Category Archives: General

While talking to a friend on phone, she narrated to me how someone she knew wept in her presence because her daughter had scored ten (10) aggregates in the Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE). She was all too furious and preparing to launch an assault of ISIS proportions upon her daughter. To her, the young girl had failed. She had let her down despite all the money that was spent giving her extra studies as well as taking her to a top school.

I keep hearing such stories on a daily and they depress me so much. As a parent of a 2016 PLE candidate, I too went through a lot especially in the last term as documented in this article. Uganda’s national examination system has become one that favours techniques as opposed to knowledgeability. Many of the candidates left the examinations clearly convinced that they were easier than the ones they had been accustomed to. However, they too had a problem reconciling the grades they got when the results came out. My son spent some time kinda depressed, his classmate spent an entire day crying out to his mother wondering how he got the marks he got, while an Old Boy of mine narrated the same about his daughter.

For as long as you are educating your child in the local Ugandan Curriculum, you need to ready yourself to appreciate two things;

1. The examination of the students encourages more of cram work as well as toeing a pre-set line of thinking as opposed to giving candidates adequate breadth to contribute unique ideas and ways of thinking to the global knowledge bank. Why for example would you mark a child wrong for stating that Light bends when it is widely known today that under intense gravity, indeed light bends? The notion that light travels in a straight line has been surpassed by the studies in Astronomy that prove otherwise.

2. You can never use the exam results of UNEB to gauge your child’s abilities especially when it comes to soft/survival skills. Some of the parents wailing and showing a lot of grief about the failure of their children are the very ones who have in the past praised them for being outspoken, go-getters, critical thinkers etc. Show me which UNEB exam tests such attributes?

Let us analyse my son’s results for example. He got Ten (10) aggregates and the points were spread out as follows;

• Mathematics – D2

• English – D2

• Social Studies – C3

• Science – C3

Under normal circumstances, a pedestrian parent will rush to shed a tear and wonder why he never got Aggregate 4. However, let us look at the results in detail. It is very clear that the grading was way up there.

Basing on the information I have from some UNEB examiners, I learnt that a Distinction 1 in Social Studies (which was the best done subject) started at 96%. This clearly means that with a Credit 3, my boy scored in the region of 85% to 90%.

A look at English implies that with his Distinction 2, he definitely scored more than 89%, same with Mathematics. The Credit 3 in Science could very easily have translated to marks between 83% and 89%.

After analysing this, I looked around at the pass marks for most of the professional qualifications that we pursue and this is when I realised that even the much revered CPA exams that professional accountants sit to become chartered accountants have their pass mark as 50%. One of the parents that was so disappointed with their child has sat these exams on two occasions and failed to pass. What moral authority do they have to declare that their child is a failure? Are they trying to imply that they too are failures?

It is an established fact that the level of scrutiny, marking and grading for urban schools especially in Central Uganda is so stringent that pupils who would readily have earned Aggregate 4 are condemned to twice that.

Another issue disturbing parents too is the desire for their children to go to the traditional Giant schools. Most of these are religio-centered schools with over forty years of existence. They are ready to bribe even the gatemen to ensure that their children get slotted into those schools. This is sapping a lot of their energy and lowering the chances for legitimately qualified pupils to access those schools. Imagine a school having to cater for the following interest groups; The Founding Church, State House, Ministry of Education, Old Students, Cultural Affiliation …. the list goes on and on. After those interest groups have taken up more than 75% of the slots available, then the legitimately qualified candidates are considered. Huh!!!!

My son out of peer influence had chosen one of those traditional religio-centered schools and I chose to let him have his way. However, despite being told that he could still get there using other channels, I bailed out when I learnt that it has class streams with upto 100 students, the dormitory setting is no different from sardines in a can, there is no more effort put into extra curricula activities among other things.

I woke up upon this realisation and decided that I will not allow him to kill his sports talent as well as other life skills all in the name of having the privilege to join a top name school. I am glad we are in agreement on this (Mom, Dad and Son) and have already made a decision to take him to a school we regard as offering a holistic package of education under the local curriculum. You want to know the school?

Anyway, back to my point, YOUR CHILD IS NOT A FAILURE !!!!!!!

Follow @wirejames on Twitter

The year was 1992, a young lady in Rukungiri had met the man of her dreams and decided to have him as a life mate. She quickly conceived and they both were too happy and expectant. Unfortunately, three months into her pregnancy, the lady’s dreams were shattered when her husband died. Seeing herself through this pregnancy was just the start of a long and grinding journey that saw her struggle to raise the son she eventually gave birth to.

The hardships this boy went through while growing taught him to always fight for his right of passage to the next level in life. His mother wanted him to take on Arts studies with the belief that they gave him a higher chance of passing and entering the University but he had a different view. From his Senior One, he had been fascinated by sciences and Chemistry in particular. He always loved the experiments and read a lot about chemicals and how they can be used formulate various products. This led him to pursue Science Studies at his Advanced Level (Senior Five and Six) where he was able to pass and get admitted for a degree in Botany.

The futuristic thinker that he is, this young man realised that a degree in Botany would not easily guarantee him a job. So he begun thinking about what next after leaving the university. Since childhood, he’s always admired the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) and always dreams of working for them. He pictures himself adorned in those army fatigues with the Uganda Flag and emblem as well as a corresponding cap on the head. The day this happens, he believes he’ll have arrived.

Being the go getter that he is, he appreciated that his major weaknesses were having a background from a no-name family and lacking the relevant connections to navigate his way into the armed forces (any Ugandan mature enough knows what I am talking about here). So, he decides to create value such that based on that value proposition, the Army will not resist taking him on.

Mr. Mugarura Samuel

Ladies and Gentlemen, the young man am talking about is Mr. Samuel Mugarura, a 23 year old university student who has lately hit the limelight for his skills in making tear gas and bombs. One day, while strolling in the city, he came across a tear gas canister and the scientist in him got curious. He studied the ingredients on the package and decided to reverse engineer it using Secondary School knowledge of chemistry. That is how he got this idea. He is self taught in this area and believes a lot more can be done if only he is given an opportunity by the Government of Uganda to further his abilities.

I see Mugarura as an innovative individual whose values are a league above his peers. While the average youth today believes being given a job is their birth right, he believes that creating value should be the basis for getting a job.

The rudimentary Smoke Bomb being demonstrated

In an interview I had with him, he boasts of his ability to make explosives of all kinds with his ultimate ambition being an atomic bomb. When asked about where he gets the components to make these explosives, he is quick to share that most of these ingredients are locally available and all that one needs is to know the formulas to mix them. He uses readily available ingredients like Sucrose, Sodium Hydrogen Carbonate, Potassium Nitrate among others.

Having read his story in this article by the Daily Monitor, I was immediately disturbed by the attitude the University dons quoted exhibited when interviewed by the reporter. It is this antagonistic and negative attitude that tends to turn the would be centres of academic excellence into white elephants. Priding in rolling out PHDs that do nothing to address issues in society is akin to manufacturing toys for hapless refugees that lack food to eat. The mismatch in expectations is what has made many shun these academic institutions and only go there to get papers that will allow them get into a job.

To Quote:

“Mugarura is a student of botany, and not chemistry. He cannot claim to be making bombs,” Dr John Wasswa the head of the Chemistry department, a unit under the College of Natural Science (CONAS) said.

Is this a medieval mindset that Dr. Wasswa is exhibiting? In which century is he living in? Gone are the days when innovations were confined to professionals. How many youths today are developing Mobile Applications yet they hardly stepped in a Computer Science class? Are you going to trash them using the same pedestrian argument? With all due respect, this don needs to wake up from his slumber. The young man indicated that making tear gas is as simple as utilising Secondary School chemistry knowledge and with the internet, identifying formulas is the easiest of things. A quick google search gave me much more than I bargained for right from videos to tutorials on how to make tear gas.

Prof Muhammad Ntale, a former head of the Chemistry department at Makerere University, said although teargas is easy to make, the university is not into such business and “Mugarura could be out for cheap publicity” or “doing such things on his own”.

Time has taught me that sometimes there is no correlation between academic accomplishments and the right attitude. To find a highly acclaimed professor with such a demeaning attitude regarding an effort that a youth is trying to make without even taking time to understand his mindset makes me fear for this nation. I even ask myself, how many students during his career, has he pulled down from dreaming big?

As for the Kampala Metropolitan Police Spokesperson’s comments, those didn’t surprise me and they aren’t worth quoting on this page. You guessed right, the key words are; confiscate, interrogate and arrest. They unfortunately reflect what we have come to know as our police lately.

Observations

What do we pick out of this effort though?

Local materials have been largely used

Mugarura laments, “I have studied Chemistry for many years. These are normal things that can be done by anyone. You don’t have to be an Industrial Chemist to make a bomb. A Senior Four student can easily make tear gas. Formulas are readily available. I understand the fear some people in Makerere may have… If I am funded, the country stands to save foreign exchange on the importation of some of these products. I am apolitical and only look forward to working for this nation.”

This young man has read the times and seen how hopeless his peers feel when after graduating with honors from the university, they are subjected to endless months and years of joblessness. The University could consider harnessing his ambition and skills by including him in any of the various research projects that they already have. He is likely to bring on board a new wave of research that can lead to interesting breakthroughs.

A futuristic UPDF needs such innovators.

As for the UPDF, you have a factory (probably factories) that is into weapons manufacture. Can this young man be taken on as a cadet attached to one of the research facilities? He could save us the pain of having to perpetually spend on buying explosives that we badly need for our military voyeurism. The young man is simply looking for survival and has impressively expressed what he’s got up-stairs.

On the flip-side, I did ask him if there is anything else apart from Explosives that he can do and his response was; Fireworks, Tissue Culture and Plant Research among others. Let us stop the politicking, it is time to help this young man realise his dream of inventing for the benefit of society.

“Life is hard, can government come out and work with me?” he concluded.

Follow Mugarura @mugarurasamuel on Twitter

Follow me @wirejames on Twitter