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NewsDay

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New curriculum should address our needs

Opinion & Analysis
A prophet, in most cases has no honour in his own country, he only gets to earn a lot of respect from his neighbour and in the process those of his ilk lose out in terms of benefitting from his talents.

The newly touted for education curriculum in Zimbabwe will most likely choke up the learner and the human capital that are at the point of its delivery. The changes that are coming with the new curriculum are too many for the system to absorb at a go. Stage theorists are most likely to be at odds with such changes because the retention capacity of learners is tied to their ages. If learners are overwhelmed by content, the law of diminishing returns will affect them. To include a plethora of foreign languages, as intimated by the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education in the curriculum when our own local languages have not been widely and fully embraced in the education system is just unfortunate because the acquisition of any target language, by and large depends on the learner’s full knowledge of his or her source language. While it is a fact that we are now living in a multicultural society where we are naturally expected to be citizens of the world, we also need to take cognisance of the need to be conversant with our own languages first before we are eloquent in a foreign language. A prophet, in most cases has no honour in his own country, he only gets to earn a lot of respect from his neighbour and in the process those of his ilk lose out in terms of benefitting from his talents.

Aribino Nicholas

Before we even think of adding Swahili, French, Chinese or any other foreign language to our curriculum, we should at least have an honest conversation with ourselves with respect to what we have done to promote the 16 official languages that are recognised by our new and progressive constitution. For example, Sign Language as a language for deaf people in Zimbabwe is taught in a just a handful of schools. Most Zimbabwean teachers cannot even converse in signed communication, yet our community has its own fair share of deaf learners. What efforts are there at the material time to consciously teach Sign Language to prospective teachers in all teachers’ training colleges? The efforts are fragmented, despite the recognition by the Education Act of 2006 (amended) of Sign Language as a medium of instruction for deaf learners. That aside, there is an issue of Braille for Blind learners, what has the education system done to popularise Braille in schools? One way or the other, teachers will always come across students who are blind. When teachers have not been equipped with the working knowledge of Braille, students who are blind may not meaningfully benefit from such a curriculum. With the trending topic on inclusive development or education, it is prudent that the curriculum becomes pregnant enough to accommodate all and sundry. Inclusion is about resourcing, if there are no resources, no inclusive education will play out, rather “dump streaming” will be the order of the day. It is critical that our education system should adopt a universal learning design (ULD) characterised by the development of a curriculum and the training of teachers to meet various needs in a classroom. The main principles of the ULD include the multiple means of representation, multiple means of engagement to cater for the needs of all learners, including those with disabilities. When a curriculum falls short of meeting the diverse learning needs of learners, it creates a fertile ground for school wastage.

Given these living arguments about gaps in the education sector that are already visible, one is persuaded to safely conclude that the new omnibus curriculum will, for some students resemble a pig’s tail which covers nothing. Neither Chinese nor Swahili is the missing dimension in our education system, because even if we were to build them into the new curriculum they will not be of any premium, as they are not the elixir to our socio-economic problems. A curriculum should essentially reflect the cherished values of a people, any curriculum that fails to celebrate where its citizenry are coming from or going is bound to suffer tissue rejection. A curriculum should always seek out to respect, promote, protect and fulfil the rights of every learner, inclusive of those learners who challenge the system. The teacher education curriculum should be reshaped to mirror the demands of the day and those of the learners.

It would be folly to belabour the new curriculum with a gamut of foreign languages when learners and their mentors or teachers cannot even use the local Sign Language and Braille for communication purposes. Essentially, education in Zimbabwe is available but to what extent is it acceptable, adaptable and accessible to different categories of learners? This is a million dollar question that ought to be considered by our armchair authorities. The resources that will be pooled for the intended changes should rather be redirected towards ensuring that the local languages are popularised. We don’t have, for instance Shona or Ndebele being taught in foreign lands.

English for us is a lingua franca, and does enable us to do business with most citizens of the world. Until such a time our resources permit us to be all over like a spirit, then we can expand our scope and enlarge our curriculum to include a number of foreign languages. The learning of foreign languages should be optional, not mandatory because they are not a sine-qua-non in our context. We have a lot of things on the table to digest, things that are critical to the survival and development of a child in a classroom in Binga. The introduction of these foreign languages has to be done piece-meal, because if it is done hurriedly it will be akin to the emphasis that is being currently put on the use of plastic money. Do we have points, for instance in rural areas where the use of plastic money will be implemented.

Utopian ideals should be departed from, people have to sit down, do their homework and come up with things that are realistic and applicable.

Aribino Nicholas is ZIMCARE Country Director