister courses, will be found arguing about who is more powerful, more influential, who gets paid how much and how long it takes to complete the bachelor’s degree or the higher qualifications.
Education Arts undergrad students are perceived to be of a lower cadre than their Education Science counterparts. Even BA programme has been erroneously ranked lower than BSc.
This argument mirrors Kenyan obsession with ‘marketable courses’ and useless or irrelevant programmes. We have to think about market needs to really judge who has a functional university degree.
We have to go past the market needs and address problems of today and visualise what will possibly come tomorrow instead of forming silos among people who are supposed to liberate the world.
Sadly, many a Kenyan has trooped back to class to acquire an extra degree to attain a social class and ward off the cut-throat competition for the non-existent jobs instead of pursuing a higher engagement of making the world more livable.
Diploma graduates cannot hold a candle to their degree counterparts; there are barriers and the former have to honour the more read colleagues.
At school, teachers and school managers have turned the learning centres into rough environments, allowing inequalities to thrive.
Geoffrey Griffin of Starehe said that corruption and other ills thrive because school environments make learners to think that ‘might is right’. Might is displayed in different ways: courses, academic excellence, salary, position in employment, the kind of school one went to, name it.
The mighty who think they are more equal than others terrorise the public by offering poor service and producing sub-standard goods while imbibing corruption.
Instead of service, the educated hide information, distort facts, and cook books, thereby making the world more unequal on account of misguided might.
Just like Griffin says that a good headteacher should aim at creating a ‘happy and harmonious’ school whose graduates observe integrity and serve, it should be desire of the educated to help the helpless find dignity.
It’s the quest for dignity that mirrors Nelson Mandela’s quip that ‘Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world’.
Apart from studying and academically qualifying to practise, a professional should offer solutions to a plethora of problems giving the rank and file sleepless nights.
This will be the inimitable way that education becomes the equaliser, not celebrating personal achievement
