Thank you Alagie and Alieu for your contribution. The Gambian intellectuals failed the country in many fronts. These intellectuals failed in technological and scientific innovations, agricultural mechanization, and better healthcare delivery that is affordable and cost effective. I think one of the biggest problems of our education system is the production of so-called intellectuals who do not have critical mind to think beyond what they cram in university or college. It is this simple reason that we have seen intellectuals fighting to secure government jobs just to loot our meager resources. Education should give all of us the ability to be independent and self reliance by using critical minds to advance not only our individual aspirations but also greater aspirations and common interest of the people.
I think the new government should Look into system education system and come up with Student-centered learning system in which students will have opportunities to critically think for themselves and be innovative. Currently our education system is teacher-centered which allow teachers to spoonfeed students , thus it did not encourage critical thinking. Having a critical mind is indeed a key asset for democracy and national development. This is because intellectuals with critical minds are the innovators of ideas, policies and strategies that transform any society. The goal of innovations or policies is to produce greater success for greater number of people. This is not happening in The Gambia because right from the primary school, students do not have the ability to think for themselves since the educational assessment and learning process is based on teacher-centered methodology. The same trend continue to university of The Gambia where students do not engage in any meaningful research that would have significant effects on socioeconomic policies.
The current poor examination results of Senior secondary school Students is clear evidence that our education system is a failure. The poor performance is not only related to limited resources, (both material and Human Resources) but also the methodology as indicated above. With better methodology that encourage production of many critical minds, we stand at high chance to use those resourceful and critical minds to transform our country. Unless we change our education system, we will continue to produce so-called intellectuals who lack wisdom and critical mind to think about greater good for majority of our citizens. A democracy without brilliant policy makers, innovators, highly and critically skilled intellectuals will only produce corrupt system where citizens live in abject poverty, lawlessness and exploitation.
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