THE founding fathers of Zimbabwe were correct when they instituted Education with Production during the liberation struggle as the modus operandi for education in independent Zimbabwe. 

They knew that capitalism could never take care of the needs of the majority of Zimbabweans because in its very nature capitalism is exclusivist, it is designed to take care of a few people while the majority scramble for the crumbs that fall from the tables of the rich, those who own and control the economy.

Today (January 16) I came across a group of young parents who were complaining on the ever increasing demands by schools in addition to the ever rising school fees, they were unhappy with the long list of additional cost, among them ZWL$30 for stationery, ZWL$20 for floor polish. 

How many children made a class? With ZWL$20 per child how much floor polish do they buy, you don’t polish the floors ever day, maybe every other day, maybe once a week, so what happens to the rest of the polish, they queried? 

One of the mothers smiled cynically, ‘they are fundraising, they take the remainder of the polish home’. The parents were quite aggrieved. 

I was as worried as the parents. At first I thought they were wrong. 

It is time to stop accepting being victims in their own lives, time to stop being objects that are acted upon but to demand to be subjects who control their own lives.

Paul Freire, the Brazilian education for liberation philosopher, says the masses cry out:

“I want to learn to read and write so that I can stop being a shadow of other people, no longer part of the mass but one of the people.” 

Freire was not referring to alphabetical literacy, he was talking about being literate about your life, reading it correctly to understand it accurately and therefore be able to master it instead of being swallowed by the torrents. 

Thus it is time to be literate about one’s life, time to realise that the albatross called capitalism will not take care of anyone. People have to start engaging in their lives by stop being victims and actively mastering their lives and transforming them in their own favour. 

It is time to realise that it is pointless to wait for prices of goods to fall or for wages to rise.

School fees will not fall, neither will the prices of school uniforms, books, stationery or food for boarding schools.  

Schools should realise that they have scrapped the coffers to the very bottom. There is nowhere for parents to get more money from, their incomes are very far from catching up with the rising cost of living that has spun out of control. 

The only thing schools are achieving by these incessant increases is alienating more and more students who are being forced to drop out of school because there is nowhere parents can get more money from. 

This means we have reached a dangerous dead end. Is it necessary for things to get this far? Absolutely not!

As long as parents have hands and minds, students have hands and minds, they need not not have to be such a dead end. Education with Production is always an option.

Labour is the source of all human livelihood. Communities and schools can therefore work together to produce goods to augment the resources of the school.

This is not an imaginary idea, it was practiced during the armed struggle.

In schools during  the struggle, students erected their own barracks, made their own furniture, grew their own vegetables, sewed their uniforms made shoes. They met many of their needs through production. 

This was also practiced in Zimbabwe Foundation for Education with Production (ZIMFEP) schools after independence where they helped build their own schools, grew sufficient maize and wheat to feed the school and surplus to sell. 

They made window frames and door frames in metal work classes for their upcoming school buildings.

So this is realistic it has been successfully done before it can also be done today.

Parents do not have to be rich or does it mean that there has to be some donors somewhere in the background. 

Remember our people in the countryside looked after an army of thousands of guerrillas from their own coffers. There were no donors supplying food and clothing for the combatants. Our people did it successfully out of their own resources without external assistance.

We can still do it today for our children in our schools. 

If each parent gave a chicken to the school, there would be sufficient chickens to start a project to raise free range chickens. 

The children would look after the chickens and they would bring grain for the chickens from home or give them other feed from the school garden, the school can also chip in. 

There are no massive resources required here. 

The goal is not a project of 20 or 30 chickens but hundreds of them which the school can then supply to the community or the nation. 

There is no need to do small scale projects, if one has to start small the target should be to grow big, beyond the community, even the nation. 

Irvines is a clear example that starting small does not mean that you stay small. 

The Irvines chicken project started off in one of the bedrooms of their three bedroomed home in Waterfalls Harare. 

Today it is a giant supplying chickens to the nation and to the continent.

Once we invited a consultant, a soil scientist to advise us on possible projects at a farm which is owned by a community taking care of orphans. 

The first thing he asked was whether we had water. 

We took him to the borehole and after he ascertained its capacity he dismissed us as not so serious. 

His comment was ‘you are sitting on gold what do you want me to do for you?’ 

He said that if each community member gave a free range chicken we would be supplying the local town with free range chickens, quite a delicacy within a few months. 

He advised we could wean the chicks three weeks after they are hatched and the hen would soon start laying eggs. 

It was the easiest affordable project. He still advised community members could each give a goat. A doe can have a litter of three or five twice a year, the farm would soon be thriving with many goats, whose meat is quite sought after in the local town. 

The farm is suitable for ranching he advised. Cattle ranching would thrive, he would advise on the type of cattle for the type of grass and soil on the farm. 

In his report, there was not a single input from a donor, we could use what we already had, the farm and the resources owned by community members. It was simple and straightforward.

Communities are differentially endowed throughout the country. Different areas offer different opportunities, but the salutary lesson is, we can pool our resources and raise our children with pride and not as destitute people waiting for handouts. 

Schools need to respect parents as co-owners and co-drivers of the schooling projects and work with them as partners to create wealth for the schools so that each child can be educated comfortably. There is no need for things to be too harsh. There is no need for dead end roads for our children, we have hands, we have minds!

Bon Voyage!