Educating and training in an Ideological vacuum: A critical explanation of the dilemma of education in Zimbabwe

Abstract

This paper is a philosophical study on ideology and its indispensable relationship to education policy making and implementation and its didactical dimension with a special reference to Zimbabwe. The paper points out that successive colonial governments and religious organisations of that era established and worked, planned and implemented their policies within the bounds of liberal-cum-capitalist ideological framework. Hence all their education and training institutions were built and meant to fulfill that cause. Post-independent Africa inherited that framework and found herself giving her citizens education that created useless school leavers. This paper will advance an argument that educating and training in an ideological vacuum stifles critical and creative thinking which is the sources and foundation of potential invention and innovation. It therefore calls for Africa to come up with an ideological framework that defines their contextual social, political, and economic condition(s) resulting in crafting policies that are relevant to their needs than repeating tired ideologies.

Key words: Ideology, education, training, vacuum, Zimbabwe, society