Mahad Sh. Ali Gelle

With today being Independence Day, many will rightly celebrate the leadership, courage, and passion of the men who gave birth to this nation.  Our Founding Fathers were truly great men, but it was more than just their courage and passion that made them great leaders – it was their unyielding conviction to their values, beliefs and ideals. These men were not only some of history’s greatest statesmen, soldiers, activists, and revolutionaries – they were also some of history’s greatest thinkers.

Much has happened in the 53 years since men like Sayid Muhamed Abdulle Hassan, the 13 SYL leaders, and Aden Abdulle Osman Daar as the first President and Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke as Prime Minister (later to become President, from 1967 to 1969) signed the Declaration of Independence, framed the Constitution, and formed a nation.

In 1967, Muhammad Haji Ibrahim Igal became Prime Minister, a position to which he was appointed by Sharmarke. And yet, with all the advances in technology and academia, why is it today’s leaders are more “educated” but so obviously less literate than our Founding Fathers?

The answer is the intellect of our Founding Fathers were formed by, and highly developed as a result of something most of our leaders today don’t have – a classical education and high patriotism.

As we celebrate our independence, I have reflected on how far we have come as a nation, and yet how much we have to learn from our predecessors. Why do we suddenly think we know better? We’ve lost the tools of learning that have been commonly accepted for thousands of years. We’ve lowered our standards, and expected too little from our children.

How is it that colonists in the 1880s, many of whom had little formal schooling, had higher levels of literacy, more expansive vocabularies and a better command and mastery of a wide variety of subjects, than the average student today?

Read more:What went wrong with Somalia

Mahad Sh. Ali Gelle
Email:mahadgeelle@gmail.com