The roots of today’s high literacy

15 Nov, 2015 - 00:11 0 Views
The roots of today’s high literacy In the face of public resistance, Professor Nziramasanga still insists Grade 7 and O-Level exams should be scrapped

The Sunday Mail

In the two previous articles, I gave an overview of Zimbabwe’s education system before and after Independence.

The last article by National Hero and educationist Dr Sikhanyiso Ndlovu was informative on the quest for relevant education.
This week’s instalment also focuses on the education system from 1980 up to 1998.
In 1980, education was at the centre of a national reconstruction agenda and the following citation from that 1980 historic statement President Mugabe (the then Prime Minister), makes this agenda clear:
“Tomorrow is thus our birthday, the birth of a great Zimbabwe, and the birth of its nation. Tomorrow we shall cease to be men and women of the past and become men and women of the future. It is tomorrow then, not yesterday, which bears our destiny.
“As we become a new people, we are called to be constructive, progressive and forever forward-looking, for we cannot afford to be men of yesterday, backward-looking, retrogressive and destructive. Our new nation requires of every one of us to be a new man, with a new mind, a new heart and a new spirit.”
The history of education reform since Independence in 1980 was very impressive.
Government took aggressive and positive steps to redress the inequalities that existed in the past. Education was democratised; access and provision of education became available to the generality of the population.
The new policy resulted in provision of free primary school education which witnessed the increase of schools from 2 401 primary schools enrolling 81 958 learners to 4 504 primary schools enrolling in excess of 2 274 178 learners in 1988.
At secondary school level, the increase was from 177 schools in 1979 enrolling 66 215 learners to 1 502 schools enrolling 695 882 learners in 1988 (Education Secretary Report 1980–1987).
Other new policies made education a citizen’s right and barred the provision of education on racial grounds.
This had been noted by a Unesco study of 1964 of the Rhodesian education system and I quote: “As long as education for Europeans and for Africans remains separately organised, whether de-jure or de-facto, the quality of education imparted to Africans and Europeans will remain unequal, and the Africans will never contribute their full potential to economic growth.”
As a consequence of this historical fact, this is why Professor C. Chiome in recent times has written that the scenario deprived Africans their potential to contribute meaningfully to the country’s social economic development.
This is the reason why at Independence in 1980 Zimbabwe inherited an education system that was both colonial and elitist in nature.
Government, led by Cde Mugabe, went straight into broadening the education system so that it reflected a new political dispensation. The post-Independence policy spelt out three aims of education for Zimbabwe.
The aims emphasise that education should develop learners who are masters in building a new culture derived from the best of our heritage and history and that the new curriculum for Zimbabwe was to develop initiatives, self-reliance, innovation and creative qualities (Commission of Enquiry into Education and Training Report 1999).
In its efforts to redress the imbalances in the education sector, the Ministry of Education through its department for Curriculum Development, developed a curriculum plan that redirected the colonial education imbalances to the Zimbabwean context.
This resulted in the inclusion of Zimbabwean history studies which acknowledged the role of the liberation struggle for Zimbabwe’s Independence.
The first Minister of Education in Independent Zimbabwe was Dr Dzingai Mtumbuka.
He had been in the war of liberation and carried with him to the ministry ideas that had been seen to work in the refugee camps in Mozambique and Zambia.
One of his experimental ideas was education with production.
In a subsequent article, there will be full play to the exploration of education with production, for now suffice it to say, education with production was matched with teacher education (the Zintec programme), which was created to deliver as rapidly as possible the people’s teacher in the new republic.
Again, the key component of the training module included a community project.
This community project entailed teaching 10 adults how to read and write in the context with practical activities that resonated with practical activities in the community.
If today’s literacy rate of 92,4 percent is celebrated, it must be remembered where the foundations were laid.
Still acknowledging the need to transform the education system, the President reiterated to the delegates at the 2015 Education Conference and Expo in Harare that the country’s highest literacy rate should translate into socio-economic benefits to the nation.
In this respect, the President said emphasis should now be on promoting Science, Mathematics and ICT subjects.
He said: “Yes, we are some 90 percent up there in terms of literacy rate, but we have been saying to ourselves, ‘It is not just literacy rate that we are aiming for, but we would like to get the essence of what they call education at its highest level’.
“And for that, I am delighted to hear that there is a teacher capacitation programme taking place in science and mathematics; the areas that we most need and the areas also that are relevant to the present times, present age. This is the age of technology, ICT.”

Dr Lazarus Dokora is the Minister of Primary and Secondary Education, and he wrote this article as a part of series he is doing exclusively for The Sunday Mail

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