‘Re-conceptualise, Yes Sir, But How?

Morris Mtisi Education Panorama
“I agree there’s need to re-conceptualize education at Primary School. I am a Primary School head-teacher at (name of school supplied) and know only too well how we are struggling to do our best in an uneven playfield. So re-conceptualisation yes, sir, but what are your suggestions of re-conceptualization?” asks a primary school head. He prefers to do so in anonymity. Another case of De-Ja-vu!

Answer
Yes, I know what you mean by doing your best in an uneven ground. You mean, don’t you, expectations of same performance results with schools that have fully qualified and competent teachers, perfect infrastructure, laptops, and desk-top computers, state-of-the-art buses and Navaras for school heads versus primary schools that are no better than Syrian refugee -camp schools? You cannot be closer to the truth. Everyone sees this wide disturbing gap between schools.
Here are my suggestions on re-conceptualization, hoping someone listens:

First, it cannot be and is not one man or woman’s business to make such important suggestions; neither this columnist alone nor the Minister of Education alone!
The idea of a curriculum review exercise as witnessed recently was excellent as I said soon after the national consultations so-called. The Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education must and should have consulted everyone who matters in the education matrix: long serving directors of education like PEDs and their deputies, experienced classroom practitioners (teachers) and other activists or consultants.

There is an inexhaustible wealth of wisdom and ideas that can and could have been very useful in the construction of a re-conceptualised curriculum.
Consult! That is the word- Consult, consult, consult! It’s not painful.

The just passed curriculum review was a total fiasco in its planning and implementation. The visible apathy demonstrated by empty venues was synonymous with a quiet protest. Whoever says the exercise was a success may have been seeing things through a cat’s eye. I have said this before.

Second, there is need for a strict and highly refined process of recruiting primary school teachers, indeed secondary school teachers too, by the teacher-training colleges; a corrupt-free system of recruitment which does not make the process a sheer money-making project characterized by back-door enrolment after back-pocket kick backs and brown envelops. This, and we see it every day, will never make the situation better, far worse perhaps.

A system which seems to continue to recruit the worst qualified, the scum of school-leavers, the riff-ruff of society to train for the teaching job will never turn round the decay and decline of Zimbabwean education. Someone must say this.

Engineering, Medicine and Law schools recruit the best, 14 and 15 pointers, nothing less, to train as engineers, doctors and lawyers. What do teacher education colleges do? Recruiting tired failures prepared to ‘buy’ places for training.

Recruiting hundreds of trainees, keeping them at teacher education college for three or four months, then throw them into schools for one year or two before they come back to write examinations, assist them to pass and call them teachers, “Go yee into the schools and teach children well,” will never turn round the decay and decline of Zimbabwean education.

Teachers and primary schools that teach and drill pupils to get 4 or 5 units after Grade 7 examinations are not educating pupils. They are pushing them over the wall or fence. That too is good. But once they are on the other side, they neither know where to go nor what to do. They eventually add onto the huge number of failures at the end of the road every year.

The primary school course does not link meaningfully with secondary school education. Second, school teachers waste time teaching basic skills and fostering knowledge that should have been taught at Primary School. By the time pupils are ‘qualified’ Grade 7 material, the Form 4 examinations are staring them in the face.

The rest is history. There seems not to be a carefully thought out and carefully constructed bridge between these two streams intended to empty their waters into the same huge dam. The Primary and Secondary sectors are like two guitars intended to play the same song, but failing to synchronise codes into one mellifluent arrangement.
With the incorporation of the zero-grade into mainstream education and the kindergarten before it, is there a need to have more than seven years of Primary education? Why not go back to Sub A and B- then standard One up to Six? It’s like going back in time and perhaps like going back to our vomit, isn’t it? I am tempted to think so myself. It does feel like going back to the Stone Age? Well, Really? But did the Grade-One-to-Seven policy make our education better? NO, is my answer. Unless you have another! I don’t.

Could that also be why we continue to talk the talk about vocational and technical subjects and not walking the walk? We are scared of looking back and or are too proud to admit blunders in education planning? Or we have too many educational experiments conducted by gurus who come and go without adding value to national education.
Or are we too proud to acknowledge Doctor Nziramasanga’s 15 year old recommendations because we want to be new Nziras ourselves? If we have lost the way and direction, we would be wiser to go back to Doctor Nziramasanga. I am sure he would not mind giving extra lessons in serious Curriculum review to those who humble themselves.