Prof Mavima must be meticulous
WHILE many people are definitely not in a romantic affair with the new curriculum, some still baying for Dr Lazarus Dokora’s blood forgetting that he is gone … and gone forever, the wicked truth is that this great and beautiful country needs to seriously make relevant changes in the curriculum. How to do it is certainly what Professor Caiphus Nziramasanga of the famous Nziramasanga Commission recommended to Government more than 16 years ago.
Dr Dokora (you can still hear his cheerless name being blown in the wind) only attempted to implement what was recommended to Government by a team of specialists and education experts led by Professor Nziramasanga.
The man called Lazarus obviously not as poor as the biblical Lazarus, at least in the context of material wealth, could have been quite as impoverished as Lazarus in the Bible in the context of thoughts and ideas of going about implementing an intended Zimbabwean curriculum best practice, but the country needs drastic change in the area of teaching and learning, particularly what to learn as opposed to how to learn it.
Prof Mavima must be slow, careful, but sure. He commands a sector that determines the future.
While the Japanese, Koreans and Chinese were busy learning about technology and how to assemble gadgets, cameras, radios, cellphones, etc, we were busy studying in Nature Study, the grasshopper. Was it studying even? Not at all! We were asked to draw the grasshopper.
What was there to learn about the grasshopper anyway, except reminding some of us from very humble homes (polite way of saying poor) that the grasshopper could be a nutritious delicacy when there was a shortage of meat in the home? And we caught or trapped these delectable protein-filled insects in dishfuls and basketfuls, boiled them and dried them to feast upon at the time of need.
I remember the turtle dove as well. It was another one of the birds of the wild that needed to be neatly drawn and labelled. Education by settler colonialists!
Colonial education was full of these useless tasks. We called it learning but there was absolutely nothing to learn. Such was the kind of arrogance the colonialists illustrated in their school curriculum.
We learnt this nonsense very well, got distinctions on our papers and waited for Government to give us jobs. As the job market slowly became suffocated, so did the jobs become more and more scarce until unemployment became the order of the day. No one created jobs. We all looked for jobs. The system prepared job-seekers, not job creators. Do we need to continue following a path that has no throughroad?
Yes, a bus can be carelessly, dangerously and recklessly driven when the driver is drunk or mad, but that does not mean the bus is wrong or faulty. Deal with the driver. And that is exactly what happened with the Zimbabwean educational bus.
Forget it! We have a new driver now and we hope the passengers will be safe. It is up to the new driver to repaint the bus, to allow business companies to advertise on it or not, to have a cassette player to entertain passengers on board or not, to have the bus travel at night or day, or both, or to travel in broad daylight alone.
We, who have been in the education sector this way or that way for many years, watching, analysing and commenting as intelligently and objectively as our small minds allowed us, have a message for Prof Mavima. “Listen to everyone.
Even the dull and ignorant! They too have something to say. With the experience and wisdom you have in that office, you have a lot to hear and distil, to revise and adjust … and steer the ship forward. We wish you success … success that this beautiful country deserves but has been deprived of for too long.”
Please note that the views and opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those of The Manica Post. Morris Mtisi is an independent writer, analyst and commentator on education, making comments and remarks independently, as a former classroom practitioner and educationist of vast experience.