Education is a sensitive matter that evokes deep emotions. The feelings this arouses are often because education has the potential to impact one’s life chances. Nonetheless, we have often been satisfied with leaving it to the ‘professionals’ to discuss during policy forums, seminars, conferences, and the like, with the voice of the ordinary person almost entirely left out.

Expertise is important. However, there’s something to be said for a light-hearted, refreshing, and genuinely stimulating conversation about a serious matter without getting caught up in the pretentiousness of the ‘experts’ that are at times too detached from the consequences of their ‘informed’ perspectives.

Which brings me to a recent discussion among siblings. While visiting a family, the usual chitchat about this and that shifted to the subject of education and how each person experiences it.

Anecdotal as they were, the recollections turned out to be quite profound. The stories were authentic and informative. They provided pointers to what might have gone wrong in the education arena over the years.

First, the vices. The profession of teaching, one recalled, was noble, with the dedication of teachers – whether at basic or higher levels – creating the perception among those who observed them that the source of their motivation must be a higher calling.

It would verge on the offensive to suggest that anyone in the teaching profession was in it for the money. The teachers of years past had keen interest in imparting knowledge, so much so that they found considerable satisfaction in mentoring the young. Today, it seems, teachers and professors seek neither to mentor nor to inspire their students.

A mutually empowering relationship of mentor-mentee has been replaced by an acquisitive mercenary culture.

Speaking with exasperation, someone pointed out that these days potential mentors seek to be paid for services rendered, ultimately leading students to conclude that teachers can now be bought.

It gets worse when things take on a gender dimension. Sometimes those gifted with physical beauty realise that it carries the power to win concessions and make possible exchange that may not involve cash transactions. The oldest among the siblings was uncomprehending of these developments. Beautiful and elegant as she is, she could not recall a time during her school days when physical beauty was ever used as a tool for circumventing hard work.

Contempt for excellence

One could already draw some conclusions. First, it became clear that with each passing generation new vices encroached on the education system and helped to undermine the true meaning of education, thereby, facilitating its gradual erosion.

Second, the rise of the mercenary culture, as noted above, ensured that a noble profession had gone to the dogs. Third, the respect for education for its own sake, as a pathway to gaining lifelong knowledge, was replaced with the pursuit of a degree or diploma through all manner of shortcuts.

Today one may possess a degree and deceive themselves of having learned while at school, as if the two are the same thing. Moreover, it has become increasingly difficult to identify what education is supposed to achieve in general terms.

The situation got dire as the triumph of credentialism – the accumulation of degrees, diplomas, certificates, and etcetera – over education became complete: The more the degree became meaningless, the more degree holders thumped their chests with an attitude of entitlement towards the world about what is owed to them. They demanded a J.O.B. Not just any job, either. That is because they considered some jobs to be beneath them due to their status as graduates.

But there was a tiny problem. Even when they did get the jobs, the mercenary culture they had applied to ‘slide’ through school was always going to wait for them around the corner, at the workplace: where they could provide top-notch service to customers in order to enhance self-pride and institutional credibility, they turned to facebook and whatsapp. They could swear by their ability to serve a client’s needs without ever having to lift their heads from the cell-phone, thus undermining themselves and the institution that had provided them with an opportunity to make an honest living.

Consequently, they find that they have no choice left but to rely on deception and intrigue in order to retain their jobs. Why? Because a culture nurtured in mediocrity, by definition contemptuous towards excellence, must of necessity reproduce itself. Indeed, the good book serves a cautionary tale: one reaps what it is they sow.

Crisis of confidence

A contemptuous attitude towards excellence has led us into a crisis of confidence. In a similarly light-hearted conversation here in Kigali a while back, Jenerali Ulimwengu, the Tanzanian intellectual and weekly columnist for the East African, pointed out that this crisis, borne out of credentialism, explains why we have graduates in history, sociology, biology, chemistry, engineering, but without historians, sociologists, biologists, chemists, or engineers, and so on.

Finally, if we paid much attention to the silent voices, we would discover how mediocrity became institutionalised in the supply and demand of education, and how it reshaped our collective consciousness about what education is all about, and how it limited our confidence in our capacity to tackle the challenges we face. What went wrong?