4 - 23 February 2014 - The Observer
Open Letter to the Education Minister:
Rote Learning is producing failures
I
n July 2013, I wrote this letter to
the Permanent Secretary of the
Ministry of Education and the
issues therein were not addressed
in the response. In the spirit of goodwill,
I wrote the letter as a Zimbabwean
parent with both high and primary
school going children locally.
It is highly commendable that
Zimbabwe has one of the highest literacy
rate in Africa. We thank the government
for that. However, I argued that we need
to move beyond the literacy rate and
achieve productivity and usefulness of
the products of the public education
system.
Observations
For the years under review, the lowest
and highest pass rate in Zimbabwe’s
academic ordinary level exams has been
10% (2007) at the height of an economic
crisis and 22% (1984), respectively.
This means that Zimbabwe has
had between 78-90% failure rate for
its ‘O’ Level exams since 1984! If this
is not scandalous, it is a dysfunctional
measurement
of
the
academic
performance and human potential of
our children.
We need to be comforted by the
specific measures to be taken in
addressing this unacceptable situation.
Unfortunately, the purported failure
rate of our children has been wrongly
diagnosed. Albert Einstein would say,
“No problem can be solved from the
same level of consciousness that created
it.”
The Presidential Commission of
Inquiry into Education and Training
(Nziramasanga Report) of 1999 is still
to be released and implemented other
than being mentioned indiscriminately
and casually.
We are in a country that has been
and is still reducing 78-90% of its young
people into being convinced that they are
hopeless failures. This creates a citizenry
that surrenders or gives up its own deep
sense of human worth, causative power
and responsibility because of such an
academic exam failure rate.
In my view, a one-size education
system that fits all is irrelevant and
counter-productive.
Our pitfalls
It is my well-considered view that
our education system has a fixation with
academic attainment and therefore is
not identified with sporting and nonacademic excellence. Schools are harshly
judged around academic performance,
as if academic achievement is the only
measurement of being human. This
may be the reason why our nation is
doing badly at the Olympics and other
competitive tournaments in various
sporting disciplines.
The whole educational grounding
is purposefully producing a hostile
or uncharitable attitude towards
entertainment, athletic and sports
personalities around the world because
they did not excel academically.
Entertainment, athletics and various
sporting disciplines may provide the
biggest employment levels and a direct
impact on the economic activities and
value (“manufacturing and construction
of
sporting facilities, consumer
spending, corporate activity and
funding, sporting events, government
grants/spending, sports marketing and
broadcasting rights, employment/jobs/
salaries, tourism…”.
There are also instances where
sporting
excellence
has
been
undermined by the attitude of seeing
non-academically talented as less
human. This has caused school and
college top athletes to stop being serious
about their sporting talents because they
would want to pursue their academic
studies. China, the USA and Australia
are top sporting countries and they
offer sporting scholarships and greater
learning flexibility for sporting students.
After the compulsory basic primary
education, the technical and sports
secondary education learning should
have general learning of “classical liberal
arts” education.
Pillars of an Educational System
There are critical and defining seven
pillars of a public educational system
– structure; infrastructure; content
(curriculum); human capital; the
efficient administration of the public
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examination system; cost and government and
incentives for corporate funding for schools and
students; and location of schools.
Structurally and according to learners’ abilities,
there should be three types of schools or streams
for public secondary education:
1. “Academic Education School” (AES) (consisting
of Arts, Sciences and Commercials), taking one
to academic universities;
2. “Technical Education School” (TES) should be
considered as an option for secondary education
for those of technical ability: Metalwork and
Welding, Woodwork and Carpentry, Agriculture,
Building and Bricklaying, Fashion and Fabrics,
Cookery, Music and Dance, Art, and Technical
Drawing taking one to technical colleges and later
technical universities. “The students are expected
to get exposure to the industries, gain basic
skills and proc W76W2f