DOI: 10.36347/sjebm.2015.v02i01.006

Pages: 37-42

Social problems are invariably addressed through politics, religion, economics, medicine and education. Education is universally perceived as the universal panacea. Literature, in the history of education, demonstrates that the faith in education as the universal remedy has now shifted to the institution of the „school‟ as the answer to social problems. Learning is now viewed only possible in enclosed institutions under the face-to-face pedagogy of the teacher, lecturer and professor. Learners are set apart from the community as they get institutionalized in exclusive communes or group homes called schools. And, in those exclusive institutions, they are further separated according to gender, ability and social class. Learning outside the school system was perceived as second rate education. The focus on schooling created problems such as elitism, segregation and prohibitive costs. The school has become the seedling of snobbish culture, social conflict and disharmony. The problem with the „Schooling school‟ is that it is a status driven system rather than being motivated by a sound philosophy of education which ought to be the torch that guides the approach to the business of teaching and learning. Professor Primrose Kurasha, a UNISA certified ODL practitioner, whose training in business administration is influenced by management and epistemological principles and from that perspective, she says, the advent of ODL brought education to communities beyond the margins of society. Therefore, through the Zimbabwe Open University (ZOU), she reaches out to students in remote places. ZOU delivers education materials on their door steps. In twelve years as the leading ODL practitioner in Zimbabwe she has adopted, as the basis of her educational approach, principles of management and classical philosophical ideas to run Zimbabwe Open University. This presentation makes sense of her philosophy of education.