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‘Fund to support new curriculum vital’

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THE Zimbabwe Heritage Publishing House hosted a workshop on the new education curriculum sometime last year.
One contentious issue was why we have failed as a nation to produce graduates who have a holistic approach to life and how they have failed to meaningfully adapt to their environments.
The Patriot has published articles on the need for graduates to be proactive and to have a practical approach in using their acquired education to empower themselves and the nation.
However, as our schools have started to teach the new curriculum which has a bias on our heritage, agriculture and economic empowerment, we should emphasise more on building an individual proud of one’s country, able to own and control resources for the benefit of all.
It is imperative that the country has a heritage fund to support the updated education curriculum.
The fund should be financed from the country’s vast mineral and wildlife resources as funding from other countries and partners has tended to dictate what we should be teaching our children.
Countries like Ghana have such a fund and it is financed from oil and other resources.
We have good examples of how foreign funding has influenced our education system in the form of policies that are alien to Zimbabwe.
The issue of corporal punishment is a good example.
Children are no longer allowed to be canned in schools and this has promoted unruly behaviour among some learners.
This has had a serious impact on the future of children who are turning into irresponsible adults.
The resistance that also accompanied the implementation of the new curriculum is another example of the influence of external educational funding in Zimbabwe, some private schools have opted to come up with their own versions of the new curriculum.
Another debatable issue of foreign interference in our education system can be seen in the resistance by some schools to recite the National Schools Pledge.
It is sad to note that most parents in some parts of the country have sent their children to schools in countries like the US, India and South Africa which have similar pledges and the children are compelled to recite these pledges in foreign countries.
However, now that we want to pledge allegiance to our country, the same parents are not ‘happy’.
The National Schools Pledge was necessitated by continued remembrance of our history, of resistance of colonial and imperialist domination.
It is unfortunate some of our children do not really know the meaning of the pledge.
We must have the National Schools Pledge recited not just in different languages, Tonga, Ndebele, Shona and others, but also fully explained.
The National Schools Pledge together with the updated curriculum have been introduced in schools to transform and empower our children for nation building through patriotism, life skills training and leadership development.
The National Schools Pledge gives our children identity, making them equal players in the so-called global village where they must operate without feeling inferior.
They are children of a great nation; they must never forget it.
But all these programmes will come to naught if as a nation we do not make a conscious effort to support them by availing funds.
Creating a fund to support the updated curriculum might be viewed as not a necessity but it is.
It is always easier to deal with the young than trying to ‘repair’ grown men and women.
Values and beliefs are cherished and upheld by those that have grown with them.
Until certain fundamental approaches, attitudes and culture in the manner education is funded, our people will forever be apologetic in the manner in which they conduct themselves.
Let us teach our children to be Zimbabweans not ‘little Britons and Americans’.
Our children must grow up to serve and protect the motherland.

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