The Sunday Mail
Ityai Frank Kurebwa and Thomas Gatsi —
If the psychomotor revolution is to be effectively infused into Zimbabwe’s learning and training, then curricula at all levels must be scrutinised so as to find out which areas have to be revisited, deleted or added on to.
This is the first of a number of articles that attempt to get the readers understand what the term curriculum means and its importance in training and education.
What is a curriculum? The reader may want to ask.
As an idea, curriculum came from the Latin word which means a race or the course of a race (which in turn derives from the verb “currere” meaning to run/to proceed). As early as the seventeenth century, the University of Glasgow referred to its “course” of study as a curriculum, and by the nineteenth century European universities routinely referred to their curriculum to describe both the complete course of study (as for a degree in e.g. Surgery) and particular courses and their content.
• The great Greek philosopher Aristotle categorised knowledge into three disciplines: the theoretical, the practical and the productive. This can be simplified as the theoretical component is known as the syllabus, the practical component is the process and praxis and the productive component gives you the product.
We can thus sum this up as:
• Curriculum is the body of knowledge to be transmitted
• Curriculum is an attempt to achieve certain ends in students — product
• Curriculum is a process
• Curriculum is a praxis
• Learning is planned and guided and is normally based in the school set-up.
Whilst the Greek masters of knowledge had given us a complete basis of coming up with a sound curriculum, modern day education practitioners and trainers have fallen far short of the ideal by either focussing on one or the other of four scenarios proposed by Aristotle.
Today we shall look at one such miscued curriculum and I invite the readers to check if our nation does not fall into that category.
Curriculum as a body of knowledge to be transmitted
Many people still equate a curriculum with a syllabus. Syllabus, naturally, originates from the Greeks (although there was some confusion in its usage due to early misprints).
Basically it means a concise statement or table of the heads of a discourse, the contents of a treatise, and the subjects of a series of lectures.
In the form that many of us will have been familiar with it is connected with courses leading to examinations – teachers talk of the sylabus associated with, say, the Cambridge Board, French GSCE exam or in our case Zimsec and Hexco.
What we can see in such documents is a series of headings with some additional notes which set out the areas that may be examined.
A syllabus will not generally indicate the relative importance of its topics or the order in which they are to be studied. In some cases, those who compile a syllabus tend to follow the traditional textbook approach of an “order of contents”, or a pattern prescribed by a “logical” approach to the subject, or – consciously or unconsciously – a shape of a university course in which they may have participated.
Thus, an approach to curriculum theory and practice which focuses on syllabus is only really concerned with content.
Curriculum is a body of knowledge-content and/or subjects.
Education in this sense is the process by which these are transmitted or “delivered” to students by the most effective methods that can be devised.
Where people still equate curriculum with a syllabus they are likely to limit their planning to a consideration of the content or the body of knowledge that they wish to transmit.
Learning, therefore, becomes a means by which examinations can be passed and the one who produces the best results to be regarded as the best educator.
Examinations which are also referred to as the terminal evaluation are thus used as a passport to future education programmes. It is common to find society equating how good a school is to the results they produce at either primary school or high school levels. The Press can even go further to highlight this by listing the Top 10 or 100 schools in terms of the results produced.
In Zimbabwe, in theory and practice one’s failure to do well at Grade 7, O-Level and A-Level examinations spells a “doomed” future to the learner as the doors to further education and training are all but closed.
Perhaps the following questions should posed:Should learners be taken as vessels that should be spoon-fed chunks of knowledge?Is the terminal examination the best way of assessing the learners’ capabilities?
The craze about covering the syllabus so as to meet the demands of the examining body has made learning irrelevant as learners are being coached to pass examinations rather than gaining relevant and appropriate life skills.
Basing the level of one’s capabilities on an examination is criminal and not objective when compared to looking at weekly and monthly assessment as a basis for terminal evaluation. Can we, therefore, say the syllabus which seeks to transmit knowledge set aside by an examining body is the best way to have a curriculum? Just think about it.
The writers are experienced educationists and psychomotorists who write this column in their personal capacities.
You can contact them at [email protected] and [email protected]
