THE CURRENT initiative of the Ministry of Education attempts to initiate a fundamental paradigm shift in education. Unfortunately, such a refocus in the education system is being done in a vacuum; as a political palliative rather than a genuine attempt to ensure alignment between the needs of contemporary society and the curriculum offerings of schools.
Beginning with a fundamental re-examination of the nature and purpose of education and by extension the role of schools, any significant attempt to remodel schools’ nature and purpose must be conceptualised in a holistic manner, mindful of current economic and cultural realities.
Conspicuously missing is the context of the transformation. It fails to locate the change in a larger social and economic context, notwithstanding its linkage to the philosophical underpinnings as enunciated in Vision 2030.
Attempting to enable citizens to escape the middle-income trap and reverse the country’s relative underperformance as well as reversing certain aspects of our current approach to education through “mandatory” school activities such as sports day, career day, kitchen gardens, student concerts, to name a few, is simply reinventing the wheel.
Schools have long been engaging students in these activities as part of both the formal and informal curriculum, the value and benefits of which are well established in their own context. The question to be asked is: what does this initiative seek to achieve or expect to change in our wider society in relation to a crime as an outcome of chronic student illiteracy or a national disregard for law and order in our larger society?
Co- and extra-curricular activities have always sought to address the stated objectives of the policy, the only difference here being that a more formalised approach is being advocated. Unfortunately, advocating the inclusion of morals and values-based education in such a rigid and structured manner has its inherent challenges, including pushback from parents who hold a different view.
Social science experts have always cautioned about legislating for the inclusion of morals and values in citizens, alerting to the need to always delineate between education and indoctrination. What is worse is the absence of established linkages between the formalised cultural transformation being attempted in the school and the root of the perceived immorality.
Morals and values imbibed by children in homes and communities are expressed in schools in their behaviours and ultimately student learning outcomes. Transforming these behaviours cannot take place in a void and disconnected from the current high-stakes examination culture that currently defines schools, dictating its agenda in a very rigid manner.
Is there going to be a de-emphasis on high-stakes examinations and the consequential overloaded academic curriculum that teachers are currently hard-pressed to deliver? The prevailing cultural/moral/ ethical dichotomy that exists between schools’ informal curriculum outcomes and students’ homes and communities
