Upton Sinclair
White collar Syndrome in education sector in Zambia
Introduction
The paper sheds some light on white collar jobs in Zambia education in Zambia during the colonial era and the subsequent challenges that the country faced upon attainment of political independence. It is divided into four sections. The first section is the introduction which provides brief information on Zambian education and the definition of white collar job. The next section discusses the main features of both pre-colonial and first republic in the education sector in Zambia. The third section, which is the main thrust of the paper, discusses the origin of white collar syndrome in the education sector during the 1960’s and attempts made by the first republic in addressing white collar syndrome. The conclusion is the last and final section of this paper.
Definition of white collar syndrome and overview of education in Zambia
The term ‘white collar’ was first used by Upton Sinclair in relation to modern clerical, administrative and management workers during the 1930s. Sinclair’s usage is related to the fact that, during most of the 19th and 20th centuries, male office workers in European and American countries almost always had to wear white, collared dress shirts. In another line of thought, Kabaso Sydney (2002:27) describes the term white-collar worker to refer to, “a salaried professional or an educated worker who performs semi-professional office, administrative, and sales coordination tasks, as opposed to a blue-collar worker, whose job requires manual labor.”White-collar work” is an informal term, defined in contrast to “blue-collar work”.
Features of colonial education in Zambia
During the federation, that is the period from 1953 to 1963, segregationist and inequitable patterns of provision for African and European children persisted. In addition, the focus was on primary education, with only limited secondary teacher education for Africans. Coombe (1967) has reported that through his extensive archival research in the Zambian archives, there were deliberate moves on the part of the colonial administration in northern Rhodesia in the 1930s and thereafter, to limit the provision of secondary education for Africans. The educational system inherited by Zambia at independence was accordingly underdeveloped. This forced the first president of Zambia, Kenneth Kaunda to launch a scathing attack on the British as quoted by Tembo (1978): As far as education is concerned, Britain’s colonial record in Zambia is most criminal. Her colonizers have left the country as the most uneducated and unprepared colony of Britain’s dependencies on the African content (p. xii). It is, therefore, not surprising that: at independence, only 110,200 Africans had completed six years in primary schools, and only 32,000 had completed the full primary course of eight years. At the secondary level, although over 8,000 Africans were enrolled in schools, only 4,420 had passed the Junior Secondary (Form II) Examination and a mere 961 had passed the School Certificate Examination. Only 107 had graduated from university, of whom four were female (Kelly, 1991: 13).
White collar syndrome in the education sector during 1960’s and attempts made by the first republic.
In Zambia the term was a replica of the Europeans and Americans. In particular the term began to be used in Zambia during the colonial era, when most Europeans started to employ Zambians to work as clericals, typist, office orderlies, cleaners and teachers in schools. The onset of the colonial period in the 1800s marked the beginning of the end for traditional African education. According to Fafunwa (1962) European forces, missionaries, and colonialists all came ready and willing to change existing traditions to meet their own needs and ambitions. Bhola (2000) has also argued that ‘the modern sector of education may have dismissed the traditional culture of education out of hand, and without thought borrowed indiscriminately from the West, irrelevant ideologies, missions, and methods of adult education …’. What is implied in this statement is that the current adult education curriculum in Africa is still modelled on the colonial one and as such does not serve the immediate needs of the learner in particular and the nation in general. The replacement of the traditional forms of adult education, therefore, brought about challenges to the education system in newly independent Zambia. How did these changes contributed to the white collar syndrome in the education sector? To answer this question, some historical analysis is necessary. Alexander (1971) observed that it was well known that adult education in Africa had been sadly neglected in the past. In colonial times missionaries and education administrators did not normally see the importance of continuing education. UNESCO (1964) in its report on education in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) wrote: An education system is a result of decisions made and designs laid down by past and present governments (p.1). Kelly (1991) admits that the above statement remains as true today as when Radford and his colleagues first wrote it in their report on the future development of the education system of what was then Northern Rhodesia. Several of the concerns that beset the demand for white collar jobs were necessitated by three factors. According to the 2000 Census of Population and Housing, Zambia’s literacy level was estimated at 55.3 %. The report further indicated that the problem of illiteracy continued to be more prevalent among females than males. The report further indicated that about 1 in every 2 females (49.8%) was illiterate as compared to almost 2 in every 5 males (39%) of the same population (MOE, 2008). The high rate of illiteracy has seen contributed to white collar job syndrome in the education sector. In that the Government had to encourage and support all those who finished their school certificates into education system, every one started to embrace adult education. According to Fafunwa (1962) “It was surprising to find a 35 year old doing grade 5, in that, Africans received education opportunities with two hands…”
The first factor was that Zambia needed many educated people to fill up positions that had or were being vacated by expatriates. Kelly (1991) explains that the colonial government had a pervasive concern about the production of an educated cadre that could not be absorbed into productive employment. Additionally, (Okafor, 1971), colonial administrators (not only in the then Northern Rhodesia but throughout Africa) generally preferred the uneducated Africans to the educated ones, who, they feared, tended to take educational planner today have their origin in events that occurred years and even decades before. In that regard, the challenges that the newly independent Zambia faced could be attributed to the education system that existed during the colonial era. The second factor was that the new government during its campaign for political independence, promised to provide more educational opportunities. A crisis of expectation was, therefore, imminent as people expected immediate delivery of more education. Thus this expectation motivated many adults to take part in adult education.
The other factor was that, apart from education being a human right, individuals themselves were keen to go to school and learn. These factors put a lot of pressure on the government to create more opportunities for learning. Indeed, the government saw this high illiteracy rate as an obstacle to economic development (Mulenga, 2000).
The third challenge was relevance of the adult education curriculum. Even after independence, the adult education curriculum available was based on the colonial model. This was the same curriculum which was said to be alienating students and stifling critical and creative thinking. In this curriculum, what was emphasised was the teaching of literacy where people learnt reading, writing and later simple arithmetic. As it has already been established, missionaries educated adults for liturgical purposes. Hence, the emphasis on literacy. Nafukho, et al, (2005) explain that the education system was changed to reflect the European social process. Colonial governments were interested in adult education in so far as they produced literate people who were used as collaborators and workers for their colonial enterprises.
According to Kabaso Sydney (2007:12) as reflected In “History of Education in Zambia” article as published by article base.com writes,” the Zambians were compared to put on smart clothes, they were put in charge of office work, in which they began to occupy professional, managerial, or administrative position. Such workers typically wear shirts with white collars. Those working in factories or doing manual labour typically had to wear blue collars, working suits and over rows and are therefore became to be called blue-collar workers
Conclusion
It has been established that history has a long lasting influence on what happens in the future. It has been shown colonial adult education positively impacted on post independent Zambia as white collar syndrome is concerned. The first republic worked out hard to fill in the workers in all vacancies that were left by the colonial government and a number of Zambians were employed on white collar jobs, thus the syndrome increased.
About the Author
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