COVID-19: PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVE II
SUSPENSION OF
EDUCATION
A. THE BACKGROUND
Whenever
there is a disaster, war or pandemic as it is the case with Covid 19, different
social institutions get their share of the havoc. There is no doubt that
religious institutions across the world have been affected. Education as a
social has also been affected going by the number of closure of schools and
higher institutions of learning. When covid19 became a reality in Kenya, among
the first educational institutions to be closed include. African Nazarene and
Daystar universities which could not wait for order from the government on the
same; their closure was followed by government directive of the immediate
closure of schools and higher institutions learning. There has been a rumour
through social media of the possibility of re-opening of Educational
institutions and a likelihood of the postponement of national exams. At the
same time a good number of schools and other Educational institutions have been
converted into quarantine canters, and when the students report back they will
be required to use the same facilities that have been used for quarantine. One
wonders how this will psychologically affect the educational process in these
institutions
B. THE PURPOSE
This
perspective piece purposes to determine whether closure of Educational
institutions and subsequent conversion of some of them into quarantine centres
has occasioned suspension of Education in general and learning in particular.
C. THE METHOD
Analysis
D.
THE QUESTION
Has Covid-19 occasioned the
suspension of Education in Kenya?
D. THE DISCUSSION
I.
'EDUCATION' HAS BEEN SUSPENDED
I
infer that to the extent that education is partially formal, yes it is
suspended. In common parlance Education is 'Synonymous' with a set of buildings, with professionals
known as Teachers carrying out methodically
a process known as teaching, based on some pool known as curriculum and
whose output can be assessed through a standardised tests. This means that when
teachers stop teaching there is no education, when there is no learning space
known as classroom or lecture hall there is no education. We cannot talk of
Education when we are not sure whether our students are following the syllabus
of their respective classes and subjects. So practically speaking, Education
has ceased.
II.
BRIDGING THE GAP: THE CONCEPT OF SCHOOLING
While
Education in its Latin etymology -Educare,
Educere-refers to the general process of bringing up and leading a learner out
of the undesired state of ignorance, Schooling connotes passage through a
system. A schooled person is one who has passed through a system and has been
certified to have gone through it. Education however is a wide world that may
include but not limited to schooling. Education is formal, informal and non formal.
It takes place anywhere and it is akin to what we call spirituality in
religion. Back to schooling, the distinguishing mark of schooling is
standardised testing. Heavy premium is laid on doing formative and summative
tests. After the test we grade the schooling products (almost the same way we grade tea
packs at Ketepa factory) into grade A, Second Class, Grade E. Much emphasis is
laid on grading such that the mark of education has been the grade a learner
was awarded. If for instance a schooled person got A -plain they are then
socially labelled as most educated, if he/she got an E, the society sees not just
as a failure but also as a mis-educated
brute, a paria and a social misfit
not good for market consumption. What
this means is that the aim of Education is reduced to serving the market. Most
markets are served by factories in the similar manner schools are fashioned to
produce human automatons and machines. These machines cannot think on their
own. They are fashioned according to the demands of the market owner who in
turn gives form to the factory that the school is, and calls it Formal
education when actually it's supposed to be called Market schooling. In formal
education, once the school stops, production stops-education stops. COVID 19
has forced the schooling factory to stop, so no more education till Covid goes
away. No more production. The clamour for so called market driven courses is
not anything strange in Kenya and by market driven we mostly mean blind STEM
(Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths). At the end of the day we produce
Scientists without labs and incapable of new inventions, Technologists who are
copy cats, Engineers who can draw good designs for roads but cannot actualise
what they draw, Mathematicians who cannot survive outside a classroom. This
implies that schools were closed way before covid19. We are now operating from
quasi educational time zone yet real
Education is a cura personalis- a
holistic process entailing not only the cognitive dimension but also
dialogical, normative and creative dimensions with impossibility of any
practical suspension
III.
EDUCATION HAS NOT BEEN SUSPENDED
One
of the philosophical anthropological definitions of man is Homo Cognoscendi
(The knowing man) or homo educandus (The educable man). These definitions point
to the fact the being X if X is human being then X is intrinsically and
necessarily an epistemological being. In ontology when we say that man is necessarily
epistemological we mean that all factors held constant it is not
possible to even imagine a human being who cannot not know without landing into
contradictions. This being the case,
formal education and schooling can only be counted as a small portion of
education, and that to suspend education is to suspend the being of a homo
cognescendi- which is impossibility.
The desire to know and to be educated in man is innate. For instance,
while schools have closed, many learners at the moment are doing everything and
anything about to understand Covid 19 through Social media updates, mainstream
media and Google search. This is education going on outside the school factory
building and happening in what we would metaphysically call the real school,
the real life outside the walls of a schooling factory.
E. THE CONCLUSION: THE REAL AIM OF
EDUCATION
Close
school or leave them 'open' Education goes on. It's lifelong. It's
heutagogical. It's androgogical. If education is a lifelong force then its Aim
should be LEARNING TO LEARN or learning to live. Education should enable the
graduate and non graduate to 'Know themselves'(Socrates) and to keep learning
till death because for humans , to live is to learn and to learn is to live
.And this is what constitutes EUDAIMONIA(True happiness). Market is an
insufficient aim of education.
