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Melody Mashaire/ Features Correspondent
Family has been topical across the world, as subversive practices, movements and legislations threaten the future of the institution. Although Zimbabwe has been credited for conservatism, there are no long-term guarantees, considering that globalised nature of culture in the 21st century privileges the West with influence over the rest.What has not been in doubt, however, is that family is a foundational institution which must not be compromised, if the continuity of any society is to be guaranteed.
The question of family is not abstract but directly relates to every aspect of children’s well-being.
Families provide probably the most important support system for children to thrive, particularly in the actualisation of their educational and professional goals.
This is one of the headaches with which the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education approached the task of creating a new curriculum.
In view of the challenge of corrosive external influences on Zimbabwean culture, the ministry is introducing Family Values, Religious and Moral Education in schools.
The subject replaces Religious Education which was narrowly focused and considered confessional from the Judeo-Christian world view.
Family Values, Religious and Moral Education will foreground the African setting while interrogating the whole climate of faith from an academic remove.
The ministry is implementing the Curriculum Framework for Primary and Secondary Education, featuring all-new learning areas and cross-cutting themes, over the next seven years.
The particular emphasis on family values has been motivated by the need to harmonise what is taught in schools with the values of Zimbabwean society.
The new curriculum is also foregrounding foundational ethics through the national schools pledge which emphasises Zimbabwe’s rich culture, honesty and hard work.
Deputy Minister of Primary and Secondary Education Professor Paul Mavima told The Herald Review that his ministry considers it a key priority to teach children about family in the African context.
He said some of what has been previously available in the texts used in schools is not entirely reflective of the Zimbabwean context, hence the need for indigenous content.
“For example, in the true African sense, we do not have an extended family. If you have an uncle, he is your father. You can be raised by your uncle or your aunt,” said Prof Mavima.
“We need to teach a grounded understanding of the African family. We are also teaching about problems that can be faced within the African family and who they can go to when they face problems,” he said.
Prof Mavima said the new subject is not just reactive to trending developments but aspires to equip students with an appreciation of ubuntu, the African communal value system, from an early age.
The move was long overdue since the cultural health of the country is closely tied with the family institution which shape children’s lives.
The family is a key social engine as it transfers the values of a community to the next generation.
An amoral school setting will only cede the role of shaping students to West-themed non-governmental organisations and the Internet.
Family Values, Religious and Moral Education is expected to help children correctly situate the role of family in the moral and cultural development.
“It is fundamental that we restore family values. ‘What constitutes family? Is there such a thing as extended family?’ Young people live with those nearest to them and education calls them strangers,” Primary and Secondary Education Minister Dr Lazarus Dokora told delegates during the ministry’s recent stakeholders’ conference.
“We need a paradigm shift to relocate ourselves in our own space. Haralambos, now going into the 40th edition, is busy still perpetuating these things. We need locally developed content to speak to local values even if that will take time,” Minister Dokora said.
Family, religious and moral educators, including Scripture Union, have also been called on board to partner the ministry in mapping the way forward.
Public Service and Social Welfare Minister Cde Prisca Mupfumira concurred in her address at the commemorations of the International Day of Families in Harare recently.
Cde Mupfumira stressed the importance of the family unit for national continuity and urged all sectors to ensure a friendly environment for families to thrive.
“Families have a unique role in ensuring health and well-being of children. Parents can improve children’s health outcomes by providing emotional support, ensuring preventive, including timely immunizations and proper treatment in times of illness,” Cde Mupfumira said.
“We need to raise awareness of the role families and family policies in promoting healthy lives for a sustainable future and focus on issues relating to family environments and the work-family balance,” she said.
Family, education, religion and media are often cited as the most influential social engines but they have been lately seen as being in conflict with each other.
The incorporation family in education on a larger scale is likely to ensure coordination for positive outcomes.
Minister Mupfumira reiterated the need for families to be role models of love and support.
“Families should be a role model of love which is the most fundamental building block of society. The family should educate its children on moral values as a stepping stone to passing on these values to the future generations,” Minister Mupfumira said.
“The two types of families common in Zimbabwe are the nuclear family and the extended family. The latter being a network of relatives brought together by maternal or paternal ties and acts as a worthy safety net in times of distress,” she said.
“Chief amongst the factors hostile to existence of the family unit are social and political changes. Historically, it was common for the man to go and search for employment in the urban environment, while his family remained in the rural homestead.
“However due to modernisation, both men and women are compromising their parental roles by not according enough time to their families, following their pursuits. Times have since changed and we realise in the modern day setting that while families may be living together, most African parents are yet to master ways of teaching the upholding of cultural and moral values to their children within the urban environment,” she said.
In the Zimbabwean culture, aunts and uncles have traditionally been the primary source of advice in matters such as relationship but such a role is now considered intrusive as the Internet, peer influence or religious groups that are sometimes a hybrid of different cultures take over.
Grooming children to be functional and respectable in society is traditionally the role of the family but now the proliferation of individualism has weakened the role.
The healthy balance between a reasonably autonomous individual and a mutually coordinated society stands jeopardised as such.
In his message for the International Day of Families, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon wrote urged communities to advance sustainable development by creating a supportive environment where all family members of all ages can realise their potential to contribute to our world.
Much of the rich lore of indigenous knowledge systems is found in families and can be passed on where families are given space to thrive.
President Robert Mugabe hinted on the mutual responsibility of school and family to build children into responsible citizens during the Independence Children’s Party.
He lamented the decay of moral fibre whereby some students are today living up to their families’ expectations, rather becoming victims of hedonism and espousing an erroneous “perception that pleasure is the highest good and the proper aim of human life.
President Mugabe noted the importance of schools and families in encouraging positive behaviour and protecting youths from derailing to depravity.
The formal introduction of family values may be the answer to an increasingly permissive and westernised climate in schools.
Research has determined that children who have the benefit of a strong family setting, immediate and extended, lead gratified and fruitful life.
Where parents fail to safeguard their children’s future by providing a structure of support because, they are bound to shortchange them.
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