Nurture successive crop of thinkers to spur innovation

I found Dr Wale Akinyemi's proposition that where there are philosophers to stir thinking, nations advance, stirring in its own right.

READ: Elevate thinkers so as to inspire a generation of innovators

Dr Akinyemi expressed the need for societies to elevate thinkers if they have to prosper, saying nations such as the US is leading on many fronts because it respects its thinkers.

I agree with his overall proposition that societies must listen to its thinkers if it has to grow. However, I believe that the greatest danger facing modern societies, and Kenya included, is the prospect of having no bona fide thinkers within its midst to think for it.

Societies that have had thinkers had institutions that grew or developed its thinkers in the first place. Most of these societies had certain traditions and institutions that provided fertile soil for the free developments of the minds and intellects of gifted young people.

Think of Ancient Greece, think of Early Rome; think of Britain at the highest of its power. Think of France a few years before the French Revolution. Think of the earliest beginnings of the United States of America. Each of these nations had institutions that nurtured the gifted few to think and to grow.

The thinkers of these nations did not just happen. The societies which each of these great minds grew in valued knowledge. They valued things of the mind: things of the spirit.

It also amply supported institutions that educated these people. These institutions embodied and affirmed enduring values ideals, principles and moral orientation or perspectives that are define the dignity of man.

It is the early exposure of these and many others that helped to systematically impart into these people and a succession of generations respect for certain ideals, and visions that befits humans.

All of these nations have used public education as the chief instruments for providing optima development of the individual and dedication to common goals needs to provide the conditions and opportunities to individual fulfilment in a context of shard ideals, values.

Those who have been inducted into these values and ideals in turn become the guardians of the community or nations: some of them join various institutions, assume policy making positions while others join academic bodies and other institutions whose job is to think.

Those who join either state or church institutions are presumed to make decisions and execute them in accordance with the values, ideals and principles that affirm the dignity of man—values they learned while in school, from teachers and from interaction with the great books that have recorded man’s heritage over the years.

Those who join academic or media institutions and professions such as law or who practice opinion journalism are expected to help shape public opinion. As we well know, this opinion is expected to critique the efficacy of policy initiatives the government or other organisations take to address social problems.

This in effect means that the government, the church, the military, and private sector institutions sorely need thinkers at all levels of their respective organisations to steer them through the changing and sometimes turbulent and confusing environments in which they operate.

The leaders of these institutions need not wait for criticism from outside to address causes or steer courses that effectively safeguard the wellbeing of the people they serve.

This also means that for those in academia, media institutions as well as civil society are expected to dispassionately critique the actions and inactions of policy makers.

The danger facing nations is that they can easily and collectively ignore certain values that have defined the safety and wellbeing of nations. Values such as courage, honesty, compassion, patriotism, endurance, and respect for human dignity can easily be swamped by the mad rush for easy gains and material possessions.

The deification of material values invariably means that society can easily ignore the development of the mind, soul and spirit of its young people.

What we end up having with are men and women who not only don’t understand themselves, but also don’t appreciate the true meaning of the powers and privileges society has given them. They also stand the grave danger of not seeing things in a broader and long range perspective.

The logical consequence of all these is that many people come to have short range thinking. In this case, there is no thinking worth talking about. It is not possible to categorise most of “the thinking” we see around as the thoughts of philosophers.

We cannot look at the sounds and furies we see in the media as informed by any established ideological thinking. We cannot discern in most of these, assumptions that underpin conservative or liberal political philosophies of politics.

You cannot see in them any thinking that affirm the sovereign spirit which too much government in the lives of citizens ought to leave free to roam, rove and discover new things, new heavens.

You cannot see in them any thinking that says that modern institutions have become too powerful, too complex, that when left alone, they will ride roughshod on man and therefore ought to be regulated by governmental action.

The challenge for me is for nations to focus a little more in developing the intellect, the mind, the spirit and soul of man through provision of a strong general education curriculum in basic education institutions.

Only then, shall we be able to develop thinkers to prick our individual and collective conscience when we go wrong.

Mr Buhere is a communications officer, Ministry of Education, Science and Technology.