ANALYSIS: Bringing ubuntu to Zim education

15 Mar, 2015 - 00:03 0 Views

The Sunday Mail

Professor Boniface Chisaka, with Profs Crispen Chiome, Ignatius Dambudzo & Tichaona Mapolisa

Any curriculum in any part of the world is underpinned by a philosophy that represents the aspirations, dreams and expectations of the citizens of the given country.

In the 1980s, post-colonial Zanu-PF governments evolved a curriculum philosophy of hunhu/ubuntu/egalitarianism, which was espoused by the then Minister of Education, Dzingai Mutumbuka (1982), as follows:

The Zimbabwean Government educational policy objectives were fourfold:

1. To achieve an education process that evenly distributes resources among the learners;

2. To achieve an education process that evenly distributes learning opportunities among the learners;

3. To create a curriculum that teaches the one-ness of citizens and not their division; and

4. To provide an education system without social stratification.

The above policy objectives carry values and ideas that obviously promote the philosophy of ubuntu/hunhu/egalitarianism.

Ubuntu/hunhu philosophy would support a curriculum that entails the promotion of equitable learning opportunities for the achievement of all learners according to their abilities and interests.

No ubuntu/hunhu philosophy would support individualism, or achieving at the next person’s expense because working against other people’s interests or disadvantaging them in any way, “hazvina hunhu” in Chishona (which means that behaviour lacks human-ness or empathetic feelings). For in the ubuntu/hunhu philosophy there is more than just the egalitarian value — there is the value of empathy and humane-ness.

Ubuntu/hunhu does not, in our view, support the too abstract concept of “equality”.

What is supported in this philosophy are the realistic concept and practices of equitability (which suggest presenting learning opportunities to all citizens according to ability and interest).

Educational policy objectives

An education process should evenly distribute resources among learners.

In our view, learners’ abilities centre around three domains of knowledge/skills in life. These are cognitive, affective and psycho-motor. These would translate in real life to: academic learning pursuits; the pursuit of the artistic forms of knowledge and its application; and the technical and vocational pursuits in life.

Neither of these three is superior or inferior to the other.

A national curriculum which distributes resources equitably along these three areas of learning/knowledge pursuits achieves the “even” distribution of learning resources in the nation, in our view.

If our curriculum is divided in the five knowledge and skills clusters as proposed in our previous submission in these curriculum review series, that is, the sciences, the humanities, the languages, the arts, and the technical/vocationals, then there will be no waste in investing all learning resources in one area like the academic pursuits, where the majority of learners (more than 75 percent) are judged as failures or rejects at the end of the day, year-in-year out, as the case is with our “O” Level (Chisaka, 2000; 2002; 2007).

An education process should evenly distribute learning opportunities among learners.

In the study by Chisaka (2000) on the effects of ability streaming in our secondary schools, it was revealed that although it was not Government stated policy, most Government secondary schools in Zimbabwe, streamed their learners according to the so-called abilities which are measured on the basis of academic competencies, thereby completely negating the affective and psycho-motor competencies (Hallinan, 1994).

The silence by Government on the schools’ practice of ability streaming gave the impression that Government condoned the practice, thereby negating and contradicting an objective of its educational policy.

The practice completely violated and neglected the interests of more than 75 percent of the learners in our schools’ system.

As revealed by Chisaka’s research (2000), ability streaming has created a situation whereby only between 18 percent and 20 percent of “O” Level finalists are judged as a success story after passing academically five or more subjects with a grade C or better, including English, Mathematics and a Science subject.

In this case, more than 80 percent of the learners are condemned as failures, largely because the ability streaming was measured on the scale of one domain of ability, the academic domain of knowledge.

We want to believe that if our proposed five cluster curriculum is adopted, there will be an even and equitable distribution of learning opportunities; there will be no division of leaner citizens on the basis of one domain of knowledge; and there will be no social stratification of knowledge.

The five curriculum clusters of knowledge and skills will be treated as equal, and equitable distribution of resources and opportunities will be ensured.

Research has been done on ability streaming in the Western world, and more negatives than positives have been identified in this curriculum practice (Bowles and Gintis, 1982; Abadzi, 1994; Kelly, 1990; Good and Brophy, 1991; Hallinan, 1994; Martines, 1996; Gwarinda, 1995; Chisaka, 2000, 2002, 2007; among many others).

In the early 1980s, the Government of Zimbabwe had the noble intention of creating an egalitarian curriculum, which we believe was influenced by the philosophy of ubuntu/hunhu.

However, these intentions appear to have largely remained on paper and were not put into real practice.

The colonial curriculum that was meant for the whites actually attempted to align their curriculum along the three knowledge/ skills domains. For the African curriculum, the approach was to design the technical vocational curriculum in such a way as to demean this curriculum and make it inferior to the academic curriculum. This appeared to have the effect of making the black citizen shun the tech/voc curriculum and made them focus on the academic curriculum with the disastrous effects of promoting the interests of a minority of learners who are less than 25 percent of learners in the case of our “O” Level finalists nationwide yearly.

In our view, our school curriculum should be guided and inspired by our national ethos, our national indigenous philosophy of Ubuntu/Hunhu, which cherishes success for all according to ability, hence should provide windows of opportunities for all knowledge/skills domains in an equitable manner, as proposed in the clusters suggested.

Certainly no knowledge or skill resides outside these five dimensions.

Of course, in all these dimensions or the five clusters, we need to always include ICT, which is the knowledge dimension of the moment.

 

Boniface Chisaka is a Professor of Education and Research. His co-writers — Profs Chiome, Dambudzo and Mapolisa — are members of the Zimbabwe Open University’s Curriculum Review Committee Team

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