Why I’m more discouraged about the state of education than of politics

The national examinations season is underway. Millions of Ugandan primary school pupils and secondary school students are sitting their final exams at PLE, O-Level and A-Level.
Uganda is entering the 20th year of Universal Primary Education (UPE). The general consensus is that UPE has largely been a failure.
It has succeeded in so far as it has gotten millions of children into a classroom or under a tree in front of a blackboard with a teacher instructing them.
It has failed in so far as the quality of education thus imparted is, at best, patchy. The rate of teacher absence from class is high and the drop-out rate is reported to be up to 70 per cent in many areas.
The last three years I have been on Facebook and monitoring the quality of discussion, posts, the punctuation and grammar by Ugandans have worried and disheartened me more than I always was.
I am more discouraged about the state of education in Uganda than I am about the state of politics.
It is possible these days for one to live a substantial part of their lives outside the reach of elective politics and the direct hand of politicians.
But it is impossible to deal with the average person and to find in that average citizen inadequate education and understanding.
In their 1994 book The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray argued that while in the 20th Century talent and educational achievement were starting to replace or at least compete with social status, money and power as determinants of a person’s prospects in life, “the twenty-first will open up on a world in which cognitive ability is the decisive force…Social life remains the vehicle of social life, but intelligence now pulls the train.” (page 25)
The proof of the accuracy of that statement can clearly be seen today. Increasingly, the biggest and best-known companies in the United States and the world are in the technology field.
Depending on which way the stock value goes in any given month, the world’s biggest companies by market capitalisation these days are either Apple, Google, Microsoft or Amazon.
Let me put it in ordinary terms.
On Thursday October 26, Amazon, the giant online retail firm, announced its third quarter results for the period July to September. The company reported better than expected revenues.
This news led investors on Wall Street in New York to buy more shares of Amazon stock, causing it to close up by eight per cent at the end of the day’s trading.
That eight per cent was worth $37 billion. $37 billion is roughly the combined Gross Domestic Product of Uganda and Rwanda.
In other words, one company in the United States in just 24 hours saw its market size grow by the entire economies of Uganda and Rwanda. Amazon added a Rwanda and a Uganda in just one day.
These are the sorts of facts we should bear in mind as we go about our daily lives, business, politics, educational policy and national economic planning.
Are we educating children to simply go through the motions and end up averagely knowledgeable and competent citizens?
Does our present education address the question and need for economic and social development?
If there are technology companies in the United States that can add in one day the GDP of two East African countries that are usually praised for their alleged high economic performance, what chance do we and our children have competing in the 21st Century?
When early next year the A-Level exams results are announced and dozens of students have scored AAAA, shall we remember to ask: AAAA in what?