Upcountry Insight: University intellectuals; a neglected fountain of knowledge

It hurts so much this time not to be alone like Maywoods song, but to see the fountain of knowledge being more often than not neglected by their very offspring.

Monday, November 05, 2007

It hurts so much this time not to be alone like Maywoods song, but to see the fountain of knowledge being more often than not neglected by their very offspring.

Think of engineers, medical doctors, teachers, lawyers, planners, managers, politicians; everyone who is anyone in our society are offspring of universities.

But alas! When any of these offspring got into any big office with moving chairs and tea attendants, they all sing one song; university intellectuals are theorists. Let us understand this sad stafe of affiars through rhetorical, epistemological and ontological questions.

1-Who has ever seen practice without theory? These two concepts are distinct but not separate.

2-What makes people forget their university fundamental knowledge so soon and call university intellectuals theorists?

3-Where do initiators and implementers of such politics derive this knowledge?

Let me be pragmatic; policies such as UPE decentralization, ICT, medical insurance such as Rama; law reform are what have put Rwanda on the world map.

The country is known for much ore than the 1994 Genocide and some of our progressive and innovative steps are well-known and exactly why this country is respected.

First, such policies and concepts are learnt at universities, and second, they are imported from western world administrators who themselves rely on university intellectuals as their gurus.

Above all, our administrators forget that once upon a time such policies were once theoretical conceptions that were made a reality.

Even the moving chairs they enjoy came from a philosopher who sat under a tree for some years and conceived it.

Ends