Every 10 years, all the science textbooks should be thrown out. As the world changes and as more scientific knowledge is unlocked we find that science constantly turns out to be wrong or has to be updated. In 1970 for instance, everyone thought we were going through global cooling. That changed.
In the 1970s everyone wrote books on how the world would have no food by 1980. Then in 1980 many thought a personal computer would be useless. Things that were science fiction 10 years ago, are now facts today and our children are still using the same textbooks that our parents used. The world is changing at so fast a pace that our education system can’t keep up.
In a competitive world that now requires a skilled workforce, we guarantee that our children will fall behind the rest of the world when we leave all their education to an system that was designed for the 90s. It’s going to be a while before we can expect policy to catch up so right now, our only hope, it seems is technology.
But sad thing is that this is not the only problem we have: Zimbabwe’s literacy rate is declining, the pass rates are dropping, tuition fees are soaring, we have hundreds of primary school children who are out of school (and that number is rising) and the percentage of children who complete their education is declining.
On the 25th and 26th October we shall be hosting our first hackathon and our theme shall be “Education”. We are very eager to see the kind of solutions the local developers can build for these real problems in our education system.
What makes our hackathon different from any other hackathon that’s been held before is the level of post-hackathon support we can offer.
The frustration we have had with every other hackathon that’s been held before ours is the number of bright and promising solutions that never market it to market. This is evidence of the lack of post-hackathon support that’s been there all this time.
To us, this hackathon is just a means to an end. Our bigger goal is to identify projects we can already start incubating in our space.
In the next few days we shall be sharing more information about the prizes we have for the winning participants and the different organisations we have partnered with
We have limited places so if you are interested in participating, make sure register on www.muzindaumuzihub.com. If you have any questions, then you can join the conversation on Twitter.
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7 comments
Mr Kembo. I suggest you do not “throw” these text books. Did you
actually proofread your article before posting it or its just one of
those “I just have to say something”. Come on, you can do better than
this am sure.
I’ve corrected that. Thanks for noticing
Word and many wordprocessors are easy. Check your grammar for you.
That said,wish you all the best!
Let’s learn to go over our articles before we throw them out for consumption.It seems Mr Kembo has failed to master the contents in the old books.
touché
coz he threw them away…kkkk
Most fundamentals of science and engineering do not fade away. I learnt about pipe-lining, parallel processing, muti-tasking OS and cellular principles in the late 70’s. The principles still apply and from an education point of view, the books are still valid. The photographs might have changes, but principles,,,nah. Is it also possible to provide more info about Muzinda Umuzi Hub (i.e. the chaps behind it, funding model, current location, when it will fly etc,