WHY WE NEED TO CRITICALLY RETHINK THIS NEW KENYAN #CURRICULUMREFORMSKE

What should we gain from a national education system ?

1. Character building: We want a system that will mold our children’s character to love the Creator (faith), respect other human beings (love and good citizenship), understand and be confident in who they are (identity), and to make good decisions (consciousness).
2. Skills: we want a system that will train our children to have skills, not for specific jobs, but that can help young people adapt to different sectors of the market place. We should not train our children for one job, because jobs are changing so rapidly. Specific skills can be obtained through apprenticeship and on-the-job training. It is not the taxpayers’ job to subsidize industry with ready-to-work workers. .
3. Wisdom: The world can be a cruel place, and for our children to survive in it, they need to think critically about what they’re told, know where to seek information if they need it, and make the right decisions
4. Global consciousness: Our children need to understand themselves, their country and the world in which they live. They must know how to respect and interact with people of all faiths and cultures. They also need to know their own history so that they are confident when interacting with the word.

What is the problem with the proposed curriculum reform?

1. The basic curriculum framework has not sufficiently involved the stakeholders in education: parents, children, teachers, education scholars and the wider society.
2. The people whose ideas are used in the framework are almost all foreigners, and almost all outdated (some are about 30 years old). The foreignness of the curriculum presents problems in terms of helping learners to adapt to our environment and foster a national identity and social consciousness through education
3. The proposed reform is not just about the curriculum. It is also about a system replacement. The new system means a break in continuity and lack of consistency, which is not good for transfer of knowledge.
4. We have not adequately assessed the problems with the 8-4-4 system, and whether those problems were all internal or external to the education system. We need to strengthen our successes and learn from our failures, before replacing the system.
5. The framework does not deal with three major weaknesses of our education system outside the classroom: inequality in the education system, lack of teacher support to update teaching skills, and lack of opportunity for graduates when they finish school
6. The new system promises three “pathways,” which will return us to the problem we had with the 7-6-3 system which 8-4-4 was trying to solve, which was that students were so narrow minded and limited to their subjects, and they found it hard to adapt to the broad and complex world once they graduated.
7. The new curriculum hides history under “citizenship” and “government,” rather than a stand-alone subject, which does not solve our current problem of students who have little knowledge of their own history.

What is a proposed way forward on the education reform?

1. Put a halt to the system overhaul. The shock of the new system will have everyone preoccupied by making sure the system stabilizes, when our priority should be the students and teachers having the optimal learning experience
2. Release the data on the review of the 8-4-4 system so that Kenyans can understand and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the current system, in order to provide viable solutions
3. Put in place a system that constantly collects the views of teachers and students. So many policy statements are out of touch with what teachers and students experience in the classroom
4. Establish a system for teachers to refresh their skills, and be exposed to new material and teaching methods.
5. Consult widely with experts in different subjects so that the curriculum and teaching approaches are up to date.
6. Pay more attention to key subjects like Kiswahili and history which are fundamental to national identity.

CurriculumReformsKE I’ve said a lot here about how the government is planning to sedate us with a flawed education system. It has covered all its bases: a new system that will put us in shock mode for the next few years, that will put us in silos – called pathways – that will decide for us which subjects to take, that will impose quotas in the name of clean exams to prevent people from going to university, that will cheat us with a government version of history that only favors those in power and then call it “citizenship.” And so on.

The future looks bleak. And we will be wounded. But we must remember that the colonialists tried to damage us too. They tried to control our minds. They bashed our cultures and languages, and tried to teach us to adore the Queen. But that failed. When missionaries tried to use schools to control our minds, we built independent schools and churches. When they closed those, we fought for independence. In fact, some of the knowledge that was meant to make us docile, we used to articulate freedom. They still left us with wounds that we’re still trying to heal, but it has not stopped us from wanting to be free. Because God created us and put freedom in our bones. That freedom may be dulled by bad education, but only for a while. Like Maya Angelou said, the caged bird still sings because it has a song. We Kenyans still have that song. Mekatilili had it. Koitalel had it. Pinto had it. Wangari had it. So GoK may win in imposing this flawed system on us. But only for a while. We will sing because we have a song. A song that even 2-6-7-3 cannot take from us. We have a song that 8-4-4 did not take from us. We have a song that examinations, corruption, Nyayo House, detention and assassinations did not take from us. We shall still sing, because God put a song in us that no one can take away.

By Prof. WANDIA NJOYA