Amon Sa­ba Saakana

For the first time, de­vel­op­ing economies can re­al­is­ti­cal­ly con­tem­plate leap-frog­ging over tra­di­tion­al growth stages and con­straints to ac­cel­er­ate de­vel­op­ment. How­ev­er, such con­tem­pla­tion is on­ly re­al­is­tic if the ed­u­ca­tion­al sys­tems which feed tech­no­log­i­cal de­vel­op­ment with the nec­es­sary skills are over­hauled.Sim­ply putting more com­put­ers and In­ter­net ac­cess in schools or lap­tops in stu­dent's hands will not solve the prob­lem.Our pe­cu­liar con­straint is that we are still deal­ing with un-evolved ed­u­ca­tion­al sys­tems, orig­i­nal­ly de­signed to pro­duce civ­il ser­vants for colo­nial ad­min­is­tra­tors. So, in an era re­quir­ing in­no­va­tors, knowl­edge work­ers and crit­i­cal thinkers, the de­fi­cien­cies of the tra­di­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion­al mod­el have be­come glar­ing­ly ob­vi­ous, and in­creas­ing­ly un­ten­able.A sub­stan­tial over­haul of ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing to match the tech­nol­o­gy rev­o­lu­tion and keep pace with con­tin­ued tech­nol­o­gy de­vel­op­ment is ur­gent­ly re­quired.

Glob­al changes, lo­cal con­tent

Why? Cer­tain con­cerns at­tend the rapid emer­gence of new tech­nolo­gies. If new tech­nol­o­gy in­creas­es pro­duc­tion with less and less labour in­put, then we are head­ing for a world with in­creas­ing num­bers of mar­gin­alised in­di­vid­u­als.We are al­ready see­ing this in the grow­ing of num­bers of dis­en­fran­chised youth who are man­i­fest­ing an­ti­so­cial be­hav­iour and in­creas­ing law­less­ness. The cost to busi­ness of this grow­ing so­ci­etal rot is well known.Our re­sponse must go be­yond in­creas­ing the cadre of tech­nol­o­gy-savvy work­ers. We need to in­crease our ca­pac­i­ty to un­der­stand the im­pact of tech­nol­o­gy on so­ci­ety. This again calls for ed­u­ca­tion.We have to pro­duce grad­u­ates of all dis­ci­plines with depth of un­der­stand­ing of the en­vi­ron­ment, and the link­ages be­tween tech­no­log­i­cal de­vel­op­ment and hu­man de­vel­op­ment.Ed­u­ca­tion­al pro­grammes have to be re­worked to re­flect in­dige­nous re­al­i­ties and pro­mote pos­i­tive so­cial val­ues, while pro­duc­ing the tal­ent for tech­no­log­i­cal and eco­nom­ic ad­vance­ment. On­ly then would we be able to boast of true de­vel­op­ment.

Be­ware of un­equal yok­ing

Both pub­lic sec­tor and pri­vate sec­tor stake­hold­ers typ­i­cal­ly es­pouse a form of tech­no­log­i­cal utopia, and a be­lief that ap­pli­ca­tion of tech­nol­o­gy is some­how a panacea to all the ills of the ed­u­ca­tion­al sys­tem. If we are not care­ful, such think­ing can lead to a ne­glect of ba­sic ed­u­ca­tion­al is­sues. The cur­rent push to in­sert tech­nol­o­gy in­to ed­u­ca­tion is not on­ly com­ing from gov­ern­ments that are des­per­ate to solve what they re­gard as the prob­lems of pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion. It is al­so dri­ven by com­mer­cial com­pa­nies seek­ing new and pre­dictable mar­kets for their prod­ucts. These mo­ti­va­tions are not al­ways con­gru­ent or com­ple­men­tary.Pub­lic pol­i­cy in ed­u­ca­tion must be dri­ven by a na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment agen­da that is broad­er than what com­mer­cial in­ter­est alone is ca­pa­ble of de­liv­er­ing. We must first ask our­selves what kind of so­ci­ety we are seek­ing to build. On­ly on an­swer­ing that ques­tion can we pro­ceed to de­bate what tech­no­log­i­cal ap­proach­es are best get us there.

Mind the gap

De­spite mas­sive and grow­ing in­vest­ment in tech­nol­o­gy in schools, and de­spite the en­thu­si­asm that has ac­com­pa­nied it, much of what takes place in ed­u­ca­tion re­mains gen­er­al­ly un­touched by tech­nol­o­gy. Yet, out­side school, chil­dren are liv­ing in­creas­ing­ly dig­i­tal­ly-sat­u­rat­ed lives.In­ter­net ac­cess at home, in li­braries and of­fices, to­geth­er with the pro­lif­er­a­tion of mo­bile gad­gets and de­vices have pro­vid­ed chil­dren with in­de­pen­dent ac­cess to me­dia tech­nol­o­gy. They are par­tic­i­pat­ing in an in­creas­ing­ly di­verse and com­mer­cialised me­dia cul­ture.This cul­ture is large­ly de­fined ex­ter­nal­ly and is feed­ing a grow­ing per­cep­tion of lo­cal in­sti­tu­tions–not just in ed­u­ca­tion, but al­so busi­ness and gov­ern­ment –as be­ing out-of-touch, out­dat­ed and in­creas­ing­ly ir­rel­e­vant.Our me­dia-rich tech­nol­o­gy world is cre­at­ing ap­petites and ex­pec­ta­tions that are not eas­i­ly sat­is­fied nor are they al­ways con­gru­ent with tra­di­tion­al norms and val­ues. Busi­ness lead­ers as well as pol­i­cy­mak­ers must be mind­ful that this widen­ing gap be­tween ex­pec­ta­tion and ex­pe­ri­ence is fu­elling mount­ing frus­tra­tion in stu­dents, em­ploy­ees, cus­tomers and cit­i­zens.

Shared re­spon­si­bil­i­ty

What we are teach­ing and its rel­e­vance to the kind of de­vel­op­ment we seek must be crit­i­cal­ly ex­am­ined. We must avoid the temp­ta­tion of us­ing tech­nol­o­gy to per­pet­u­ate the mod­el of shov­el­ing canned ma­te­r­i­al to stu­dents to cram and re­cite. In ad­di­tion to cur­ricu­lum in­struc­tion, ed­u­ca­tors must play a vi­tal role in im­part­ing the val­ues and mind­sets nec­es­sary for their charges to con­tribute rel­e­vant­ly to so­ci­ety. A mod­ern ed­u­ca­tion­al sys­tem re­quires fo­cus on se­cur­ing the foun­da­tion of knowl­edge and skill dur­ing the first years of ed­u­ca­tion. At a young age, in­di­vid­u­als should be taught how to look for in­for­ma­tion and how to make ef­fec­tive use of gath­ered in­for­ma­tion as ac­quired knowl­edge. At the same time, sus­tained, strate­gic en­gage­ment of teach­ers and train­ers must be a pri­or­i­ty.

Tech­nol­o­gy chal­lenges ex­ist­ing ap­proach­es to teach­ing and train­ing; of­fers new op­tions for mo­ti­vat­ing stu­dents; and promis­es end­less and ex­cit­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for cre­ativ­i­ty and in­no­va­tion. The ben­e­fit is cycli­cal. Ed­u­ca­tion dri­ves tech­nol­o­gy in­no­va­tion which, in turn, forms the ba­sis for ed­u­ca­tion in­no­va­tion.In this re­gard, tech­nol­o­gy in ed­u­ca­tion needs to be un­der­stood as more than an ap­pen­dixed, de­vice-dri­ven un­der­tak­ing. True ed­u­ca­tion ex­tends well be­yond the tech­nol­o­gy, class­room and cur­ricu­lum. Ed­u­ca­tion must be seen and ap­proached as a shared re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of stu­dents, teach­ers and the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.Bevil Wood­ing is an In­ter­net strate­gist with the US-based re­search firm, Pack­et Clear­ing House and the chief knowl­edge of­fi­cer at Con­gress WBN, an in­ter­na­tion­al non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Fol­low on Twit­ter:@bevil­wood­ing, and Face­book:face­book.com/bevil­wood­ing