Last week the great and the good of this
great land converged in Nairobi to talk about how our children are educated. A
conversation about our education is nearly two decades late. We must all be
delighted that we now have a real chance to prepare our children for the
future.
We all now appreciate in this competitive,
post-knowledge global economy primacy will belong to societies with the
best-educated population. As far as we know today, innovation and creativity, critical
thinking and analytical reasoning, communication and teamwork are the
attributes that will underwrite individual flourishing and national prosperity.
Moreover, the delivery mechanism of education, the curriculum, must be adaptive
and nimble, not dogmatic and onerous.
The spirit and intent of the Kenya’s
curriculum reform is both encouraging and laudable. When he spoke at Kibabii
University last year, President Kenyatta pledged that the new curriculum would
make education relevant to the lives of the learners. When he officiated at the
curriculum conference last week, Deputy President William Ruto said the new
curriculum would be responsive to market needs. In his impassioned remarks the
head of Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development, Dr. Julius Jwan, reassured
the public that the new curriculum would be focused on developing critical
knowledge, skills and attitudes. This would be a fundamental and welcome
departure from the current emphasis on rote learning and regurgitation.
I have argued in this column that in the 21st
century, a high school education must be the birthright of every child born in
this country, not a privilege of the well to do few. I am delighted that the
proposed curriculum allows all children to transition from primary to secondary
school. Moreover, assessments will be formative to evaluate learning
achievement rather, as opposed to the current system of national standardized
tests, which privilege rote learning and incentivize cheating.
I have a good feeling about the direction
our curriculum is taking. I am especially delighted that the focus on learning
is unequivocal. The raison d’etre or the sole purpose of the curriculum is
enable learners acquire knowledge, skills and attitudes that will enable them
to thrive and flourish in a competitive globalized world. The curriculum
intends that education is about knowledge learning and application of
knowledge. The emphasis on numeracy, reading and writing in the early school
years is especially laudable.
However, I am
mindful that nearly all of the things that I find especially progressive in the
proposed curriculum were said about the 8-4-4 system 31 years ago. Why has the
8-4-4 curriculum failed? I think it is
not too late to answer this question. Lets not be too quick to invest massive
resources in curriculum change when the problem in our education lies
elsewhere.
The real problem is
that our children are not learning. This has everything to do with teachers and
the quality of teaching, pedagogical approaches and much less with the elegance
of the curriculum. The proof of a curriculum is in learning outcomes. A great
curriculum does not inevitably produce learning. Great teachers produce great
learning outcomes. Perhaps this is where we ought to start.
Let’s invest in
recruiting, training and retaining the best teachers. We should restore the
lost glory and prestige in teaching. If we don’t address the issue of quality
of teachers and how they teach, we will be back at another conference lampooning
the proposed new system and vigorously urging for change.
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