Prognostication and literacy education: cave humans in the 21st C

The power of education lies is its grand ability to skill the mind to project and reflect experiences.  Outside of these twin-goals for education, it is apparent that the classrooms can only serve to re-create the dark ages 'caves' suitable to arrest human development. One's ability to look into the past in order to see the future- prognostication- is assumed to be a trait that comes naturally to all human beings, not a specialized skill reserved for a few. Literacy education is best suited to harnesses this skill and to bring it to live! We increasingly find that bad education based on oppressive-one-language norm, on the other hand, teaches multilingual people to stay in 'the here and the now' mental state--a trait well-known among children and other animal species.This assisted oblivion  also happens when we ask learners/students to regurgitate information and memorize answers in ONE  language  (information is stored in the short term memory space).  

There is no doubt in my view that prognostication is a strong feature among human beings. In Ghana, for example, there is a saying called "Sankofa", meaning you go back and fetch! Not only are we able to predict what is coming, we are also able to 'create' the future provided we have a glimpse of what it might look like. That is why there is a conventional wisdom that history is a good teacher. Yet, it only teaches some people as others  are not able to learn from it. Here's a question and answer session:

Q:  Is it possible to develop highest levels of foresight and hindsight if a language is taken away from you in schools?

A: Impossible. Language is the enabler of deeper levels of thinking. It enables our infinite intelligence  to be at work.

Q: So what happens to students/learners who don't understand the language the teacher uses? 

A: I and my Norwegian language education scholar believe that this is  a 'stupification' exercise for the children. The real education challenge facing Sub-Saharan Africa (more than any another region in the world) is that children do not understand what teachers are saying. Neither do most teachers understand deeply what they say to the learners.

Q: So there won't be reflection in this situation?

A:You are right. Education here creates an assisted oblivion.

Q: What about their foresight?

A: Impossible in the same way that  prognostication is?

Q: Are these children then made to be like animals? 
A:  I leave this to your imagination.
Q:  But are  you saying that students  taught for 12 years in schools are made to be like cave men and women trapped in the moment?

A: Language damage is more than that of armed  forces. I leave that question for you to answer.

An education that fails to ignite this power of imagination only creates cave men and women as the case was in the dark ages. The good news is that we can work to change the situation. 

As a student of life, it would serve one better  to sit back at the end of the day and visualize how the day has been. Taking some time once a week to flash back offers unmatched advantages on self engagement, knowing oneself, and reflecting on one's growth path. All great people in the world do this and then develop better insights on what is next and take charge of the next. Simply put, they are always intentional about tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year--some even go to the next 20 years. When one flashes back for the same amount of  the foresight time, the magic sparks! When you habitually do this (even when you don't feel like it), you become unstoppable and stay on your way to earning a life of prognostication! Not moment paralysis and procrastination. Every parent should know that the language, literacy and prognostication are related and interdependent. And see the argument for literacy as both a cognitive trait and social practice beyond the ink and paper.

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