ONE of the major challenges that Zimbabwe faced since independence was hanging on to a complex historical force surrounding the colonial era — education.
At independence in 1980, Zimbabwe inherited a two-tier education system designed to serve the needs of the minority whites and another created for Africans.
Not only did the education system then favour whites, its curriculum was designed to confine blacks to third-class citizens, an aberration to the aspirations of the majority who were and are owners of the country.
Colonial education had a crafted structure of discrimination against blacks in order to sideline them from acquiring the best the land could offer; be it jobs or business opportunities.
The colonial regime, through their colonial policy, flagrantly sidelined the black majority with only 12 percent of the 100 000 blacks who completed seven years of primary education proceeding to secondary education every year.
Also, the colonial regime came up with a restrictive law; the Native Education Department and the Education Act of 1979, which made sure blacks received inferior education in the form of a watered-down curriculum.
But problems in the education sector were not only manifesting in the curriculum, but on the shortage of schools and subjects offered to Africans.
In order to maintain the racist education it was offering to blacks, the colonial Government systemically left education essentially in the hands of missionaries.
The essence of black education was to ensure they did not compete with whites for high-profile jobs but remained servile to whites.
Speaking in 2014, during the launch of the Teacher Capacity Development Programme, President Robert Mugabe, an advocate of a home-grown curriculum, said the local education system was lagging behind in promoting and teaching the country’s cultural practises.
“Our students should appreciate and emerge from our system as proud heirs and defenders of our hard-won peace and independence,” President Mugabe said.
“One of the major weaknesses of the present curriculum has been the absence of an underpinning philosophy to guide our education system.
“Such a philosophy must speak to who we are as Zimbabweans and our values, laws and norms must be informed by this philosophy.
“We have heard especially in the past those who went to school, not highly educated, wanting to behave as non-Africans.”
In order to redress these inequitable and discriminatory practices of successive colonial governments, the country described the policy of education as a basic human right in September 1980.
The policy supported the adoption of a curriculum that pursued the national interest.
The education system remained Eurocentric with African values including languages and nationalistic thinking being sidelined.
As a result, we had the likes of Professor Geoff Feltoe continuously churning out lawyers who cannot mould their thinking in Zimbabwe’s historical context from the University of Zimbabwe.
These are the leading proponents of regime change agenda through non-governmental organisations (NGOs) sponsored by the West.
That widely discredited curriculum was in fact nothing more than an extension of white hegemony and dominance over black people.
Yet in 1999, when findings of the Nziramasanga Commission Report were released, we could have transformed our education system if we had paid heed to the recommendations.
The Commission recommended that secondary school education be transformed from a colonial, elitist and theoretical approach.
The Commission also recommend the inclusion of practical subjects like agriculture, gardening, carpentry and building in the curriculum as a way of enhancing skills and not make blacks perpetual servants of whites.
A report published in July 2001 by the United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) International Bureau of Education gives some insights into what the country did and could have done to do away with the colonial curriculum.
Titled The Developments In Education: The Education System at the End Of The 20th Century, 1990-2000 National Report of the Republic of Zimbabwe, the report gives a critical analysis of what constitutes a curriculum.
The quality of the national curriculum is based on the extent to which it meets individual attributes, the requirements of the national economy, the needs of society and the future challenges and aspirations of the nation.
It seeks to promote individual and national achievement through the recognition of the different abilities and needs of learners.
The current curriculum requires strengthening in terms of developing values and catering for needs and aspirations for self-reliance and entrepreneurship, in order to produce a responsible, productive and self-sustaining citizen.
The skills and competencies which pupils are expected to develop through the education system derive from:
l Language and communication
l Numeracy and literacy
l Science and technology
l Aesthetics and creativity
l Entrepreneurship
l Ethics and good citizenship.
As Zimbabwe marches towards the total erasure of the colonial agenda, it is imperative that it ensures the new curriculum works.