3.2. Conceptual framework
3.2.3. Public Education
There are several definitions that have been proffered on public education. The Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption commission Public Education Manual, (2012) defines public education as what the Commission does to raise anti-corruption awareness among the Zimbabwean citizens. Indati, (2015) and Ransomed and Newton, (2018) seem to agree that public education is also known as character education and its thrust is to deal with the concept of moral education (moral knowing), moral attitudes (moral feeling), and moral behaviour. Character education or civic education is believed to be founded on the aforesaid basic three components and also that good character is supported from knowledge of the good, the desire to do good and doing deeds of kindness. The objective of public education is to enable people to participate meaningfully in the development of their community, their nation and the world as a whole, (Deliversky, 2016).
Public education is further explained as programmed civic education which is designed to raise awareness to the public on disaster issues like poverty, disease outbreaks, theft, corruption, terrorism and banditry (to name but a few) with the hope to mobilise communities to prevent and resist their occurrence, (Truex, 2010).
Hopwood, (2007) affirms that public education (civic education) is a strong preventive strategy in combating corruption. This implies that a good public education programme should prepare the public for social transformation. For instance, if a society is under threat from bad habits in the form of drug abuse, casual sex, early marriages, corruption and others, the government should come up with comprehensive interventions that solidly empower the people through giving safe and sound solutions or mitigatory measures. Such measures are passed through public education and may be reinforced by sanctioning all illegal behaviour and acts so that those found on the wrong side of the law would not repeat. The Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission public education programme, is delivered in various ways including workshops, seminars, exhibitions, campaigns and others depending on the target group. In these educational activities the public is also provided with reading materials in form of flyers, brochures, anti-corruption hand books, disks which are loaded with content on anti-corruption. Of late, the
43
Commission has also adopted the use of digie-media where the public benefit through live-streaming of educational programmes on platforms like face book and others.
In its contribution to the 45th Session of the UN Commission on population and development, (16 February 2012) the Baha’i International Community said public education provides transformative education by giving new responsibilities to the people as well as making them protagonists of change in their communities and nations. This contribution made it crystal clear that an effective public education should be purposeful and well targeted to a group of participants so that those educated would take full responsibilities in tackling issues of concern around them like corruption.
In an almost similar vein, the ZACC’s public education as guided by the 2015 to 2020 ZACC’s strategic plan, was geared to reach out much more to the youth and women in general. The Commission was convinced that Zimbabwe with its 13,8 million people had 52% of its adult population comprising of women while above 62
% of the total population constitute the youth, (ZimStats population estimates, 2013).
With the greater percentage going to the youth, (62%) the Commission believed that its public education drive would have a stronger bias towards women and youth if the anti-corruption drive was to bear fruit. The idea seemed to be motivated by the assumption that, the future of today’s society would depend to a large extent on the manner in which public education programmes and methods were designed to realize the latent potential of youth as well as preparing them for the world they would inherit, (Baha’I International Community’s contribution to the 45th UN Commission on population development, 16 February 2012).
The above assertion seems to portray that the Baha’I’s experience on public education was central to the transformation of the individual and community’s life even though it was carried out informally outside the four corners of the classroom.
Thus, formal education needs to go beyond the idea of helping people to secure gainful employment because the people of all ages are under siege from public education coming through digital media, family peers, the wider community and other institutions which of late have a strong influence in changing societal values,
44
(Komalasari and Saripudin, 2015). This study takes a lot from the Baha’I people’s experiences which advocate for public education processes that assist citizens to recognize and express their potentialities while developing in them the capacity to contribute to the spiritual and material prosperity of their own communities. Indeed, corruption is a menace in the Zimbabwean community and there is need for the citizens to reason together and fight corruption in one direction.
Schmidt and Moroff, (2012) argue that transformative education (public education) should involve all echelons of people in society particularly in the development of public education systems and methodologies. No section of the society should be seen as beneficiaries of the education systems and processes without having involved those people in the development of the public education programme. This assertion makes better sense because most public education programmes in many countries have been monumental failures due to the fact that the target groups were not meaningfully involved and consulted during the preparation stages, (Stahl,2018).
To this end, most youths and women are on record that whatever is prepared for them in their absence should not affect them.
My study needs to dig deeper into how the ZACC’s public education programme is designed and the people who participated in producing and maintaining it. It would be very interesting to establish the profiles of the participants to ZACC’s public education programme as one might be tempted to believe that those in the corridors of power and authority could have exerted their influence in shaping the curriculum.
If this is the case, the study needs to go further and establish the levels of its acceptability nationally. Thus, Hopwood, (2007 agrees with Komalasari and Saripudin, 2015) that to combat corruption in any country, there is need for an effective process for exploring issues surrounding anti-corruption in order to make decisions that promote genuine participation, facilitate collective action and responsiveness to the complexity inherent in efforts to forge sustainable systems and structures.
45