Education has been lauded for many years as the heart for social change and development.

The state of our education, though, matters as we pursue sustainable development goals. We need to consider what is at stake for the country and understand that education is the single most important tool for social and economic development.

The 16th and 17th century theorists critically observed education as the channel for elite circulation and ideological reproduction.

This kind of reasoning, therefore, gave birth to many questions on what should be the primary influence for the country’s development.

While this seems like such a great educational debate with many varying perceptions and different individual interpretations, the main centre of focus remains one—the ‘holistic improvement of Rwandan education’.

The discussion on education always gets so tense that many times people fail to come up with general knowledge on how the status quo can be confronted. While this remains a challenge, let’s not forget the significance of education to not only societal development but holistic human interaction that is based on how informed people define the meaning of their existence.  

Holistic education is viewed as an embodiment of all that makes education more relevant to the needs of society, as well as the general growth and development.

Conversation about holistic education transcends academic success. Much as the modern policy makers continue to define education from the traditional mirror, this system considerably contradicts with the demands of the modern human labour-force.

Let’s face it; a comprehensively learned citizenry is less likely to succumb to issues such as teenage pregnancy, for many will be critical on all facets of the future that they envision.    

While we continue to debate and deliberate about the quality of education that we want, let’s understand that it becomes more challenging when we come up with solutions for a problem we have not comprehensively understood.

Though, this may seem obvious, in education, people often bicker about which particular way is the best to improve education when they don’t actually agree on what education should do and why they think education is that important.

It is, hence, imperative that we have a common ground on how and why we should make education relevant.

The writer is a PhD student at Beijing Normal University

Pontiankbr@outlook.com