THE MOST FORGIVING EXAM ROOM – BTV’s SET TOP BOX SHOW

There is no way one can discredit a matter of fact that Set top box exam is the planetary most forgiving exam in the history of the human race. It is an open exam room in which a candidate can be hinted; where copying is permissible and where a fellow candidate can aid another struggling assimilator with a solution to the problem.
On a scale of 1 to 10, can somebody candidly administer an approximate thought as to where a fair Motswana, young or old falls in so far as literacy is implicated? Are we genuinely an informed and enlightened state? It is heart aching and so startling to learn that Batswana in general are not an informed nation as evidenced by their dismal failures in addressing the questions asked during the BTV set top box give away sessions. This is an open line “question and answer” session lasting for about 10 minutes or so. By open I denote that any other person may participate and has an opportunity to win a decoder set showing BTV channels dubbed “SET TOP BOX”. with a moniker “MAMOSETHWANA” The examiners are overly lenient and motherly as shown by their heartfelt faces after one has failed to give a correct answer notwithstanding several open book attempts. They would try all they could to lead a caller to the correct answer but tearfully to no avail.
To the highest degree, Batswana are ostensibly incognizant of their country’s current matters. An elementary question like in which state is the SADC headquarters? A poor Motswana struggles and after such a long struggle would say Gaborone, and when reminded that the answer demands a country not a city he/she would hastily respond thus: South Africa. HOW? Has Gabs resettled to South Africa? It is sort of pitiful and sorrowful to pick up that and I at one point virtually wept for my beloved country when I was listening to this programme. We don’t even know who our National speaker is; let alone our ministers and their respective ministries more especially the common ones being Education and Health.
Not only does this cumbersome attitude pass off out there but inside Government business likewise. The principle of “Duty to be informed” in the public service charter is not in any circumstances fully heeded to; Administrators are invariably indebted to inform and inculcate various knowledge into public servants.
My bone of contention is that, all these are actuated by the undermentioned ethos: our relapse to attend kgotla meetings and seminars, our disinclination to partake in issues of national interests which I believe is induced by self-underestimation; we neither watch nor listen to both local and international news and the culture of reading has become our biggest antagonist. What we are good and upright at is sitting back and anticipating wonders and miracles from head to toe. Spoon feeding and getting handouts is what we are categorically good at.
Our transition from resource-based to knowledge-based system will remain a cul-de-sac owing to self-generated impediments or albatross to our own progression. If ever we desire to be competitive, we need to be informed. Illiteracy gap is a mere hollow that can be shut by self-eagerness and receptiveness to know what is happening around us and not necessarily becoming professors or obtaining PHD’s in various disciplines.
I would love to come to a close by perhaps prodding my beloved fellow countrymen to hold fast to a culture of discovering through reading and researching amongst many others. We are living in a High-Tec epoch which tyrannize hard and fast terms in our daily lives and as such we need to keep abreast with whatsoever challenge that we intersect or run into. Let me leave you with this simple question: What heritage are we spawning for our future and succeeding contemporaries? A legacy of informed or an inheritance of uninformed generation? I would rather intermit and accord you a decent time to mull over this crux. Take pleasure in your midweek.  Adieu
Keodumetse Kidoh Boikano- Office Administrator Rakops Primary Hospital
For compliments, comments and threats contact me on 71540828/77925645/73086752
Email: kidohboikano@yahoo.com