Youth, Leadership and Nonviolence: A Global Education Imperative

This article first appeared in The Nation on Wednesday, December 1st, 2010, and also in Pambazuka News.

In the early hours of Tuesday November 30^th a group of students at Viphya Private Secondary School in the city of Mzuzu in northern Malawi fought one another, and destroyed school property worth millions of kwacha. Police came to the scene just before dawn and arrested 54 students, 17 of them girls, according to Zodiak Broadcasting Station. It is not clear what caused the violence, but school authorities have dismissed suggestions that it stemmed from frustrations to do with poor sanitation, lack of entertainment, and poor diet, according to The Nation newspaper (December 1, 2010). The violence that erupted at Viphya Private Secondary school on this night raises questions of the type of education offered to young people in Malawi, Africa and around the world. Of pertinence here is the concept of global education, celebrated around the world the week of Monday November 15^th ending Friday November 19^th. The theme for this year was “Peace and Nonviolence for the Children of the World.”

I spent one afternoon that week with students of Maghemo Secondary School, in the northern district of Karonga, near the Malawi-Tanzania border. Our discussion was guided by the question of what the term “Global Education” meant, and why the theme, “Peace and Nonviolence,” was relevant to Malawi and to the world.

This was the first time I was interacting with Malawian secondary school students in a discussion setting probably since I left secondary school back in 1989. I had no idea what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised. The students were in the mood for more questions and discussion, I had to be pried away from the classroom so as to go and attend to other duties that had brought me to the lakeshore district of Karonga in the first place.

What did these students understand by the term “Global Education?” I asked. “An education about the entire world,” they answered. How about “Peace and Nonviolence”?  “Settling issues without resorting to violence,” came the answer. These are students who are “glocally” conscious. They know about world wars and current wars around the world, and they know about sensitive issues affecting Malawians today. In their questions about peace in Malawi, they wanted to know how the controversy surrounding the quota issue in university selection could be settled using nonviolent methods. Malawi’s president, Professor Bingu wa Mutharika directed early in 2010 that selection of students into Malawi’s two public universities should be based on a quota for each of the country’s 34 education districts. The directive was seen as controversial, and triggered a massive debate in Malawi. It was welcomed by Malawians who felt that university selection favoured specific districts and disenfranchised others. But it angered Malawians who feared that the quota system would deny high scoring students a place in the university in favour of students who did not score as highly, but made the quota for their district.

Equally troubling to the students who came to the meeting at Maghemo was the manner in which the ruling party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), was using the state broadcaster, the Malawi Broadcasting Corporation, in unfairly campaigning for the president’s brother, Professor Peter Mutharika, for the 2014 presidential elections. Were there nonviolent methods that could be adopted to address these problems, they wanted to know.

These students were aware of the role of nonviolent action in recent Malawian politics, including the role played by pastoral letters issued by Catholic bishops. On March 8, 1992 Malawi’s Catholic bishops issued a pastoral letter addressing political and social problems in Malawi, under the one party government of the Malawi Congress Party and then life president Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda. The letter opened the floodgates of pent up frustrations, which forced out Dr. Banda and his party in the 1994 elections. It was a largely peaceful, nonviolent transition from dictatorship to multiparty democracy.

At least one of the students at Meghemo knew about Mahtma Gandhi, the man whose philosophy of Satyagraha gave the world the concept of nonviolence that guides peaceful mass action in various parts of the world today. They knew about how violence is too often the first rather than the last resort. They listed religious, emotional, political and gender violence, and expressed the conviction that they, as students, had a role to play in teaching nonviolence to their colleagues and to their communities. They promised to start a peace club, whose name would come from the word for ‘peace’ in one of the languages spoken in their area.

If there is one thing that ought to inspire and give hope about the future of Malawi, it should be the sight of young Malawians engaging with the difficult issues of the day. I met these young Malawians barely two days after party youths in the capital city, Lilongwe had threatened violent action against a Malawian journalist who had asked President Bingu wa Mutharika questions they deemed to be ‘tough’ upon his arrival from a state visit to India and the G-20 summit in South Korea. The president arrived at the Kamuzu International Airport on Monday November 15, and held what Sunday Times columnist Raphael Tenthani termed a “press rally”, a blend between a press conference and political rally.

The journalist, Mike Chipalasa of Blantyre Newspapers Limited, had asked the president questions about fuel shortages that had gripped the country in the president’s absence, and about a recent pastoral letter issued by the Catholic bishops. The letter was seen by supporters of the ruling party as critical of the government. The party youths had ignored the president’s own encouragement to reporters gathered at the Kamuzu International Airport, to ask any question they wanted. Even as the party youths and dancing women murmured and booed Chipalasa before he finished his questions, the president urged him on, saying, “let him continue.” The party youths descended on Chipalasa after the function and threatened to beat him up. It took the intervention of the police who appeared on the scene and led Chipalasa to safety.

Columnists writing in Malawian newspapers in the wake of the airport incident were unequivocal in expressing their shock and disappointment. For many Malawians the whole episode brought back unsavoury memories of an era gone by when party youths became a law unto themselves in full view of the police and political leaders. There was a time when police officers were harrassed by party zealots, with utter impunity. For a moment, it appeared as if Malawi was on the verge of backtracking to those sad years. Another columnist, Brian Ligomeka, noted that the Malawi Police Service needed to be thanked for stepping up to the fore and asserting their responsibility to protect and restore order. Equally poignant was Tenthani’s question as to why the police arrested no one. Chipalasa himself expressed gratitude for the police action, saying it saved him from an unknown fate.

Contrasting the police action on Monday November 15^th with the impunity of the past, one notices a relative distinction in the way the Malawi Police Service view their role in a supposedly “democratic” dispensation. Relative because one would have expected the police to not only prevent an act of violence, but to also apprehend whoever was threatening the violence, as Tenthani argued. But it’s a distinction nevertheless, in that this time around the police seemed to have had the sense and professional judgment to be proactive and prevent violence.

Malawians have been waiting for statements at party and government levels setting the record straight as to whether or not the kind of conduct displayed by the youths in full view of their leadership will be tolerated. Failure to set the record straight here would be interpreted by some as condoning political violence. Columnist Levi Kabwato mused in his Sunday Times column of November 21^st that “the DPP is essentially the UDF (United Democratic Front), at least they share the same DNA.” It is up to the respective parties to respond and correct that perception, or keep quiet and leave no one in doubt. The advice from Tenthani, in his “Muckraking “ column tellingly titled “Tame the rascals”, was timely: “if left untamed party youths can mar a leader’s otherwise clean legacy.”  

Will it be enough to tame the youths and redirect them toward peaceful, nonviolent expressions of their views and beliefs? Or is there more that needs to be done before things revert to the dreaded past? What obtained during the era of UDF’s rule, when party youths went wild beating up opposition politicians with impunity, was not new. It was merely a perpetuation of what had obtained during the one-party regime. Youths were given the role of unthinking demagogues who guarded the ill reputation of their erstwhile masters and mistresses with reckless abandon. The airport “press rally” incident tells us there is no guarantee that those days are irretrievably gone. They could come back.

One thing we might want to do as a nation to effectively curb this tendency is to go beyond proselytising about peace and nonviolence. We seem to know little, as a nation, about the psyche that makes this kind of conduct possible. It is imperative to analyse this phenomenon by studying it, and the perpetrators too, carefully. Rather than further demonise youths who seem not to know the difference between psychophancy and critical thinking, we need to engage them in a discussion on what it means to have a free press, and to advocate freedom of expression. These are lessons that seem to have fallen by the wayside since 1992 when the bishops opened our eyes.

This ought to be a broader, national discussion on what kind of leadership we envisage for Malawi’s future, as University of Malawi political scientist Dr. Blessings Chinsinga suggested in his Sunday Times column of November 14, one day before the airport incident. Dr. Chinsinga’s call is worth repeating: “. . . there is an urgent need for a leadership revolution in all spheres of life. We need new leadership that is motivated by an ethos of trust, honour, integrity and service.” Dr. Chinsinga believes that this kind of leadership does not happen on its own accord; it needs to be propagated through proper training. He wrote that our university campuses were devoid of a “culture of critical engagement”, reduced to “welfarism”.  The effect of this was being seen in youth wings of political parties, which Dr. Chinsinga said “require an urgent reorientation of their role in politics.” He went on to call upon youth wings to exercise autonomy so as to develop their leadership potential to the highest levels of their parties’ political structures.

What I saw at Maghemo Secondary School on November 17^th gave me hope that whereas “critical engagement” might indeed be dead on university campuses in Malawi, there are Malawian secondary school students ready and eager to seize the opportunity and claim their rightful place. But this will not happen on its own. It will need the support of discerning teachers, parents, the entire educational system, and the wider Malawian community. It will need learning lessons from Malawian, African and world events, with an emphasis on global social justice. The events at Viphya Private Secondary School on the morning of Tuesday November 30^th happened two weeks after the commemoration of Global Education Week with its theme on peace and nonviolence for the young people of the world. Although one small isolated incident, the Viphya school violence might be instructive for schools in Malawi and elsewhere in discussing prospects for peace and nonviolence education..

While visiting India in early November, President Bingu wa Mutharika paid his respects at Mahatma Ghandi’s resting place. He was honoured with a bust of Gandhi, and was given copies of books written by Gandhi. This was a pivotal moment of the state visit, and should have a bearing on how Malawi can promote Gandhi’s ideals of peace and nonviolence. Gandhi’s genius was that nonviolence requires more courage and discipline than violence. Gandhi led a nonviolent revolution that drove the British out of India, and won independence for his country. Peace and nonviolence is also what Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, among others, have preached and practiced. It is what uMunthu teaches. The Chichewa proverb, Nkhondo siimanga mudzi (war does not build a village)—offers a Malawian perspective on nonviolence. Global education is a good starting point for peace and nonviolence for the children of the world.

Involving Universities in Educating Primary School Teachers: The Case of Malawi

This article first appeared in The Nation on Wednesday, October 13, 2010. It also appeared in Pambazuka News, and on the Zeleza Post, with a different title.



With one of the lowest university enrollments in Africa, the debate on who gets access to higher education in Malawi is an incendiary affair. The debate has erupted once again with the announcement of the 2010 intake for the University of Malawi. Largely missing from the debate, however, is any discussion of the role of the university in Malawi’s teacher education system, the foundation for the education apparatus. I wish to argue here that much as we may think of primary school teacher training as outside the Malawian university system, teacher education could potentially offer a way out of the contentious equitable access quagmire. It could also offer another approach toward achieving the ‘technicolour’ dream of the new five universities being planned by the Malawi government, as announced by president Prof. Bingu wa Mutharika in May this year.

5 October is World Teachers’ Day, and its occasion this year provides us an opportunity to discuss issues such as teachers’ welfare, training and professional trajectory. In the following discussion, let us explore the question of the involvement of the Malawian university system in the teaching of primary school teachers. Let us examine some of the consequences that arise out of the absence of Malawian universities in teacher education, and what recommendations a new teacher education and development policy is making to address that problem. We need to put this discussion in both the local and the global context, commenting on the expressed wish by the government of Malawi to construct five new universities, while observing Asian, American and European countries making massive investments into their own higher education systems.

Considering the approaches used by countries whose educational models we follow, it has been somewhat of a curiosity that very few Malawian educators have given thought to linking primary school teacher education to the university system. It is imperative that we think seriously about the role of the university in the training of primary school teachers, argues Bob Moon, professor of education at Britain’s Open University and founding director of the Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) programme. Moon points out how African countries such as Uganda, Tanzania, Sudan and South Africa have long involved their universities in the training of primary school teachers.

He says the progression of university involvement in the training of primary school teachers has not been easy. The United States didn’t make the transition from independent teacher training to the university system until the 1930s. The British only started in the 1970s, while France did it in the 1990s, as did South Africa. According to Moon, Sudan is currently upgrading the qualifications of 130,000 primary school teachers in the Sudan Open University system.

In many countries, including Malawi, higher qualifications for primary school teachers always mean a ticket out of the classroom into administrative positions or other better paying careers outside the teaching profession. I heard the most poignant metaphor to illustrate the folly of this in a personal communication with a Malawian educationist who has given a lot of thought to these issues. Lexon Ndalama, executive director of the Association of Christian Educators of Malawi (ACHEM), told me in 2004 how illogical it was to use higher educational qualifications to entice teachers out of the classroom. ‘Imagine you have a nursery,’ began Ndalama. ‘Instead of giving the nursery your best resources to give it the best foundation for future growth, you deprive the nursery and instead devote your best resources to your other gardens.’

This is precisely what has been happening in Malawi, as expertly analysed in the National Strategy for Teacher Education and Development (NSTED) document. Completed in 2008, the NSTED document, Malawi’s most up-to-date recommendation for teacher policy, laments how the best teachers are always taken out of the primary school classroom and sent to secondary schools and other administrative positions. Another way of looking at the problem is to think of who we assign to teach in our primary schools, secondary schools and tertiary institutions. We train our primary school teachers for two years only, and in many cases, we let them enter the classroom as a full time teacher only after a very brief orientation. This is how I trained as a teacher in the 1990s, under the Malawi Special Teacher Education Programme (MASTEP). In contrast, we insist on a rigorous university education for our secondary school and tertiary education teachers, whom we expect to make a good job out of the same pupils taught by teachers with a minimal professional qualification. There are several consequences that arise out of our reluctance to afford the best academic and professional training to primary school teachers. Let us examine just a few.

The absence of the university establishment in teacher education means that none of the most experienced researchers and intellectuals of which Malawi boasts make their expertise available to the training of Malawian teachers. As Paul Tiyambe Zeleza observed in his 1997 book, ‘Manufacturing African Studies and Crises’, there is a gap between what African scholars produce, and what African schools teach. In Malawi, as in many African countries, we have no tradition of sustained research in teacher training, teacher competence or best practices. We do not have much research into what contributes to a teacher’s effectiveness and greatness. Our universities are in turn deprived of experience in a crucial area of the development of the nation.

Another consequence is the dumbing down of a profession that is of primary importance. Teachers make up the largest number of civil servants in any ministry, and with the majority of these being primary school teachers, we have a large section of our professionals who are deprived of the benefits of a higher education. When you consider that teachers are supposed to be professionals in the same tradition as medical doctors, lawyers, engineers, economists, and others, it is surprising that we do not think of primary school teachers as deserving of the best education available. Our problem of difficult access to university education is most illustrated in the figures available: with more than 233,500 students in the Malawian secondary school system, our universities have space for a total of 8,000. Only 2,000 students have been offered places as first year students in the 2010 University of Malawi selection announced last week. And this is itself an improvement from previous figures.

The absence of university involvement in the training of teachers also contributes to the problem of access to university education in Malawi. This problem would take on a different shape if our teacher training colleges were to offer four-year university degrees. Not only would we be graduating 2,500 more degree holders every year, in addition to current numbers, the profession itself would also be transformed. The many gifted and brilliant young men and women who have never thought of a teaching career could be attracted to the profession by the allure of the opportunity to obtain a rare university degree.

One of the crucial issues discussed in the NSTED document is low teacher morale, poor motivation, and the low social status of teachers. The type of training and the kind of qualification which trainig produces are two of the factors contributing to the low morale, motivation and social status of Malawian primary school teachers.

We have a few teachers who are undeterred by these factors. They embrace their profession with zeal and passion, and inspire their pupils, against the odds. But they are very few in number. Researchers who study teachers’ classroom performance point out that teacher perseverance in the face of adversity often translates into inspiration for pupils. A recent article in the American magazine, ‘The Atlantic Monthly’, cited research by a University of Pennsylvania psychologist, Angela Lee Duckworth, and her colleagues, on teacher perseverance. Duckworth and her colleagues found that teachers who scored high on perseverance and had a passion for long-term goals were 31 per cent more likely ‘to spur academic growth in their students’.

Even more important as a teacher trait was life satisfaction, Duckworth and her team found. Defined as being content and satisfied with their lives, teachers who scored high on this trait had a 43 per cent success rate in the classroom than peers who reported low life satisfaction. It is confirming to see research results producing these conclusions, but these are matters of intuition to anybody who has been inside a classroom. It is not surprising that the perception of dwindling standards of education in Malawi and elsewhere (including the United States) is accompanied by rising anger and frustration among teachers.

The NSTED document is a bold attempt by the Malawi Ministry of Education, Science and Technology to address these particular problems. The teacher policy recommendations articulated in the document suggest a career path for teachers to receive rewards and promotions through a structure that offers continuous professional development tied to academic credit offered through collaboration between teachers’ colleges and our universities. The document is careful to recommend rewards for higher qualifications inside the education system, just falling short of calling for a university degree for every primary school teacher as a long-term strategy. Such a suggestion never fails to elicit questions about whether the Malawi government’s budget capacity can successfully absorb thousands of primary school teachers with university degrees.

Another unwarranted fear warns about the problems that could potentially be caused by too many university graduates. These are legitimate debates, but they do not warrant enough reason to delay much-needed reform in the teacher education system. The emphasis needs to be on highly qualified teachers, and strengthening our universities to be able to offer that kind of teacher education. In a press release to commemorate World Teachers Day this week, the Teachers Union of Malawi (TUM) makes mention of the need to provide teachers with ‘adequate in-service trainings for all teachers so that teachers keep updated on emerging issues.’ The press release calls for opportunities for teachers to upgrade their academic qualifications by taking advantage of the proliferation of accredited universities in Malawi. TUM’s vision for teachers is right on the mark. The Malawi Mininstry of Education, Science and Technology is in fact already rolling out a national teacher professional development programme which will address the issues TUM outlines.

Many countries are already moving to construct as many universities as they can. These countries are convinced that in the 21st century, universities are key in producing the kinds of knowledge needed to transform economies and enhance livelihoods. In an article published in the May/June issue of the American journal, ‘Foreign Affairs’, Richard Levin, president of Yale University, describes efforts in this direction by focusing on the growth of Asia’s universities. Two years ago the Indian government announced a plan to construct a world-class university in each of its 30 states, later amended to 14 universities in states that don’t already have a comprehensive university. China, South Korea, Singapore are all pursuing similar goals, guided by the understanding that ‘greater access to higher education would be a prerequisite to sustained economic growth.’

The Malawi Government’s plans to build five new universities in the next ten years would seem to follow a similar conviction. As Levin argues, ‘In today’s knowledge economy … it is not subject-specific knowledge but the ability to assimilate new information and solve problems that is the most important characteristic of a well-educated person.’ It would be folly to wait until a learner was at the university before teaching these characteristics. In order to inculcate these abilities from a young age, Malawi needs to train primary school teachers to the highest quality feasible. In an unpublished essay, Master Kalulu, a seasoned and distinguished Malawian teacher educator, says teachers now operate in ‘situations that are global and dynamic in nature.’ He calls for a teacher education that enables teachers to ‘perceive education as a process of freeing curiosity, permitting individuals to go charging off in new directions dictated by their interest and unleashing enquiry.’

As we debate how to increase equitable access to higher education for all Malawians, let us also consider the foundational players in the educational system, primary school teachers and the institutions that train them. We should also think of ways to strengthen indigenous knowledge systems whose resilience has come under threat from research approaches that do not understand the role that local knowledge systems play.

Levin writes in the conclusion of his article, ‘Increasing the quality of education around the world translates into better-informed and more productive citizens everywhere.’ We can do no better than start with the teachers whom we entrust with the task of educating our little ones, our future leaders.

Transforming the teaching profession as a national development strategy

Note: This article first appeared in the Daily Times, 7 October, 2010

The occasion for this year’s World Teachers Day commemoration, October 5^th, has spurred recollections and reminiscences of teachers who have been influential in a number of people’s lives. In a ‘My Point of View’ op-ed column by Limani Nsapato in the Friday October 1^st issue of the Daily Times, he wrote about a Mr. Zuze, his Standard 3 teacher who inspired him to start liking school, and achieve academic success in later life. In the Nation on Sunday of October 3 Akossa Mphepo dedicated her Editor’s Note in the EveryWoman section of the paper to the teachers who have remained memorable for her to this day. She also interviewed Maggie Madimbo, a primary school teacher who went on to amass degrees, and is now studying for a Ph.D. in the United States.

Not wanting to miss out on the fun, I would like to say something about my own teacher training days and how I was inspired by teachers who shaped my passion for reading and writing. In so doing, I would also like to celebrate friends and colleagues with whom I have travelled along this path, some of whom are, unfortunately, departed. I will conclude my thoughts with a discussion on Malawi’s aspirations for its future teaching corps, as outlined in the National Strategy for Teacher Education nd Development (NSTED), developed in 2008. Over and above everything else, I want to suggest that we engage in a constructive national debate on how to transform teachers’ lives and performance in Malawi.

My teacher training started in December 1989 and ended in September 1993. The MASTEP program had been designed as a three-year program, combining a residential model during the school vacations, and a distance-learning model during the school year. In effect, as can be seen from the dates, it lasted four years. I made some very striking friendships within a week of my arrival at the Lilongwe Teachers’ College, towards the end of December 1989. In a matter of days, I had become very good friends with Charles Mnjale Gwazeni, Albert Kalimbakatha, Isdor Kaiya, Limiton Chalera, Ken Kalonde, and a few others. We all had one thing in common. We loved to read and write. Soon we formed what we called the Malawi Special Teacher Education Program (MASTEP) Writers Workshop. During our two-month stays at Lilongwe Teachers College over the next three years, we met almost every afternoon right after lunch. We took turns reading our writing, and critiquing each other. Our writing ranged from poetry to short fiction to feature essays. Gwazeni, Chalera and Kalonde are deceased now, but their literary and teaching spirit lives on in those of us who were touched by their genius.

By the end of the MASTEP program we had put together a literary journal containing works of poetry, fiction, essays and other types of writing. We drew inspiration from some of Malawi’s finest writers. After the initial two-week residential orientation at Lilongwe Teachers’ College, I was posted to Chikande Primary School, in Ntcheu, where I spent the rest of my teacher training. We taught during the school year, and we went into college during the Christmas, Easter and Summer vacations.

Looking back at my time in the MASTEP programme two decades later, I am very happy that I chose teaching as my profession. Well, I didn’t actually choose it over other careers. I was away at my home village in Ntcheu enjoying the summer vacation when my father saw an announcement for the MASTEP programme in the newspaper. He cut it out and mailed it to me, advising me to apply for it. My father, a police officer of many years, believed that I would make a better teacher than a policeman. He thought my mother was an excellent primary school teacher, and I could tell he respected teachers more than he respected any other profession.

Teaching gave me a start in my professional life, and I have grown to see the world from the perspective of a teacher and the role teachers play in building a society. Even as I have developed other professional habits, teaching has always been at the centre, from the knowledge production aspects around a particular practice, to the dissemination and utilisation of that knowledge for broader social purposes.

Over the years I have had many wondeful teachers, at various levels of the educational system. Mrs Kajawo was my first ever teacher in Standard One at Police Primary School, and in Standard Two Mrs Saiwa and Mrs Mwenelupembe were my teachers. These wonderful teachers guided my earlierst attempts at reading, writing and numeracy. In secondary school, two teachers stand out, mostly for their encouragement, through actions mostly, on the importance of reading widely and writing seriously. I started thinking of myself as a writer when I was Form Two at Nankhunda Seminary in Zomba. In Form Three our English teacher was Fr. Lawrence Mlenga, and he easily noticed how I enjoyed writing. I did my Form Four at Police Secondary School in Zomba, and there it was again an English teacher who stood out. Mr Lot Dzonzi, now Commissioner of Police, introduced a Writers’ Board, and encouraged us to write and post our stories there. In addition to being my English teacher, he was also patron of the drama group, and we ended up at number three at the 1989 ATEM national grand finals. Police Secondary School later won the national championship. By then I had finished my Form Four and left.

Mr Dzonzi went beyond the call of duty. He took personal books from his library, which were not even on the exam sylabus, and gave them to his students to read. One such book was Ngugi wa Thiong’os Devil on the Cross, which I read right after I finished Form Four. Another one was Athol Fugard’s published play Sizwe Bansi is Dead. After the MSCE exams, he took me to the homes of Wokomaatani Malunga and Garton Kamchedzera, where he introduced me to these Malawian literary luminaries and encouraged me to follow in their footsteps. It was these steps that later led to my becoming a non-university member of the Chancellor College Writers Workshop, which later led to many other writing ventures, two decades later.

I recently wrote about spending six months in 2004 visiting schools and talking to Malawian teachers about prospects for peace education in Malawi. For me those six months epitomised the coming full circle of teaching, writing and national aspirations. As a classroom teacher, I remember feeling respected by the village community around Chikande in Ntcheu, while learning how unappreciated teachers were by the authorities. My school visits and talks with teachers in 2004 revealed to me new depths in the anger and frustrations many Malawian teachers feel, especially in primary schools. This is no secret to anyone who studies Malawian schools. The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology has highlighted the problem of teacher morale and frustration in its 2008 National Strategy For Teacher Education and Development (NSTED). The NSTED document has offered practical recommendations for teacher development policy to enhance the lives of teachers and thereby promote teacher performance in Malawian schools.

No clause in the NSTED strategy holds more potential for the revitalization of the Malawian school system than the recommendation to introduce an accreditation programme to offer teachers a path for career advancement through classroom performance. The NSTED proposes that the accreditation programme be tied to collaboration between teacher training colleges and universities, and be supported by equipping Teacher Development Centres with modern technology and Internet connectivity. 

The NSTED is a far-sighted, comprehensive educational policy recommendation that has the potential to transform teacher education and school performance in Malawi. If it can become widely publicised so that every teacher and educator in the country knows what the teacher policy is, Malawi will have embarked on the road to revamping the educational system and to a more meaningful approach that goes beyond Millennium Development Goal Number Two, Universal Primary Education by 2015. As many educators understand, it is one thing to achieve universal primary enrollment, but it is quite another to provide those children a quality, meaningful and relevant education.

As has been observed by Bob Moon, founding director of the Teacher Education in Sub-Sharan Africa (TESSA) programme, the MDGs do not mention teachers, an oversight that can potentially stall progress and development in any country. During the BBC’s MDGs panel discussion in New York last week, President Bingu wa Mutharika told the audience that the MDGs missed the “supply side” of the equation. The MDGs, said Professor Mutharika, said nothing about the teachers that would be needed to train the children being targetted for Universal Primary Enrollment. Bringing teachers into the strategy calls for massive investments into not only teacher recruitment, but also sustained, long-term research into how to train and develop excellent teachers. As of now we do not have that kind of research in Malawi, a consequence of not involving the university establishment in the education of primary school teachers.

For the school experience of children to have relevance beyond universal enrollment, we need to not only address chronic teacher shortages, we also need to realign teacher education with the needs of a 21^st century society. We need to broaden the discussion on how effective it is to offer teachers a two-year education, with none of our universities taking an active, leading role in teacher education and curriculum research. We need to seriously think of how to motivate teachers beyond cash emoluments and higher qualifications.

Several of us have started a discussion on how to develop an annual Teacher of the Year Award, along the lines of the end of year awards organizations such as the Malawi Broadcasting Corporation run. We are having this discussion using online tools that are increasingly becoming more accessible here in Malawi. In the coming years it will be possible for many teachers to access the Internet, as some teachers have already taken the initiative, on their own, to open email accounts.

To create space for discussing teachers’ issues and share information and developments about education in Malawi and beyond, a number of us recently started a google online forum, called Bwalo la Aphunzitsi. It is located at http://groups.google.mw/group/bwalo-la-aphunzitsi. To join, send an email to bwalolaaphunzitsi@gmail.com, and be a part of the important discourse envisioning Malawi’s teaching profession for the 21^st century. 

Hide It In A Book? Myths & Truths About Malawi’s Reading Culture

This article first appeared in The Nation of Wednesday, 29 September, 2010. It also appeared in Pambazuka Newsletter.


You have probably heard a friend say it, or at least seen it forwarded in emails: ‘If you want to hide important information from an African, put it in a book.’ Another less insulting but blunt expression says when you see a white person riding in a bus or on a train, or waiting to catch a flight at an airport, they are always reading something. When you see a black person, they are mostly scratching their ankles and staring blankly, not reading anything. Both statements are made as proof that as Africans, we don’t have a reading culture.

Generalisations are always dangerous because they are mostly untrue, lumping entire groups into crude and inaccurate stereotypes. Most of the people I find myself in the company of, going back to my school days, have been voracious readers. I grew up in a healthy reading culture, surrounded by books, right here in Malawi. One English teacher in secondary school not only encouraged reading, he also gave me books to read that were not on the examination syllabus.

Conversely, I have also seen white people staring into space and yawning, waiting in line, while in the same space black Africans read books, newspapers, magazines, and other materials. All of this is to say neither of the above stereotypical statements is an accurate description of entire groups of people, whether white, black, yellow, turquoise or magenta.

Britain and the United States are also expressing similar worries about their reading culture. Consider these recent developments:

- The British newspaper The Telegraph recently carried a story that said a whopping two thirds of British people did not visit a library in 2009.

- In the United States, New York Times columnist Timothy Egan on 25 August expressed concern over the percentages of Americans who are misinformed about President Obama’s religion, his birth and citizenship; the bailout of banks; and the scientific evidence on climate change. The title of Egan’s column was telling: ‘Building a Nation of Know-Nothings.’

Not long ago retired secretary of state and army general Colin Powell countered the ‘Obama is a Muslim’ myth by pointing out that there would be nothing wrong if Obama were indeed a Muslim. Many American Muslims were decent, peace loving people who contributed to America’s economy, culture and democracy. But that belief, together with much other misinformation, persists and grows in a society that sees itself as a model of high literacy.

In his 7 August column in the New York Times, titled ‘Putting Our Brains on Hold’, Bob Hebert wrote about a report released by the College Board that showed how America’s educational standards were declining. Not long ago America led the world in the numbers of 25 - 34 year olds with first degrees. Today, America is at number 12. Hebert said America was a society that held ‘intellectual achievement in contempt’ and paid more attention to Lindsay Lohan, Lady Gaga and Snooki than to important matters of the day. The blame, he said, lay with parents, students, the educational system, government, and the news media. ‘What is the matter with us,’ he asked. ‘What have we been drinking?’ he pleaded, stopping just short of accusing Americans of having been imbibing at Bwandilo and missing important national debates in the media (Malawi’s president has recently accused his critics of spending too much time at a famous drinking joint called Bwandilo, in the capital city Lilongwe, and missing out on important matters). Hebert implied that America’s reading culture was being affected by these problems, saying, ‘We read less and less and write like barbarians.’

In the United States booksellers are closing stores, and libraries are shutting down. A sidewalk book vendor told a New York Times reporter recently, ‘It is apparent that we have a real serious issue, that the life of the mind has been in decline for some time now.’ As if that is not worrying enough, several newspapers have folded over the past few years.

But dismissing and getting rid of unfair stereotypes and generalisations should not lull us into a false sense of satisfaction that we have a thriving reading culture. A lot of Malawians hardly read anything and the number of those that do not know how to read at all is said to be at 37 per cent of the population.

The other day I crossed the wobbly bridge that vendors have constructed along Lilongwe River. At the end of the bridge I asked the young man collecting the K10 fee (approximately US$0.06) how many hours he spent at that bridge. Morning till sunset, he told me. I observed that he was not carrying any reading material. A little further away I stopped and asked a similar question to a woman selling airtime. Her answer was the same - morning till sunset. Did she have anything to read when there were no customers? She couldn’t afford newspapers, she said. Had she thought of visiting the library and borrowing a book? Nope, she had not thought of that.

The Malawian ‘Jua Kali’ sector - Jua Kali being what Kenyans call vendors who sell wares in the scorching sun - has lots of people who spend hours sitting and waiting for customers. In my next life I would like to come back as a driver. Or a security guard. I envy the hours these and others in similar types of jobs spend mostly sitting and just waiting. Drivers spend hours waiting on their bosses attending workshops and meetings. Many of them do not have anything to read in between. Next time you are waiting in line at the bank, count how many people are carrying and reading a book, magazine or a newspaper.

Then there is the price of books. The other day I walked into Nyabufu Bookshop in Sunbird Capital Hotel in Lilongwe and saw Professor Brown Chimphamba’s autobiography, ‘Born in Ntengela: The Story of My Early Life’. Price? K4,000 (approximately US$27). I know Malawians for whom that is their entire monthly earnings. The problem of the prohibitive cost of books is a chicken and egg one. Without a huge market for books, the cost is going to be high, and publishers will produce just a few copies. And the cycle repeats itself, with implications for literacy rates and a society’s reading culture.

It is common for us in Malawi to have a national conversation on events that grip the nation, such as worshippers committing suicide by jumping into a raging fire, or two men conducting an engagement ceremony and planning to marry each other. But when is the last time we had a national conversation based on an important book published by a Malawian scholar or novelist? How often do Malawian columnists cite books and other informed sources?

Apart from former president Dr Bakili Muluzi and the current president Professor Bingu wa Mutharika, most of our politicians and other leaders never write books about their time in office, or about their lives. Our journalists write volumes and volumes about current events and trends over long periods of time, but never think of developing these topics into book-length projects.

Recently Dr Pascal Mwale, lecturer in philosophy at Chancellor College and Dr Linje Manyozo, lecturer in media studies at the London School of Economics, wrote a lengthy and charged article in the online newspaper NyasaTimes Online about how most lecturers in the University of Malawi get promotions without having to publish a book.

We cannot expect an abundance of books from a society that does not read as many books. The self-perpetuating cycle has to break at some point if we are to learn from our best practices and embark on a process of intellectual renewal. The teacher training colleges are the best place to start, together with classroom teachers and their advisers. The National Library Service is setting up libraries and training librarians in Malawian schools. The Malawi Writers Union has recently been on a nationwide tour visiting schools and encouraging young Malawians to take writing seriously. The Malawi Institute of Education (MIE) this week launched the Read Malawi project, a project being piloted by MIE and the University of Texas at San Antonio aimed at providing supplementary and complementary books for children in primary schools.

These and other efforts by government and civil society ought to be integrated into the teacher education and professional development system, if we are to rebuild the much-lamented reading culture. The United Nations designated the decade from 2003 to 2012 as the Literacy Decade, but obviously the importance of the idea continues from generation to generation. Not only should we be encouraging reading, we should go a step further and encourage book writing as well, giving the world a much-needed progressive African perspective on local and global issues.

Women, Gender & Peace: Towards uMunthu and a New MDG Ethic

This article appeared in The Nation of Wednesday, September 22, 2010, and also in Pambazuka Newsletter. 


Is it a mere coincidence that the 2010 summit on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) being held this week in New York overlaps with the UN International Day of Peace? Whether it is or is not, that fact alone offers an opportunity to reflect on how the MDGs relate to the promotion of global peace. The idea of ‘peace’ is absent from the MDGs. This has prompted a group of activists to declare ‘Interfaith dialogue for peace’ a missing Millennium Development Goal. However, it may not be the only missing goal, as another activist group, the Charcoal Project, has taken up ‘energy poverty alleviation’ also as a missing MDG. I am sure each one of us can come up with at least one suggestion that could be said to be another missing goal from the MDGs.

There has been a lot of discussion leading up to the UN MDGs summit, but one that caught my attention last week was the BBC programme World Have Your Say. On Thursday 16 September the programme’s discussion centred around the observation that of all the eight Millennium Development Goals, those relating to women were the furthest behind. Evidence for this for me came from a separate news item that celebrated Ghana’s progress, touting it as on target to become the first African country to achieve MDG number one, halving poverty. But the same news report also observed that Ghana would be unable to achieve the MDGs relating to children’s and women’s health, goals number 4 and 5 respectively.

Is it surprising that of the eight Millennium Development Goals, those pertaining to women are the hardest to achieve? Take MDG number 3, promoting gender equality and empowering women. The target for that goal is to achieve gender parity in primary and secondary school enrolment for boys and girls by 2005, and in all levels of tertiary education by 2015. The 2010 Millennium Development Goals report indicates that the global numbers show near parity for this goal, but when regions are looked at separately, the reality is quite different. A few days ago the news coming out of the United States was that more women were now obtaining PhD degrees than men. This was the last remaining area in the American education system where women were not in the majority. On any given day, there are more women on American university campuses than men, with some universities reporting a 45:55 men to women ratio. It is these figures that balance out the global numbers in other parts of the world such as sub-Saharan Africa, where in fact there are 67 women for every 100 men in tertiary education. In southern Asia the ratio is 76 women for every 100 men.

Going by these realities alone, why wouldn’t one conclude that the United States of America and other societies in the global North have achieved gender equity? It is only when one looks more closely at other indicators of power that the above conclusion starts to melt away. As advanced as the United States appears to both Americans and others, it has never had a female president in its entire 234-year history. The US Senate has 18 women and 82 men, according to the website ThisNation.com. In the US Congress, males make up 83 per cent (441 males) while females make up 17 per cent (92), according to 2009 Wikipedia figures. On average, an American woman earns 75 cents for every dollar a man earns. The speaker of house is a woman, for the first time in the history of the United States. More evidence of gender disparities in the United States comes from gender-based domestic violence. Some estimates put the number of American women who have experienced sexual violence or attempted sexual violence at one in six, according to figures from the activist group Safe World for Women. Every two minutes a woman is sexually assaulted in the United States, according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN).

Clearly American women have not only achieved gender parity in higher education, they have surpassed it. When it comes to politics and other areas of gender concern however, the US is not unlike other countries. The world leader for women’s political representation is an African country, Rwanda. There, women make up 55 per cent of their parliament, a feat no other country in the world has achieved. 

Throwing around numbers such as these always raises the inevitable question of whether women in positions of political leadership promote peace better than men. This would be an easy question to answer, were it not for the misunderstanding of the meaning of ‘gender’ differences and the nature of political power implicit in that question. For women’s leadership to promote peace, there is need for change in the very process that defines ‘gender’ and entrusts political power. The misunderstanding will endure for as long as gender continues to be defined in confrontational terms as a competition between men and women, masculine versus feminine. Progress will continue to be elusive for as long as gender is seen as an argument for women to prove that they are equal to men in physical strength and endurance, academic achievement and political representation, property ownership and leadership management style. 

For the empowerment of women to make a real difference in the promotion of peace, the discussion needs to shift from one of competing forces to one of cooperation and collaboration. Feminist scholars argue that both men and women possess characteristics that are considered, for lack of more refined language, masculine as well as feminine. The difference lies in the way we are socialised. We grow up being taught to behave in a particular way due to what society perceives gender differences to mean and to require. Social norms compel us to reinforce these perceptions and expectations, and then to undermine them when we use those very perceptions and expectations to blame one gender for being collaborative rather than competitive, accommodating rather than uncompromising, submissive rather than aggressive, gentle rather than violent.

One Malawian gender columnist recently captured this contradiction perfectly. In a recent article, Penelope Paliani-Kamanga wrote about being in a vehicle with male colleagues. The car in front was moving rather slowly and cautiously, and the men concluded that the driver must be a woman. In due course the vehicle Penelope and her male colleagues were in overtook the vehicle in front, and she noticed that the driver was actually a man. She went on to observe in the article that advertisers make it a selling point when a vehicle has been driven by a female, making sure to include that in a classified ad. Yet on the road, many men make disparaging remarks toward female drivers, seeing them as incompetent and inexperienced.

The contradictions and misunderstandings of what gender means are not the preserve of one section of society only; as many men and women alike hold distorted views about the inferiority of women and their unsuitability for leadership positions; as many men and women alike believe that women have no one to blame but themselves in the numerous instances that show women not measuring up to men. One example of this came up in a recent radio panel discussion commemorating International Literacy Day, whose theme was ‘literacy and women’s empowerment’. One man called into a live programme on Transworld Radio and said the reason why there were more illiterate women than men in Malawi was that women did not understand the importance of literacy, and therefore chose to drop out of school before acquiring literacy. No doubt there were women who agreed with that sentiment. Equally problematic is the stereotypical view of women as victims who need men to empower them.

It is very common to hear men and women argue that there is no reason for gender equality programmes; women only need to apply themselves the way men do. Do people who think in this way understand why two of the eight MDGs are gender equality and maternal health? Do they understand why several African governments have created entire ministries to tackle issues of gender and women’s development? Why many universities around the world have departments and programmes studying gender and women’s development? One of the startling statistics here in Malawi is that women make up 70 per cent of all small-scale subsistence farmers, yet only 4 per cent of Malawian women own land. An easy solution to this problem would be to simply call on women, in the ubiquitous manner of news headlines, to own more land. Problem solved. But were it that simple.

As world leaders gather in New York this week to review progress on the MDGs with five years to go to 2015, the list of what goals are missing will probably grow. I will take this opportunity to add one more to the list: uMunthu-peace. Target: reform school curricula around the world into peace curricula, making all education peace education. It is in peace education and peace studies that a more meaningful perspective on gender equality has been developed. Such a perspective might enable each of the eight goals to be viewed ultimately as aiming to promote uMunthu, peace and social justice at the local and global level, making them much more relevant to the majority of people around the world.

Teaching uMunthu for global peace: Reflections on International Day of Peace, 2010

Note: This article appeared in the Daily Times of 22 September, 2010. It also appeared in Pambazuka Newsletter, and on AllAfrica.com.

As I was beginning a 7-month period in 2004 studying prospects for peace education in Malawian classrooms, a friend of mine seemed very surprised at the topic of my study. Why peace education? She asked. Has Malawi been at war lately?

I don’t exactly remember how I responded, but the question of peace education in the Malawian school system appears to me to be as relevant today as it was six years ago. And as it was probably since we first developed our own education system at independence in 1964. September 21st is International Day of Peace, and the theme for this year is Youth for Peace and Development. Observing this day prompts me to reflect on what I learned those six months I spent in 2004 visiting Malawian classrooms and talking with Malawian primary school teachers and pupils about how we can define and understand peace from a Malawian perspective.

A picture of how we may define ‘peace’ from a Malawian perspective started to emerge in my mind when I attended the inauguration of Rt. Rev. Bishop Thomas Msusa as Bishop of Zomba Diocese on 17th April, 2004. In his homily after the inauguration, Bishop Msusa talked about his guiding principles in his life as a priest, but it was his description of the Malawian philosophy of uMunthu that has stayed with me in the intervening years. The more I thought about uMunthu and its implications for Malawian life, the more intriguing it became. The only person I knew to have given serious thought to the idea of uMunthu within a peace framework was Emeritus Archbishop Desmond Tutu. In his 1999 book No Future Without Forgiveness Tutu argued that the transition South Africa underwent from apartheid to democratic Black majority rule was made possible because of what the South Africans call uBuntu. He grants that it was not the best of transitions, but he could not think of another way South Africa could have managed the transition without degenerating into a horrific civil strife. In recent times Desmond Tutu has described post-apartheid South Africa’s socio-economic tensions as a ticking time bomb, but his belief in the power of uMunthu as an African principle of being has not dissipated.

I was also aware of Malawian philosopher Harvey Sindima’s treatment of uMunthu as an important African philosophy, from his 1995 book Africa’s Agenda: The legacy of liberalism and colonialism in the crisis of African values. I decided there and then that I needed to look more deeply into this topic, and see which other Malawians had done research on the concept of uMunthu. To say I was pleasantly surprised by what I found would be an understatement. To be sure, none of what I stumbled upon talked about uMunthu as a Malawian or African peace concept, as Tutu had done. However I discovered that there was already a considerable amount of scholarly attention paid to the concept, by Malawian intellectuals such as Augustine Musopole, Gerard Chigona, Chiwoza Bandawe, Richard Tambulasi and Happy Kayuni, among others. I also recall seeing a number of articles from a column in The Nation newspaper, titled ‘uMunthu’. More articles have appeared in other newspapers and magazines as well.

It was a female primary school teacher who gave me insights that helped me make sense of what Malawian scholars have written about uMunthu, and in the process pushed my thinking in a new direction. I had been wondering how the concept could be thought of from an educator’s viewpoint, and this teacher didn’t hesitate to show me how. She began by giving examples of Malawians in high positions because of their superior rank and educational qualifications, but who did not seem to how practice uMunthu principles in their daily life. She asked, rhetorically, “Of what use is a university education if a graduate has no uMunthu?” She asked similar questions of Malawian bosses in various offices in companies and in government ministries, before making a statement that captured the essence of uMunthu and education. She observed that it was one thing to have an education, and quite another to have uMunthu. We could teach Malawian children all the knowledge necessary to succeed in life, but if we didn’t teach uMunthu, that education was incomplete.

Looking at uMunthu from this educational perspective raises several questions about how to teach young Malawians, indeed young people in any part of the world. It also offers part of the answer to the question my friend asked in 2004 as to why I was studying prospects for peace education in the Malawian school system. A number of peace educators around the world have argued that all education ought to be peace education. This is important, whether teaching a Standard 1 pupil how to read, or a final year university student how to analyze quantitative research data. The question at the heart of the education system ought to be how particular subject matter content promotes the values that define our society, and promote love and understanding, friendship and interdependence, empathy and community. That is where uMunthu-peace starts.

Educationist: Career of the Week interview, Weekend Nation (Sat. July 31, 2010)

An abridged version of this interview appeared in the Weekend Nation of Saturday, July 21st, 2010, Career of the Week. It was conducted by Paida Mpaso. It is reproduced here in full.

1.    Who is an educationist?

An educationist is someone who works within an educational system in various roles and responsibilities that facilitate teaching, learning, assessment, research, curriculum development, and policy among others. An educationist may teach in an educational institution, work in the administration of an educational institution or system, research educational issues, or make educational policy at national and international levels.

2.    What is the job all about i.e. what does the job involve?

Being an educationist involves teaching or facilitating teaching and learning at various levels of the educational system, starting at the pre-school and nursery levels, including primary and secondary school, and going up to tertiary and higher education. Other educationists might include school librarians, educational social workers, school psychologists, just to mention a few. Educationists also carry out educational research, administration of educational institutions and systems, and policy making in government departments, educational NGOs, and legislative bodies.

3.    How long have you been in this profession?

I have been an educationist since 1990, when I became a student-teacher and started teaching in primary school. That makes it twenty years. In those twenty years I have played other roles within the education profession: an editor of educational materials, a university teaching assistant, an educational consultant, an educational researcher, an academic adviser, an assistant professor, a peace educator, and a teacher educator.

4.    How do you look at the career in Malawi ?

Being an educationist is one of the most important careers one can embark on, in Malawi or anywhere. When I was growing up teachers were highly respected members of society, and they were well trained. Somewhere along the way that respect has dwindled, as has the education of teachers. That has affected the various types of educationists across the system. It is cyclical, systemic problem. If Malawi can solve the crisis in education, improving both the numbers and the quality of teachers, we will be well on our way to developing the nation beyond where it is today.

5.    What kind of jobs can one do under this profession and where are the services needed?

One can teach, or facilitate teaching and learning, at various levels: pre-school (yamkaka), primary school, secondary school, tertiary, vocational and higher education. The services of educationists are needed in the entire educational system, in the various educational institutions in Malawi, as well as in the research, administration and policy-making aspects of education.

6.    When you were growing up, is this the career you wanted to pursue?

Not really. I don’t remember if I had a meaningful desire for a specific career when I was little. But as an adolescent I wanted to become a writer, which I did, in some ways. Only I don’t write for a living, in a strict career-sense. I wish I could!

7.    Who inspired you to join this profession?

My parents. My mother was a primary school teacher until her retirement in 2003. And my father, who was a police officer until his retirement also in 2003, used to say teaching was the most important profession there was.

8.    Briefly explain where you have worked for you to be where you are now and the professional qualifications that you possess? ( don’t forget to mention the years as well)

I started out as a student-teacher under the World Bank-funded Malawi Special Teacher Education Program (MASTEP) between 1990 and 1993. During those years I taught at Chikande Primary School in Ntcheu. After obtaining my teachers’ certificate in 1993 I taught at Gunde Primary School, also in Ntcheu, in 1994. That same year I joined the Malawi Institute of Education (MIE) as an editorial assistant of educational materials. During my time at MIE I also studied for a journalism certificate in the University of Malawi’s The Polytechnic, which I finished in December 1996. In 1998 I went to study for a Master of Arts Degree in English Education, at the University of Iowa in the United States of America. I finished the degree in 2000. In August of that year I embarked upon a Ph.D. program in Teacher Education at Michigan State University, also in the United States. I completed that program in December 2006 and got my Ph.D. degree in January 2007. In August 2007 I was hired as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Peace and Justice Studies in the Department of Philosophy at Michigan State University. I left that position in May of 2010. Now I work as a teacher training specialist in the newly-started Malawi Teacher Professional Development Support (MTPDS) project.

9.    What makes you happy about your job?

As an educationist I am interested in how knowledge becomes school curriculum content, and in how school curriculum content is applied to the understanding and addressing of human problems. Human beings create knowledge on a daily basis, and that knowledge is sometimes used to empower some, and disempower others. I am happy when I see educationists making school knowledge relevant for problems of structural violence, structural inequality and social injustice. I believe that all education should be peace education, and should promote what I term global uMunthu; this means teaching for peace and social justice. For teachers in Africa, this entails promoting ideals of the African rebirth through knowledge production. I am most happy when I see teachers inspiring young people to create and acquire new knowledge and transform lives, theirs’ and others’. It confirms what my father used to tell me that teaching is the most important profession there is. Not that other careers are not as important; they are equally important, but teaching is special in that it influences us from our earliest stages of life.

10. In your opinion what makes a good educationist?

My opinion is that a good educationist should view the ultimate goal of the school curriculum as teaching for and promoting peace and social justice locally, nationally and globally. A good educationist keeps abreast with the processes of knowledge construction, regardless of the discipline. A good educationist inspires others, especially young people, to construct and acquire new knowledge, and make that knowledge useful for the solving of problems and the advancing of human life. A good educationist not only reads widely, but also shares knowledge through researching, writing, publishing, speaking and teaching. A good educationist asks difficult questions, and is never satisfied with shallow answers about causes of phenomena. A good educationist is always on the lookout for big, new ideas.

11.What advice would you give to someone who wants to be an educationist?

Start whilst you are still in primary school. It’s not too late if you are already in secondary school or in a college. Take an interest in how your teachers teach. Take an interest in what you learn in school, and think of ways to make school knowledge useful in your home, in your community, in your country and in the world. Read as widely as you can, especially books. Make use of new sources of information, especially the Internet but not forgetting educational programming on radio and TV. Write about what you learn. It’s when you share with others knowledge and processes of knowledge production that you become an educationist. And as my father argues, and my mother confirmed, being an educationist is one of the most important careers there is.

Beyond reading, writing & empowerment: Thoughts for International Literacy Day 2010

Until I started knocking on people’s office doors to ask about what was being done to celebrate this year’s International Literacy Day in Malawi, September 8^th, I hadn’t thought of how differently various people might interpret the concept “literacy”. Picking up the phone to tell a director of a ministry department about what I had come for, one secretary didn’t bat an eyelid to add “adult” to the word. It didn’t matter that I repeated the phrase “International Literacy Day” several times. And she was not the only one. Several people heard it as “International Adult Literacy Day”.

Obviously a basic meaning of “literacy” starts out as learning how to read and write, and in Malawian discourse, the type of literacy most commonly heard on the street and across the airwaves is “Adult Literacy”, Sukulu ya Kwacha. No doubt adult literacy is crucial an issue as is emerging literacy, what we teach toddlers in nurseries and Standard 1 classrooms. But literacy is an extremely broad term, and covers probably each and every area that requires specialized knowledge across the breadth of human productivity. Viewing literacy in this manner forces us to consider the importance of learning more complicated knowledge systems beyond the ability to read and write as a child or as an adult literacy learner. It is not enough to know how to read and write; one needs to develop life-long intellectual habits of reading regularly and utilizing modern technologies including computers and the Internet.

A crucial factor in developing and maintaining such intellectual habits is a thriving book industry.  There was a time in Malawi when we had what could be considered a thriving book industry, considering our development stage and years from independence at that time. When I was growing up in the then Municipality of Zomba, I had access to four excellent bookshops, and a well-stocked library, within walking distance. A Malawi Book Service bookstore easily competed with a Times Bookshop a stone-throw away from each other along the M1 road in the centre of town. At Zomba Zero the CCAP Church ran a CLAIM Bookshop not too far from the Times and MBS Bookshops, and straight down the road from Zomba Zero to Chancellor College was the MBS University Bookstore.

It was the same when I travelled to Blantyre, where I was able, in one day, to visit Times Bookshop, Central Bookshop, and a few other bookstores and libraries. Even when I travelled to rural parts of Malawi such as Mulanje, Ntcheu or Kasungu, I was still able to find well-stocked bookshops ran by the MBS, CLAIM, or Times Bookshop. Today, only the CLAIM bookshop and the National Library Branch still stand in Zomba. The Malawi Book Service and the Times Bookshop no longer exist. Central Bookshop had two shops in Blantyre and one in Lilongwe. Today two of those don’t exist anymore. When I visited Maneno Bookshop in Lilongwe in June, I saw more books from other countries, and very few from Malawi. It was the same at the lone Central Bookshop at the Chichiri Mall in Blantyre. At Maneno I saw children’s books from Kenya, and almost none from Malawi. At Central Bookshop I was told that people called to ask about the next issue of People Magazine, while stacks of Malawian magazines lay unsold.

There are reasons of political economy and recent socio-economic changes that explain problems in the book industry in Malawi. This is despite the gallant efforts of the Malawi Writers Union (MAWU) and the Book Publishers Association of Malawi (BPAM) to keep book production in the country afloat. The National Library Service has also grown in strength and outreach, as have several efforts by enterprising Malawians who establish private bookshops and open libraries in schools. The last ten years have seen the introduction of Teacher Development Centres (TDCs) that serve between ten and twenty neighboring schools, and libraries are an unfailing feature of these centres.

The most inspiring Malawian success story on the international science and technology circuit, that of William Kamkwamba, owes its origins to a TDC library. It is a pity that none of the bookstores I have visited in Blantyre, Zomba and Lilongwe recently stock Kamkwamba’s co-authored book (with Bryan Mealer) The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. Kamkwamba’s story always elicits jaw-dropping silence and attention, whether here in Malawi or in the United States. There his book has become a best seller. I look forward to the day when every young Malawian and school-teacher will read the book and feel inspired by how a quest to enhance one’s literacy and knowledge wowed the world.

Part of Kamkwamba’s story was made possible through the power of the Internet, in particular Malawian and African bloggers. Digital literacy is a must for any society that wishes to enter the 21^st century. Digital literacy involves knowledge of how to use computers, which can start with as simple a step as setting up an email account. It is disappointing that very few Malawian teachers have email accounts, let alone access to the Internet. This is understandable for teachers working in the remotest parts of Malawi where trading centres don’t even have electricity. But many centres that have electricity have seen entrepreneurial Malawians set up Internet cafes, with Internet charges as low as K5 ($0.03) per minute. I know of one teacher who taught in Kasungu in the early 2000s when there was no Internet café at Kasungu town. This teacher would take the bus every Saturday morning and go to Lilongwe, a 2-hour journey each way, so he could access the Internet. But I also know teachers today who reside within walking distance of free Internet access, and they have never used it.

Young Malawians, like their counterparts the world over, are taking to the Internet and 21^st century technology much more rapidly than grown ups. I know of primary school pupils who have email addresses, and their teachers don’t. It is the same with other educators in the system, and in the society at large. Everyone who has a business in Malawi has a cellphone, which they proudly brand on their products, shop walls and in newspaper advertisements. It is still very rare, in 2010, to see Malawian advertisements carrying email addresses and website URLs, notwithstanding the proliferation of relatively cheap Internet access in cafes across trading centres in almost every district.

This year’s theme for the International Literacy Day is “Literacy and Women’s Empowerment.” UNESCO in Paris will on Wednesday September 8 award Literacy prizes to women’s projects that are promoting women’s empowerment through literacy. A Malawian group, Coalition of Women Farmers (COWFA), is this year receiving the 2010 Honourable Mention of the UNESCO Confucius Prize for Literacy for its Women Land Rights Project (WOLAR).

These Malawian women have charted a new way of looking at literacy. They are challenging our stereotypes of women as helpless, hapless victims who are hopelessly disempowered. They are showing us how empowerment is not a one-way, transmission-style process, but rather a self-motivated aspiration. As Julius Nyerere once wrote, people cannot be developed. They can only develop themselves. It is the same with empowerment. Women cannot be empowered by someone else; they can only empower themselves.

A profile describing the project undertaken by the Coalition of Women Farmers observes that only four percent of Malawian women own land, yet 70 percent of Malawian subsistence farmers are women. But it is also well known that Malawian women take up the responsibility of providing food for their families. Given the food crises Malawi has experienced in the first half of this decade, and the surpluses of the last four years, the empowerment of women in land ownership is one way of establishing a social structure that could ensure that food is available to more Malawians throughout the year. Using literacy to achieve that goal reinforces the understanding that reading, writing and numeracy should not be for their own sake, but rather for greater transformation and socio-economic well-being. Literacy is part of the framework within which each of the eight Millennium Development Goals ought to be understood and integrated, if they are to be seen as more than top-down, donor-driven rhetoric. 

That is how we ought to look at literacy, and address what many Malawians see as the absence of a reading culture. We should view literacy as a process of not just knowledge consumption but production as well, embracing new technologies to facilitate grassroots participation and promote human dignity, especially that of women, children, and those with special needs. More importantly, we should use modern literacies for the promotion of social justice and uMunthu-peace.  As we Malawians like to say, kuphunzira sikutha; learning never ends.