A new curriculum has been rolled out here in Kenya this year, and as good as it sounds in theory, the implementation has been a mess. We all know that the world is evolving from a knowledge-based economy to a creative one, and at least we have to take a few seconds to appreciate that someone in government got the memo about this and decided to do something about it. Thus the new reforms ensuring the curriculum is more focused on building skills and competency.
All is good and well.
If you actually read up on it, the articles that highlight the guidelines for this curriculum read like a mashup of popular Forbes and Inc posts on the topic of preparing the next generation to work in an AI world. The emphasis is on personal interests, nurturing creativity, developing skills, etc…
There’s only one tiny problem though…how the new curriculum reforms were rolled out. With an initiative this big, you would think that teachers in training colleges would be taught first on how this new 2-6-3-3-3 system is supposed to work, and then it would be rolled out inside classrooms after the first batch had graduated, right?
Wrong.
Teachers were given a one-week workshop, and then told to go figure it out.
Basically, they’ve been thrown in the deep end of the pool only to discover there’s no water.
The results?
Practicing teachers complain of the following:
– Total confusion. They end up teaching the way they always did because they really haven’t grasped how the implementation of the reforms would be.
– Lack of resources. The books that were supposed to help design new lessons too their sweet time to reach certain public schools.
-ICT-related problems are difficult to implement considering that many public school teachers lack ICT skills and many of those labs are ill-equipped.
And did I mention, teachers are totally confused?
I know that sometimes the best way to learn is to actually be thrown at the deep end of the pool and learn how to swim. But chances are, you’re more likely to sink than swim when you’re not equipped with a minimum set of skills.
Between the lecture strike at the tertiary strike and new curriculum reforms at the kindergarten level, the educational system is quite the mess. The only consolation is that students are so cynical about it, you’ll hear many stories of students spending more time working on their side businesses and personal projects than at schoolwork (and of course, these are the people who are the happiest when lecturers call for a strike).
In Eat, Pray, Love Liz Gilbert wrote about how each city has a word to describe it.
I guess everybody in Nairobi will agree that the word here is ‘hustle’.
That’s it for today.
Image via; http://www.thecitizen.co.tz/News/1840340-3085564-lq7w7nz/index.html