Form One selection, university selection and Malawi School Certificate of Education examination results unveil discrimination in our public secondary schools.
The system is rigged and it eliminates children living in poverty. As educators and policy makers renew their commitment to justice, equality and humanisation, there is an urgent need to have conversations about desegregation and decolonisation.
Public secondary schools in Malawi must be run indiscriminately as community secondary schools. Grading public secondary schools is hypocritical, scandalous and undesirable.
Two-tier, three-tier and four-tier systems in public secondary schools of the same country are an indication of a dehumanising and retrogressive schooling system.
The history of secondary education in Malawi acknowledges the indispensable role of missions in education but suggests that the country inherited a defective schooling system.
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Celebrated historians D.D. Phiri and Kelvin Banda unpack how missions and the colonial government provided an inferior education to Africans relative to whites.
Moreover, the colonial government and some missions were unwilling to provide secondary education for Africans. Lamentably, when an opportunity for secondary school education was provided in the early 1940s, secondary education was for the elite.
From this inequitable introduction of secondary schools, policy makers and educators have failed to design and redesign a secondary school system that would include the masses.
The funding and allocation of public resources including teachers has remained discriminate.
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Consequently, policy makers have reproduced a stratified and oppressive model of secondary education without attempting to interrupt and disrupt it.
Yet, working for social justice demands disrupting policies that work for some while leaving others underserved.
Marxists, encyclical letters of Popes and pastoral letters of the Episcopal Conference of Malawi affirm that the wealthy and the powerful obtain their privileges from exploiting the working-class masses.
A closer examination of several secondary schools will reveal how they started with public resources or how they are run with public funds but are inaccessible to children from struggling households.
Put succinctly, there are public secondary schools that are not public. The history and administration of several schools illustrate how the ruling class appropriate and privatise government resources.
In Decolonising the Mind, revered novelist and essayist Ngugi wa Thiong’o fails to understand how Dr Kamuzu Banda fought colonialism but maintained colonial elements by erecting monumental schools.
Worrisomely, mainstream churches have not been spared from the syndrome of harnessing resources towards certain sections of the student population while trapping masses of children from struggling households in failing schools. This is a contradiction.
A deliberate effort from government, churches and the corporate world can create a public education system that does not discriminate.
A great way to confront the discrimination is by creating indiscriminate public schools that are run as community secondary schools.
Philosophies that promote solidarity such as Umunthu, Ujamaa, and Kantianism provide much inspiration. These philosophies cast light on how to live as a community whose character is defined by collaboration, care and compassion.
This article is also inspired by Pope Francis. In his October 2020 encyclical letter Fratelli Tutti the Pope argues that to build a better, more just and peaceful world, we must live in fraternity as brothers and sisters.
More inspiration comes from the March 2022 Lenten pastoral letter Celebrating 30 Years of Pastoral Letter ‘Living our faith’, of the Episcopal Conference of Malawi.
The Catholic bishops expressed the aspiration to see children from both affluent and struggling families receiving the same education.
Who would wish to send their ward to a low-tier school while public resources are being directed towards other children in higher-tier schools?
It must be emphasised that no one can be authentically advantaged through exploitation and dehumanisation of others.
Discrimination is inherently evil and a society that perpetuates injustice shall be haunted by those very injustices.
Children whose advantages come from disadvantaging others will have defective notions of social justice, will be ill prepared to solve inequities and bring about social change.
To humanise all learners, Malawi needs indiscriminate community secondary schools.
