This means that the educational system of Tanzania must emphasize cooperative endeavor, not individual advancement; it must stress concepts of equality and the responsibility to give service which goes with any special ability, whether it be in carpentry, in animal husbandry, or in academic pursuits. And in particular, our education must counteract the temptation to intellectual arrogance; for this leads to the well-educated despising those whose abilities are non-academic or who have no special abilities but are just human beings. Such arrogance has no place in a society of equal citizens.
The virtue of solidarity is obviously important here, and it is a virtue to be cultivated in school communities, where students contribute to the common good of all. Nyerere's words provide a huge challenge to late modern industrial society which is so marked by individualism and competition.
This does not mean that education in Tanzania should be designed just to produce passive agricultural workers of different levels of skill who simply carry out plans or directions received from above. It must produce good farmers; it has to prepare people for their responsibilities as free workers and citizens n a free and democratic society... They must be able to think for themselves, to make judgments on all the issues affecting them; they have to be able to interpret the decisions made through democratic institutions of our society, and to implement them in the light of peculiar local circumstances where they happen to live. It would thus be a gross misinterpretation of our needs to suggest that the educational system should be designed to produce robots who work hard but never question the leaders in Government or TANU [Tanganyika African National Union party] are doing or saying.
The above quotation is another great one -- It is reminiscent of Catholic Action in Europe, and it certainly echoes Blessed Pope John XXIII's idea in Mater et Magistra commending the threefold action relative to social justice: see-judge-act (para. 236).
In the quotation that follows, Nyerere makes it clear that education is about the development of individuals for democratic citizenship:
The education provided must therefore encourage the development in each citizen of three things: an enquiring mind; an ability to learn from what others do, and reject or adapt to his own needs; and a basic confidence in his own position as a free and equal member of the society, who values others and is valued by them for what he does and not for what he obtains.
Nyerere would have had a great conversation with Paolo Freire, a contemporary on another continent. Like Freire, Nyerere sees educating as a moral and political act. What he advocates is a sort of system in which students are treated like subjects rather than objects.
I'll be reading more, I know.
Malkia wa Amani: Utuombe.
****31 March: FYI "Mwalimu" is "Teacher"
