Vision 2020 and the Education Factor

I’ve now been to many corners of Rwanda. The slums, the bush, the fancy business centers, the abandoned alleys, the red dirt roads, the cultivated hills. Sleek and shiny cars going 80 miles an hour. Worn sandals after a day’s and night’s walk through the jungle with sacks of coal, wood, or pineapple resting precariously on the top of heads. People eating bounteous feasts and people eating tree bark. I’ve seen fights, random acts of kindness, sadness, hope, acts of unbelievable strength, images of intense weakness. I’ve also seen many people come and go. Some stay longer than others. Into Rwanda and back out again. I’ve shared a house with many people, with many stories, all with a keen interest in Rwanda. And for good reason. Heated discussions are a part of daily life. Things are controversial, queer, fascinating. The more corners are uncovered, the more questions I have about this place.

Discussions with locals and expats alike almost always end up pointing to one thing. No matter how heated they become or how far they wander, the debates and disagreements more often than not go full-circle, arriving back at square one. What is square one? Education.

It’s time to talk about Vision 2020 – a trailblazing, cutting-edge governmental plan for restructuring Rwanda on several levels. I’ve been grappling with this plan for some time now. The Vision keeps an unwavering eye on the Asian “tigers” – those four developed economies of Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. The Vision was drafted in 2000 by the Republic of Rwanda’s Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning with these Asian “success stories” in mind. The plan is a goal for what Rwanda should look like – in numbers, in image, and in mentality – by the year 2020. The plan is rooted in a commitment to the idea that economic success can be achieved if “tiger-like” approaches to development are adopted. Having spent time in Singapore (I don’t know what my thing is with tiny countries) two summers ago, that place is fresh in my mind. I walk around trying to picture Singapore – a highly developed, colorful and clean, business-minded city-state – in Rwanda. Interesting thought. After all, there’s a skyline growing in Kigali at a tremendous rate. Last week, there was one day when I went out for a walk and every curb of every paved road in the heart of the city was being freshly painted. High-rise buildings are being constructed everywhere; water systems are being installed; more people have electricity.

The central focus of the Vision is economic development, but it does not neglect social and political development. In fact, the plan emphasizes the strong linkages between all three, and the fact that all three must operate together in order for progress to made. A good chunk of the plan is devoted to creating a “knowledge-based” population, and education is discussed at several points throughout. I don’t think approaches to education can be overemphasized here, especially when we’re talking about rebuilding Rwanda and other post-conflict societies. Actually, I think it’s hard to overstate the importance of education in any part of the world.

Education is not just formal classroom instruction. It’s not just field exploration, either. It’s not a major, and it’s not a grade. It’s an entire system with colossal political, social, and economic implications. It is a system that is designed, honed, and hallowed according to the needs of the particular country we’re talking about. It’s teaching young and old and everyone in between. One of the first things that was obliterated during and as a result of the genocide was education. The state of education before 1994 was also, interestingly enough, a cause of the genocide. I don’t think it’s out of place to say here that countless studies have shown a strong correlation between lack of education and crime. Take a look at education in the U.S. Crime, poverty, and high drop-out rates are clumped together in the same neighborhoods. War crime in Rwanda is no exception, either. Vision 2020 points to Rwanda’s goal to reconsider and reconstruct education.

Education in Rwanda, and anywhere else, takes on several forms: it could mean learning a foreign language, or learning computer programming, or learning how to install a clean water system in a village, or learning about methods of birth control, or studying the environment, or learning better farming techniques, or learning how to achieve reconciliation. Whatever it looks like, it is going to shape a society more than we can measure. Perhaps more important than building the capacity of the human mind, it builds an understanding of that capacity. Here’s what I mean.

A major reason why the genocide was so unstoppable for 100 days – why it progressed, flourished, and managed to toss the whole of the country into chaotic oblivion – was this: state of mind. Conviction. Such atrocities could not be committed unless the following thought was festering in the minds of millions: “Oh, here’s a Tutsi. I am being told by people I admire and respect that Tutsis are not human. Therefore, my reasoning tells me that this person - thing, animal - standing before me is not human. Why should I feel bad about killing something that’s not human?” This is the dehumanization factor. I’ve interviewed too many people who have told me that they and others were entirely convinced during the genocide that certain individuals living in a section of Earth in 1994 were sub-human.

There is something extraordinary about education: it reveals to us the sheer capacity of our minds – our ability to reason, problem-solve, illustrate, imagine, create, invent. It reminds us of the immense value of a human being. The philosophers many of us know and take for granted – Kant, Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, Aristotle, the list goes on – shaped our conceptions about ethics and morals, about individuality and individual value. Ever worked a calculus problem for 4 pages, applying theorems, postulates, theories, and rules of advanced mathematics you never thought you’d understand to finally arrive at one right answer? It’s surprising how our minds can work so efficiently, how they can sort complex things and categorize. So what’s the point? It’s easy to complain that “I’ll never use this in my life. Why am I toiling away like this? Why am I working an advanced calculus problem or reading philosophy? I’m never going to actually need to remember this stuff.” Yeah, but without really realizing it, we are learning about the capacity of our minds. We are realizing that we can solve things and reason about things that we never knew we could solve or reason about before. Through education, we are understanding the complexities of the human soul, mind, and spirit. Dehumanization becomes more unreasonable.

Also, consider this. Certain approaches to education have been criticized, especially in recent decades. Rote memorization, for example, is considered by many to be an ineffective and pointless way to introduce new knowledge to learners. Teaching everyone to have the same opinion about history or about a political system is considered wrong and even unethical. In so many ways, education is about teaching people to think for themselves. Being smart doesn’t mean being agreeable.

Another thing: there are many kinds of knowledge. Natural science, for example, is important, but social science is just as important. Humanities and social science are getting more attention in schools in Rwanda since the genocide. Policy is important, but psychology is also important. Rebuilding a country takes an understanding of human potential and human value.

I say all this about education because I think that in any society, whether it’s recovering from mass conflict or not, education must be given undivided attention. It must be defined and discussed. Its purpose must be clear. In so many ways, education is the bottom line. What you’re taught in the beginning, middle, and end of life has tremendous implications for your own development, for the development of your local community, and – I don’t think it’s a stretch – for the development the global community.

Sure, education geared towards economic development is good, but so too is education geared towards social development. Knowledge and skills? Yes. Don’t forget about creativity. Don’t forget about the arts. Don’t forget about entrepreneurship. Don’t forget about the humanities. Don’t forget about how each person on Earth has a mind that is capable of things beyond the understanding of that mind itself. We surprise ourselves.

Photo Captions (from top):

1. Rwandans walk countless miles (sometimes through the night and day, rain or shine) to transport products - in this case, large amounts of coal - from one place to another on foot. With the coming of infrastructural developments and a knowledge-based labor force, espoused in Vision 2020, these long journeys may become fewer in number. (Photo credit: Nina Losekaam, who was walking beside me at the time and continues to be a faithful travel buddy.)

2. I've included photos 2 and 3 to depict a stark contrast between urban development in the capital city of Kigali and the rural isolation of the countryside. Vision 2020 includes (necessarily so) discussions about development in both settings.

3. This high-rise very recently went up on a bustling street in downtown Kigali - it took virtually no time to construct and towers over the single-level shops, dirt roads, and private vendors below.

4. A single-building classroom in middle-of-nowhere rural Rwanda, where PFR held a workshop about restorative justice and reconciliation with ex-prisoners and war criminals, genocide victims, and local authorities who otherwise may not have been reached with this message.

5. Musanze Reconciliation Village. Villagers gather around PFR staff to talk about everything from farming techniques to methods of contraception to control village population size.