{"id":1567,"date":"2012-03-22T08:05:26","date_gmt":"2012-03-22T08:05:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/2012\/03\/22\/dr-gopee-88\/"},"modified":"2019-11-13T13:34:01","modified_gmt":"2019-11-13T09:34:01","slug":"dr-gopee-88","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/dr-gopee-88\/","title":{"rendered":"Are we misguiding and failing our youths?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong>By Dr R. Neerunjun Gopee<\/strong><\/span><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Jan Kenneth Eliasson is a 72-year old Swedish diplomat and Social Democratic politician who has occupied various positions in the United Nations, and has notably been involved as a peace mediator in conflict situations around the world. He is due to become the UN Deputy Secretary General on 1 July 2012. While being interviewed by the BBC a few days back, he said that the real strength of a country lay in its having:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Economic vitality;<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Environmental awareness;<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Social cohesion (people living together in peace, their solidarity towards each other);<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Social trust (robust functioning institutions);<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Kids growing up and getting into jobs.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">He also observed that \u2018you need passion to make things happen, but without compassion many wrongs can happen.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">He said that he came from a modest working class background, and was the first ever person in his family who had gone on to receive higher education. He also explained that his own life course had almost paralleled that of and illustrated the development of Sweden, in that the country rose from being relatively poor about seventy years ago to being one of the most prosperous and successful countries in the world essentially through education.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">There is no doubt about the centrality of education in the development of country through the <em>proper<\/em> education of its citizens \u2013 that is, a combination of knowledge acquisition and application, skills development and character formation. This must start from preprimary level, naturally by methods and contents appropriate to that stage, both of which are then respectively adapted and expanded as the child progresses to higher levels in the school system. The system must be such that once he has reached a certain stage of maturity, there are exit points available for the student, and the country is in a position to find him a place where he can earn a living and be encouraged to become a useful member of society.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Those who have the interest and the capacity to go higher must definitely be encouraged to do so. The observation of Eliasson finds resonance in the words of the ex-Vice Chancellor of the University of Mauritius Prof Konrad Morgan &#8212; who was recently forced into resignation \u2013 in his interview to this paper last week: \u2018Higher education is the single most important national investment that a country can make for its own people and for its long term future.\u2019 He went on to add that although there may be no immediate discernible impact, \u2018the changes that are made in the young people who have studied at a <strong><em>good University<\/em><\/strong> provide a <em>lasting constructive influence of intelligence, tolerance and justice that permeates all aspects of society, from business through top personal and family life<\/em>\u2019 (NB: emphasis added).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em>\u2018Good<\/em> university\u2019 is the operative concept here; he must have known what he is talking about, what with the proliferation of universities that are being officially announced with great fanfare, and some whose degrees may not even be recognized by the regulatory bodies in their \u2018source\u2019 countries. For the sake of the students\u2019 future careers, the government has a duty to take this matter seriously, as they may find themselves unemployable with qualifications that are dubious and training that is more virtual than virtuous. A number of students in different fields, including medicine, currently find themselves in this situation, clearly having been misguided into pursuing \u2018studies\u2019 at institutions of questionable standing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">These are examples of bad education, and here again the remarks of Prof Morgan are very pertinent: \u2018When education is done badly it mirrors the worst aspects of bureaucracy\u2019 \u2013 and one wonders whether the hands of bureaucracy are being forced locally to grant recognition to institutes, universities and colleges despite available proof that they have no standing elsewhere, or may even have been expelled from other countries. In that case the colluding bureaucrats will be doing a serious disservice not only to the innocent students, but also to the country as a whole.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Future students must therefore be warned to be very careful and to get all the <em>right <\/em>information from <em>reliable <\/em>sources before they join any tertiary educational institution, a number of which operating or wanting to operate locally being bent only on making money by fleecing the vulnerable students.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">In this respect the responsibilities of the Tertiary Education Commission and the Mauritius Qualifications Authority are paramount, and if they yield to political pressure to grant recognition to tertiary institutions of dubious reputation and their <em>bidon <\/em>degrees, they will be doing much harm to the students and a great disservice to the country.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Students are warned.<\/span><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008080;\"><em>* Published in print edition on 22 March 2012<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Dr R. Neerunjun Gopee<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27],"tags":[103,19924,13709,8496,19925],"class_list":["post-1567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society","tag-dr-r-neerunjun-gopee","tag-jan-kenneth-eliasson","tag-prof-konrad-morgan","tag-tertiary-education-commission","tag-un-deputy-secretary-general"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/MT-Logokk.jpg?fit=1200%2C880&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8QzSF-ph","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}