HomeOld_PostsFallacy about ideological neutrality of science and technology

Fallacy about ideological neutrality of science and technology

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MORE and more science and technology is not the panacea for our problems in the country.
It will not necessarily create more industries nor will it create more jobs.
This will not automatically turn the wheels of industry nor necessarily resurrect our shrinking industrial base.
There are political and economic changes that are inevitable and necessary in this land and these cannot be circumvented.
Why is it Cuban doctors are prepared to work in our rural areas and Zimbabwe’s sons and daughters are not committed to do so, but instead opt to run private practices or to work outside the country?
If science were value free, then there shouldn’t be such a stark difference.
It is not that we do not have enough science and technology graduates.
How old is the National University of Science and Technology (NUST)?
For how many years has the Chinhoyi University of Technology (CUT) been in operation?
How many thousands have graduated from these universities?
How many have graduated from the polytechnics throughout the country?
Have so many thousands of science and technology graduates established industries that have contributed to the national basket, have they created jobs, or are they job hunting themselves?
This is ample proof that the solution is not more and more of the same, more and more science and technology.
Science and technology are not value free, they are there for a purpose, for a particular society.
Therefore what needs to be corrected is the ideological axis of the science and technology curriculum and not the quantity of graduates.
This is why Cuban doctors can work for Zimbabweans in the rural area and yet our own Zimbabwean doctors shun the rural areas.
It is not possible to run away from ideology in any discipline, science and technology included, because they exist in a socio-political context and they have to be grounded in this context if they are to be relevant to it.
Science and technology are there to assist man to understand nature so as to be able to harness it to produce his means of livelihood.
They are tools, but it is the ideology of the particular society that determines the understanding and use of these tools.
The ideological axis of science and technology to eradicate poverty, to eradicate disease, to eradicate hunger, housing shortage, poor sanitation and to ensure universal clean water is different from the ideological axis of science and technology to maximize profit for those who have the capital to purchase machines and to employ others to make more and more money for themselves.
It is different from the ideological axis of science and technology to make weapons of mass destruction, to make weapons for chemical and biological warfare in order to annihilate those with resources they covet.
Just as the purposes are not the same, so the priorities are different, the interpretation of science and the modes of operation are not the same.
For these very grave reasons therefore, curriculum transformation has to start with the transformation of the ideological axis.
There is a reason why despite thousands of graduates in science and technology we do not have corresponding industries created and run by these graduates.
The reason is that science and technology are not value free, they are not ideologically neutral.
The scientist who is going to work to eradicate poverty in his country has to start by seeing the intrinsic worth of each of his countrymen, to love fellow Zimbabweans as who they are, to have empathy and compassion for their situation and to have a burning desire to put an end to the circumstances which bedevil their welfare in the same way that the freedom fighters felt for their fellow Zimbabweans and sacrificed everything including life itself to end the misery of living under cruel bondage to the robbers who had stolen their land.
This is the ethos that will make the difference.
This is the ethos that will make our science and technology graduates commit to use their knowledge and skills to eradicate the problems that ordinary Zimbabweans struggle with every day.
It is this ethos that will enlighten them and commit them to open a shoe factory in Nembudziya bringing employment and affordable shoes to the locality, a fish processing factory in Binga, instead of skipping borders because ‘things are too hard’ in Zimbabwe.
If they have the true feelings of heirs of Zimbabwe, they know that it is they and no-one who have the God-given responsibility to be at the helm of Zimbabwe, that the solution is not in abandoning Zimbabwe, but in confronting the problems just as the freedom fighters looked death in the face in order to wrest Zimbabwe from those who had stolen it.
When the prescription is more and more science and technology without firmly establishing the ideological basis, it spells a decision to leave science and technology in the hands of capitalist ideology, a travesty which even capitalist scholars can no longer defend as Ira Shor summarises:
“This myth of value free inquiry is common in my culture, but it also co-exists with the partisan nature of knowledge.
“Political forces in the US use scientific research to support their demands or policies.
“But, in schools and colleges, science, engineering, technology, business and many social sciences courses present knowledge as value free.
“If not value free, then these subjects are presented from an establishment point of view, students are trained to be workers and professionals who leave politics to the official policy makers at the top. – (Ira Shor and Paulo Freire:1987).
But this is not Zimbabwe’s model, such is not our heritage from the liberation struggle.
Dr Mahamba is a war veteran and holds a PhD from Havard University. She is currently doing consultancy work.

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