My daughter wants to be a Knowless

“ If we can take young people who excel at the highest levels in schools, put them on the same kind of pedestal as the all-state basketball player and the all-state football player, and begin to get the same kind of recognition, it will have a profound effect, and we are finding that it does,” by Ben Carson.When I first read Gifted Hands by Ben Carson, apart from his brilliance and exceptional skills exhibited in this book, something that caught my attention was the author’s emphasis on reading as a practice that can unlock every one’s potential and propels them to greater heights in term of knowledge and information. From this book, I also love the author’s sarcasm on how the society exalts football stars at the expense of genius students and other academic excellencies. This reality dawned on me of recent when I engaged my small daughter on what she wants to become if she grows up. Her first choice was to become like Knowless. Like any other conservative father I was not impressed by her choice and I wanted her to give me other options, unfortunately she did not have any and I eventually accepted her choice of this music star! But after soul searching, I once again engaged this youngster further to know how Knowless’s image is so stuck into her mind and not any other person or career. She told me she wants to be like Knowless because she sings well, she is always on TV, she has seen her ku byapa (on billboards) being creative as she is she crowned it by telling me that she wants to be like Knowless because she (Knowless) is “everywhere like MTN”. I tried to tell her that she could be a pilot and fly aeroplanes like Esther Mbabazi but she was less interested and she did not know anything called Esther Mbabazi! To refresh your mind about Mbabazi, she is the first female Rwandan pilot who caught headlines few months ago but she is no longer in the lime light. I say she is out of lime light, because she is no long newsworthy! To confirm your doubts, while writing this article I tried to contact a few prominent women in this country some of whom women activists, but just like me none of them remembered both names of the Rwanda’s first female pilot! To be specific four out of seven women that I contacted, only four knew one name of this pilot star and three did not know anything about her! Why all this narrative? In my view I think there are small things the society is not paying attention to. And yet such small things are creating profound impact especially on the young generation. We have idolized sports and music stars and it is slowly influencing and impacting on the upcoming generations. The media outlets are so possessed with sports updates all the time than they do to educational programmes. We are heavily hoodwinked by sports that even some of little efforts towards promotion of reading are irrelevant and unrealistic. The other day I was engaged in an argument with colleagues on whether to use a football star or music star on a leaflet/billboard that promotes a reading culture. Surely, is it not more relevant and realistic to use Esther Mbabazi to promote reading than using Jimmy Gatete or Knowless for that matter? The argument even in the mind of the child would be that one needs to read hard to become a pilot, than becoming a music star or a footballer. Media outlets need also to focus on education programmes and career on the way they do to sport. There is need for corporate sponsorship to focus on education as well as career awareness programmes. We need to keep successful professionals into limelight and use them as models to inspire the young generation. There must be deliberate policies to reward academic excellence and use students who excel in their studies as models to inspire others. Engaging successful professionals would also inspire and shape career choices for the young generation in schools.I will end by paraphrasing Ben Carson once again when he said that if star students were treated as star athletes …the world would have very many scientists.The writer is an educationist, author and publisher.