Liberia: Educational System Must Empower Learners

Considering the irrefutable fact that education holds the key to the development of any nation, including Liberia, it was unsurprising when President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, in near lamentation over the poor performance of the education sector in this country, silenced applauses at the Liberia Development Alliance retreat over the weekend with the bombshell: "My thinking is education is a big mess that needs a total overhaul."

Whenever economists seek why education makes a difference, empowerment is the usual answer that flashes out. No doubt Nelson Mandela once described education as "the most powerful weapon that can be used to change the world.

President Sirleaf, being amongst Africa's political leaders that really understand the critical importance of education for the future of these countries and for the hopes of their children, wants a total overhaul for the national educational system, which she often criticized for not targeting development needs of the country.

Liberia is amongst African countries facing the epidemic of youth unemployment, which experts warn could convert our teeming youthful population from an economic opportunity into a demographic time bomb.

Africans found in any poor rural village or urban slum share the view that education has the capacity to break the intergenerational cycle of poverty.

And, desperately poor and vulnerable people across the region rightly see education as a pathway out of poverty for their children.

President Sirleaf, who is in a hurry to restore and build a system that will catapult Liberia to catch up with middle-income nations by 2030, has worries galore that things are moving too slowly in almost all spheres of development.

Relying on facts that one additional year of schooling in a poor country can add 10 percent to a person's income; children of educated mothers are more likely to be inoculated against childhood diseases, she gets annoyed seeing education incapable of inducing the performance of these tasks.

The holders of terminal degrees in education placed in charge of national education disappointed the President by producing hallowed plans they said could revamp the education system. But non-implementation caused their downfall, thus continuously reverting to the drawing board.