President urges nation to embrace new curriculum

PRESIDENT Mugabe has expressed reservations on one aspect of the new curriculum being spear-headed by Primary and Education Minister Dr Lazarus Dokora, but said on the whole the syllabus needed to be embraced because it provides solutions to the country’s challenges on innovation.

He said he was not sure if Dr Dokora would be successful in introducing the teaching of Science and Mathematics in vernacular in lower grades.

President Mugabe was responding to a question on the controversies surrounding the new curriculum being implemented by Government during his birthday interview with ZBCtv.

Said President Mugabe: “But if it is as has been reported in the press that we are starting from Grade One upwards, the lower part, they will do Science and

Mathematics in vernacular, I am not sure what the old curriculum said, and can there be a syllabus of Mathematics in vernacular, can it be done?”

President Mugabe said he hoped Dr Dokora was not trying to introduce outlandish exercises into the country’s education system.

He said while Tanzania had succeeded in conducting all its learning in Swahili, the exercise had come at “a great expense of their English ability”.

“I am sure he (Dr Dokora) is not trying to do a Swahili exercise on part of our system,” said President Mugabe. “They (Tanzanians) were very proud of their language, Swahili, and they were saying why not develop our Swahili and make it the language in which the learning is done.

President Mugabe, who is a former teacher, said: “I think our education should be open. It should be open, so that we have an ability to absorb, you know, especially developments taking place in the ICT world and our curriculum, it should not remain backward.

“If you went to ask my boys to recite three times table or four times table, five times table, 12 times table they just use the computer, you see, whereas we did it by head up to 12 times table, sometimes to 13 times table knowing that 12×12 it’s 144.

“Now today’s children, it’s just the computer. I don’t know which is better, but I think there is damage being done to the intellect by the gadgets.” - Chronicle.