The Sunday Mail
Aribino Nicholas
The Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education is on an opinion shopping exercise as the education curriculum goes under the microscope for review.
A curriculum essentially reflects the socio-economic, political, cultural and religious values, among others of a nation and as such the ideas and ideals of a nation should be reflected in a school curriculum.
A school curriculum is, therefore, a window through which a nation’s worldview of phenomena can be measured.
A nation does not comprise a homogeneous group of people, rather it comprises a heterogeneous group of people.
Ideally, a curriculum should reflect the diversity of its learners in terms of their capabilities and a sound one should be alert to developing learners’ psychomotor, cognitive and affective domains.
Learners who have challenges with intellectual skills should find refuge in a robust curriculum by pursuing areas in which they have a flair or at least this should be the basis.
Similarly, learners who have a flair in a practical-vocational field should also be developed alongside their strength, and this said curriculum should be pregnant enough to accommodate individual learning needs without necessarily being too academic to shut out the door on those ones who are not intellectually gifted. In essence, the set induction to this article is saying that an education curriculum should lay the foundation for the promotion and development of the heart, hand and head.
However, given that the head may not be fully developed then the learner’s abilities in other areas have to be exploited to their fullest potential.
For example, a learner who is not intellectually tuned in but has shown unspeakable talent in football or athletics should be helped to horn his or her skills through the school system.
This is where our current curriculum has been totally at odds with learners who have not demonstrated enough intellectual skills to pass their Ordinary Levels.
Learners with personality resources linked to the psychomotor domain have been neglected by the education curriculum and the generality of Zimbabweans have erroneously embraced the thinking that only those with academic skills have a higher premium in the socio-economic environment as compared to the other lot that is not mentally smart.
Zimbabweans need to rethink their mentality, revisit their values and strongly reflect on what is happening the world over and come up with a balanced curriculum that has a nugget of gold for every learner. In some developed countries like the USA and Britain, athletes live far larger lives than academics.
Learners’ personality resources in the said countries are identified as early as they begin their schooling life and as Zimbabweans we need to appreciate that the only thing that is normal under the sun is difference, hence our curriculum should be fashioned along the need to celebrate differences in terms of abilities.
A curriculum that is neither forward nor outward looking risks short changing its citizenry. Values that should be written into the curriculum should not be values of the elite, but values of a multicultural society that anticipates and at the same time embraces changing times.
No curriculum is timeless, every curriculum is affected by time, hence the need to move with the grain of change.
Pursuant to the above, a curriculum should not also be seen to serve the interests of people of a certain political persuasion.
While a curriculum is influenced by historical or political events of a country, its complexion should strive to respect, promote, protect and fulfil the needs and rights of the learners. Every learner should be accommodated in the curriculum.
For instance, learners may not fully realise their potential if the teacher education curriculum has not been tooled to enable prospective teachers to meet the individual needs of all learners.
Teacher training colleges have to equip their trainee teachers with a gamut of skills, values and knowledge to manage all categories of learners. In Zimbabwe, justice has not been served, especially when meeting the learning needs and rights of children with disabilities.
The majority of teachers in both primary and secondary schools have no working knowledge on the management of students with hearing and visual impairments. The former and the latter have additional needs which involve the use of sign language and Braille.
Teachers’ training colleges have not transformed themselves into serving this special constituency of learners.
Any curriculum changes that bring a fresh academic menu without taking note of the skills of the professionals who are supposed to be at the point of service delivery is bound to be nothing else but vanity.
The area of teacher optimisation, which happens to be the baby of the Ministry of Higher Education and Technology, should be considered alongside the idea of reviewing the primary and secondary education system.
Our government has been a signatory state to the United Nation Convention on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (UNCRC), United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACRWC), among others.
The above conventions extol the rights of the child and of persons with disabilities and the New Constitution of Zimbabwe (Amendment No 20) of 2013 shows that the government has domesticated the above international and regional instruments on the need to respect, promote, protect and fulfil the rights of the child and of persons with disabilities.
The implications for the new curriculum, given the above, are that it should reflect issues of democracy and human rights, say at primary level and then at secondary level, civic education for the learners.
In Zambia, for instance learners in primary schools learn about democracy and human rights and in secondary schools they are exposed to civic education.
The world today is experiencing so much suffering because of intolerance of one another and children need to be taught during their formative years that all human beings are equal before the law and that human dignity should be central to their existence.
Learners need to know as early as is practicable through the curriculum that they have roles, responsibilities and rights as citizens.
This is only realisable through civic education.
Cities and towns in Zimbabwe are very dirty due to litter despite our high literacy rate as a nation; the state of urban centres are a reflection of a curriculum that has failed to deliver on the civic education front.
Schools are extensions of communities and the latter provides unstructured education to their children while schools offer structured education to the children (learners).
The two institutions have to speak to each other in terms of values, for if communities value cleanliness then schools naturally should be seen upholding such values through the curriculum.
Cleanliness therefore, cannot only be a function of the school; it should be a cross-cutting value. Coming up with a new curriculum involves assessing, analysing and mapping actions (AAA) together with stakeholders.
The triple A exercise has to been done in good faith without any attitudes of high handedness from any quarter.
Gaps of the education system can be identified through a multip-ronged approach that seeks out the stakeholders’ perceptions of a healthy curriculum which is responsive to the socio-economic needs of the country.
Any curriculum review that takes its consumers or stakeholders for granted may suffer tissue rejection.
In the process of reviewing a curriculum it should be appreciated that many hands make the job easier.
Aribino Nicholas is the director of ZIMCARE Trust, an organisation which caters for mentally challenged persons in Zimbabwe.
