Prof. Al Mariam's Commentaries / February 5, 2023

 

Adafne has made Ethiopia the land of chatterboxes — first by suppressing truth,  second by suppressing education and knowledge, third by closing down all means by which truth is propagated, fourth by hiring silver-tongued spinners of lies and fifth by closing all avenues for the publication and dissemination of ideas and knowledge. Professor Mesfin Woldemariam in his book “Adafne.”

Prof. Alemayehu G. Mariam -zehabesha.com

Author’s Note: While this commentary stands on its own merits, I strongly recommend reading Part I, “Message to Ethiopian Intellectuals: A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste!” and Part II, “Message to (Diaspora) Ethiopian Intellectuals: Save/Support Ethiopian Youth/Education!”

“When going gets tough, the tough get going!”

Today, education in Ethiopia is in a tough spot.

Only 3.3% of students (out of 985,354) who took the 2022-23 high school leaving exam passed to qualify for university admission.

Ethiopian Education Minister Dr. Berhanu Nega announcing the shocking results last week lamented, “In education, we have failed as a country.”

“We” includes everybody!

Legend has it that NASA Flight Director Gene Kranz during the Apollo 13 moon landing mission defiantly proclaimed, “We’ve never lost an American in space; we’re sure as hell not going to lose one on my watch! Failure is not an option.”

But is failure such a bad thing, especially if it leads to innovation?

Elon Musk, the great innovator of our age and co-founder and CEO/Chief Engineer of Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink and The Boring Company offers an unorthodox view on failure.

Musk enthusiastically embraces failure. He says, “Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.” The best data for success is found in the analysis of failure. That is the simple secret of Elon Musk.

In 2023, we “lost” 97 percent of our students as they failed to pass the national school leaving exam.

That  is terribly distressing.

I don’t want to make excuses for lack of student preparation or want to appear as though I am defending willful indolence. But I wonder how many students performed poorly on the national exam because of “examophobia,” stress/fear of exams or test anxiety.

Nonetheless, Minister Berhanu in his press briefing appeared to defiantly declare in the face of catastrophic failure, “I am sure as hell are not going to lose another 97% on my watch.”

But the million-dollar question is whether Ethiopian education is failing because we are not innovating enough.

Should Ethiopians fall into the abyss of despair over such dismal failure on the national exam?

No!

“When the going gets tough, tough people get going!”

Better yet, when faced with failure, the failed innovate.

Ethiopians are tough people, and we need to realize tough times never last but tough people do.

We all need to roll up our sleeves, put our noses to the grindstone and shoulders to the wheel and innovate the hell out of our badly broken educational system.

Innovation is a huge part of the solution to Ethiopia’s problem of education 

First, innovation is necessary because doing the same thing over and over again (failing) and expecting different results is sheer insanity!

Truth be told, 2023 is not the first time 97% of Ethiopian students have failed the national school leaving exam. They have been failing over and over again during the Benighted Era of the TPLF regime. But that truth was a closely guarded state secret.

Innovation means different things to different people.

There are breakthrough innovations and incremental ones.

There are also disruptive innovations.

In education, “disruptive innovations challenge established norms and use proactive approaches to changing school systems in positive ways that include all students in the learning process.”

Great innovators teach difficult problems require innovative difficult-to-find solutions.

In other words, extraordinary problems require extraordinary solutions.

Extraordinary solutions in turn require disruptive innovations.

Innovation to me is first and foremost an attitudinal/mind issue.

Innovations cannot emanate from the closed or idle mind.

The idle mind is the devil’s workshop.

That is probably the reason most of us in the Ethiopian diaspora waste our time spinning tales of ethnic hatred unable to transform the “jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood” and education.

Indeed, the idle mind is a factory of negative thinking, defeatism, pessimism, cynicism, determinism, fatalism, herd mentality and groupthink.

The wages of an idle mind is intellectual bankruptcy.

Closed minds never open new doors of creativity, only serve as crucibles of brutality and cruelty.

The famous slogan is, “A mind is a terrible thing to lose.”

I would argue a closed mind is actually a very good thing to lose.

Innovation is birthed in crucible of  the open mind.

Innovation can be positive or negative.

To innovate, one must know what one wants.

Innovation then becomes action driven by deep and critical thinking and evidence gathering.

Passion comes when one works on the innovation relentlessly and with obsessive focus.

We should always seek innovation that promotes human progress, human rights, conservation of the environment, peace, tolerance, understanding and enlightenment.

Second, disruptive innovations to rectify educational failure in Ethiopia would require root cause analysis. That is to say, it is necessary to do systematic multidimensional investigations on the causes, breadth, scope, intensity and severity of educational problems. The 97% failure rate is the fallout in a chain reaction, that is the ultimate result of a series of events, each caused by the previous one. Such analysis requires considerable data gathering.

There are many approaches to root cause analysis.

I believe “failure mode and effects analysis” may prove to be useful in identifying the fission of critical failures in the educational system.

Speculating from afar, I would hypothesize the root causes of educational failure are likely to be found at several levels in the educational system.

The first level may be failure in student-teacher interaction and student performance and assessment measures.

A second level may be programmatic failures including poor curriculum, incoherent instructional processes and lack of teacher competency training.

A third level may be systemic causes involving educational leadership, organizational structure,  policies, practices and resource.

A fourth level of failure could involve external factors such as parental involvement, youth culture, media, family income and so on.

Third, innovations in Ethiopian education would be most effective if they are undertaken by a core group of dedicated and competent people with a creative mindset absolutely determined to change the world, at least public education in Ethiopia. Innovation requires a “clash of ideas,” and generation of the best and most practical ideas that could improve student outcomes in the shortest possible time.

To innovate in Ethiopian education, it is necessary to assemble competent and open-minded people from diverse sectors of society with unwavering commitment to structural educational reform. An open mind operates best working in team settings, exchanging and testing ideas.

Anthropologist Margaret Mead observed, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

I would modify Mead’s observation by adding, “passionately committed citizens.”

Fifty-five passionately committed revolutionary Americans attended a Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, and by sheer dint of political will created the United States of America, changed themselves and the world.

The Framers of the American Constitution were first-class intellectuals steeped in the philosophy of the Enlightenment.

Indeed, as enlightened as they were, many of the Framers were also benighted on the issues of slavery and women’s rights.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership (SCLC), 175 years after the ratification of the US Constitution stood in the nation’s capital and announced:

So we have come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and security of justice. We have also come to his hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now.

Dr. King and the SCLC changed America and the world.

A small group of passionately committed Bolsheviks launched a revolution in Russia and changed the world.

Above all, Jesus and his Twelve passionately committed Apostles changed the world as did Muhammed and his passionately committed followers in Mecca.

Fourth, my concept of innovation thrives on materializing a dream into reality.

I consider myself a dreamer.

I often talk about my dream of Ethiopia at peace and her enemies in pieces.

That should not come as a surprise for it is written “Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy and see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.”

Dreams are aspirations, ambition and ideals that could drive innovation and show the path out of misery.

George Bernard Shaw heartbroken by the poverty and malaise in Europe following WW I, in Act I of his play “Back To Methuselah”, poses the question to end all questions: “You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not?’”

Heartbroken by the failure of 97% of Ethiopian students on the school leaving exam, I dream of the day when only 3% fail; and those who have failed through diligence achieve success.

For I believe in no Ethiopian child left behind in the dust of 97% academic failure.

I dream of big things for Ethiopia’s youth, the Cheetah Generation.

I dream of the day when a young Ethiopian astrophysicist makes a breakthrough discovery in the understanding of “dark energy” and “dark matter.”

Why not?

I dream of a young Ethiopian molecular biologist finding the gene responsible for uncontrolled cell division and disable it forever removing the curse of cancer from humanity.

Why not?

I dream of the next Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs or Elon Musk coming from Ethiopia.

If South Africa can produce Elon Musk, Ethiopia can also produce its own and create its own Silicon Valley of Africa.

Why not?

These are no pipedreams.

When Elon Musk decided to revolutionize space flight and reduce its cost by 90%, everyone including himself, thought he was insane. He was not insane but a disruptive innovator.

The odds of me coming into the rocket business, not knowing anything about rockets, not having ever built anything, I mean, I would have to be insane if I thought the odds were in my favor. When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.

Boeing, the old, tired god of flight, which received twice as much money from NASA to develop cheaper space flight vehicles, turned into a dodo bird as Musk shuttled his reusable rockets to space carrying thousands of tons of payload  (61 successful launches in 2022).

Fifth, innovation in education in Ethiopia requires imagination.

Einstein is credited with the observation, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. If I had an hour to solve a problem, I would spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.”

He reputedly also said crazy is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Ethiopia needs young people who cannot only dream but also imagine and imagineer (engineer) the future.

Imagination is about thinking, envisioning and figuring out ways of doing things differently and better. It is the ability to think about how to do the traditional and conventional in a better way using available technology and scientific discoveries. It is about making the impossible possible.

In my view, most Ethiopian intellectuals suffer from lack of creative imagination and often live in figments of their imagination. The world and Ethiopia have changed but most of us are stuck in the past or suffering from arrested intellectual development.

An imaginative person will not ask why 97% of Ethiopian students failed the school leaving exam. That person would drill down and discover  how the 3% passed and what could be learned from the 3% to help the failing 97%.

For Apple’s Steve Jobs:

Imagination is the ability to envision something that does not yet exist, the ability to form a mental image of something not yet perceived by the five senses. Put another way, someone with imagination is open-minded and believes it is possible to achieve something thought by many to be impossible.

As impossible as it seems, it is possible to create a pass rate of 97%.

Apple’s most successful advertising slogan was “Think different.” To remedy educational failure in Ethiopia, it is necessary to think and act  different!

Sixth, innovation is a culture unto itself. In my view, a culture of disruptive innovation is the most effective mechanism in dealing with the fallout of failure. As part of a culture of innovation, we must champion the principle, “Ethiopian educational innovations for Ethiopian educational problems.” Educational innovation must be guided by core Ethiopian values. Ethiopians have some beautiful and enduring cultural and traditional qualities. The Ethiopian moral character is carved out of respect for each other, common national identity and pride in our history of independence from colonial rule.

Anyone who doubts the existence of Ethiopian values should ask only one question: When all of Africa came under white colonial rule, how did Ethiopia remain independent and indeed defeat one of the great European powers (Italy), not once but twice?

Though innovative ideas have no race, ethnicity or nationality, in education reform, we should strive for homegrown innovations and heed Paulo Freire counsel in “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”:

One cannot expect positive results from an educational or political action program which fails to respect the particular view of the world held by the people. Such a program constitutes cultural invasion, good intentions notwithstanding. The starting point for organizing the program content of education or political action must be the present, existential, concrete situation, reflecting the aspirations of the people.

Wholesale and uncritical importation of Western educational innovations and models could be like pushing a square peg in a round hole. Educational innovation in Ethiopia should take into consideration the present, existential, concrete situation, reflecting the aspirations of the Ethiopian people.

We Have Met the Enemy! Now, what do we do?

Many years ago, there used to be a comic strip called “Pogo” which appeared regularly in American newspapers.

The funny animal characters in Pogo lived in a swamp community, which figuratively represented the diversity of American society and issues facing it.

That community began to disintegrate because its residents were incapable of communicating with each other to deal with the most important and urgent issues facing them.

They wasted valuable time on non-issues.

One day, Pogo saw the swamp they lived in filled with debris and litter.

In reflective frustration he sighed, “We have met the enemy. He is us!”

We too have met the enemy in the swamp of educational failure.

He is us, all of us — students, parents, teachers, school administrators, local and national officials, faith leaders, civil society and business leaders.

We are the enemy who let down Ethiopia’s youth and wasted at least two generations because of our ignorance, apathy, indifference, lack of concern, disinterest, negligence and miscalculation.

We are the enemy who allowed 97% of our youth to suffer catastrophic failure.

Disruptive innovation in the Ethiopian education sector

When Education Minster Dr. Berhanu Nega made his tectonic announcement about the national school leaving exam, I instantly knew he had passionately committed himself to transforming the Ethiopian education sector with disruptive innovations.

To proclaim without evasion, equivocation and sugarcoating that 97% of Ethiopian students had failed the national school leaving exam takes guts, chutzpah, extreme self-confidence and audacity.

That is because his announcement is a historic indictment of all involved in education.

With that announcement, Dr. Berhanu not only named and shamed everybody but more importantly disrupted our national mindset and shocked us to the core of our consciences. He also committed himself to an irreversible course of fundamental educational reform.

That disruptive announcement caused many like me embarrassment. Others were outraged into finger wagging and condemnation of the government for what it coulda and shoulda done. Many so-called Ethiopian  intellectuals scattered to seek cover.

None of that matters. The truth genie is out of the bottle and no one can put it back. The only option is to deal with the truth, however bitter, painful and shameful.

I met Dr. Berhanu for the first time in the fall of 2007.

I chaired an ad hoc committee designated by various diaspora activist groups in the US to arrange a visit for Kinijit leaders who had been imprisoned following the 2005 parliamentary election.

The Kinijit delegation arrived in Washington DC on September 9, 2007. The delegation was led by Weyzerit Birtukan Midekssa, Dr. Berhanu Nega, Dr. Hailu Araya, Ato Gizachew Shiferraw and Ato Brook Kebede.

I have documented their extraordinary US visit in my October 30, 2007 commentary, “A Farewell to Champions” and October 12, 2007 commentary, “Truth Fest In L.A.”

I have followed Dr. Berhanu’s testimony before Congress and other European forums.

I had opportunities to interact with Dr. Berhanu when he asked me to head the ESAT advisory Group in May 2010.

The establishment of ESAT was an extraordinarily innovative act in providing an alternative voice to those opposed to the TPLF regime. It gave hope and expression to suppressed voices and viewpoints.

I have been a long time supporter of ESAT even as it faced organizational turbulence.

It is regrettable ESAT ultimately could not maintain its organizational unity.

I believe Dr. Berhanu will prove to be disruptive innovator in the Ethiopian education sector.

But I say that with a sense of dread and trepidation.

In his earthshaking announcement, Dr. Berhanu has effectively declared, if not war, his determination to sweep up and clean up an entire national industry and market of education corruption.

He has disrupted the profitable operations of corrupt teachers and administrators who have been selling exams, passing failing students for a fee and giving out undeserved grades, school administrators who admitted unqualified students; organized cheating gangs who steal and sell  exams and take over testing sites; misguided students who post exam questions online and share them by email and text; and lazy and corrupt bureaucrats who would rather sit on their duffs and push paper than get their hands dirty improving educational quality.

I cannot imagine the dogs of educational corruption taking it lying down as Dr. Berhanu implements his innovation.

I guess the gangs of corruptoids in the bureaucracy and the nattering nabobs of negativism will have their long knives out ready to chop up and bury any innovation he may introduce to improve education.

I am already hearing some trash talk on social media about Dr. Berhanu’s statements and analysis of catastrophic educational failure. For me, trash talk is a matter of mind over matter. I don’t mind and trash talkers don’t matter.

It is what it is. “Full speed ahead. Damn the torpedoes!”

The bottom line is we must fully support Dr.
https://zehabesha.com/disruptive-innovation-can-fix-failing-ethiopian-education-part-iii/