Loading ...Education at Buduburam: SHIFSD’s Concerns
Anyone present at the 1972 Commencement at the University of Liberia would have taken a great deal of solace in the following words of Liberia’s longest-serving speaker and former Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the University, the late Hon. Richards Henries: “Today is a great, high, and history-making day, not only for the University of Liberia but also the Republic of Liberia, for the world is now convinced that like many successful nations Liberia now realizes that education is the buttress to any nation”.
Arguably, products of the Louis Arthur Grimes School of Law and the prestigious A.M. Doglotti College of Medicine and a retinue of faculties at the University of Liberia have since spread far and wide contributing considerably in their respective feats.
Our educational system was indeed remarkable and Liberians could proudly make good ambassadors of so small a country that is ten times the size of Lebanon.
Regrettably, the pursuit of war as an option to capture state power has sent Liberia more than a century back. Every facet of society has suffered at the expense of destruction.
At the Buduburam refugee camp, education and the status of learning remain bleak. Classrooms are joked and crammed, commitment of the part of teachers is secondary due to lack of incentives, library facilities completely unavailable and the traditional enthusiasm synonymous to students’ upbeat mood tends to be tilted along a lackadaisical front for a number of obvious reasons.
The nation Liberia is on the road to stability and such an environment points to the fact that reconstruction, readjustment, rehabilitation, resettlement and reintegration have got to abound. Varied skills and trained human resource potentials have to be mobilized in that direction.
But with the existing trend, there is an element of juxtaposition to fill the gap. SHIFSD, is therefore of the conviction that various international interventions would be required to salvage the looming development.
At Buduburam Camp, there are many who out of zealotry are clamoring to enroll into schools: be it primary, Junior Secondary, Secondary, short-term courses, skills training for women and young girls especially out of school dropouts, vocational, professional and tertiary institutions.
Our concern at SHIFSD stems from the understanding that in order to return to our proper place within the comity of nations and in order to be seen as effective competitors on international platforms, we must first seek the academic kingdom, empower ourselves – so that such empowerment would culminate into all other things to enhance the work of so ideal a kingdom.
No country can ever survive without the requisite skills and human resource base to deliver in terms of the increasing demands and challenges our changing world is poised to bring.
Democracy in the new Liberia would only be seen credible if those structures that obtain in a democratic society are controlled, managed, administered, engineered and made implementable by trained Liberian professionals, academics, technocrats and the like.
The battle against poverty, disease and ignorance would no doubt be ours if the question of our shattered educational system gets redressed in a holistic manner. It’s the only way the late Speaker’s speech would attract real meaning.
