“One of the problems is that the material brought in by the teacher is disorienting to students. It is often in academic language, an English they don’t use. It is often written about subjects irrelevant to their experiences… Even worse, the social relations of the classroom are alienating and silencing. That cold distance between students and the teacher keeps the students and the teacher far from the material.” – (Freire: 1987)
To teach someone something that is relevant is to honour them that they are correct in themselves as who they are. When the mind is persistently assailed with what is irrelevant, it disensconces.
To be taught as an unwanted, as a chore, without love and respect, without being made to feel special, silences the soul and disengages the mind .
The above critique of the scientific and pedagogic axis of curriculum by Freire is a correct indictment of our curricula because it cannot be that it is only 20 percent of our students who have the capacity to understand what is going on in the classroom as this would defy the logic of the normal curve.This exonerates the students and leaves the camera focused squarely on the curriculum.
If we plan a curriculum and teach it for four years and at the end only 20 percent master it, there are two possible explanations; either
1. Our students are subnormal, which clearly they are not and they cannot be because the Zimbabwean stock is an illustrious one, we have achieved great things as a nation
or
2. Our curriculum is such that the majority of our students cannot ensconce with it, which actually is correct because we are pursuing a curriculum based on the ideological axis of the first ordinance of 1899, crafted by the Rhodesians in order to control African education so that it would be the perfect apology for colonialism and its most faithful perpetrator.
As normal Zimbabweans our children cannot be at peace with such curriculum so they cannot excel in it.
The 20 percent who make it are more the exception, but since it is not normal to excel in something so inimical to one’s self, they probably do so at great cost to themselves, something probably breaks in the process, something precious is sacrificed in the process.
Thus the oppressed cry:
“I want to learn to read and write so that I can stop being the shadow of other people, no longer part of the mass, but one of the people.” – (Freire: 1972).
The reading and writing Freire is talking of does not refer to technical literacy, but to the ability to know who you are and how you relate to the world as a pre-requisite to taking charge of one’s destiny.
To be no longer part of the mass is to be a decisive force in one’s life, to be a subject, not an object to be acted upon. You cannot be said to be literate when your own identity is elusive to you, and it is others who write on the slate of your life and your fate is designed, executed and sealed by others.
This is what the children of Zimbabwe are protesting, it is the literacy they will not acquire, it is the derangement they will not appease.
They do not wish to be experts at living in the shadow of other people. If it shall not be honoured that they are Zimbabwean, then they shall not dignify the charade.
If it shall not be honoured that they are heirs to a great and magnificent history, then they shall not be billboards on which the history of others is advertised, on which the achievements of others are lauded, on which the destiny of others is magnified while their own is shredded or put in the dumpsters and thrown away.
It is particularly painful for these heirs of this precious land to walk in the shadow of their arch enemies, those who for the last 115 years have sworn that Zimbabweans are not a people apart from the wildlife, the flaura and fauna.
They refuse to be put through the trauma that their forefathers have already suffered, what their compatriots rejected and abandoned.
In this endeavour, no-one can win against these children, against Zimbabwe, because history is against whoever this might be.
It has defined these children as products of a great moment, they are Zimbabweans, and this is engraved in their DNA.
The same DNA that fought the heroic battle of Chinhoyi, the same DNA that drove thousands of Zimbabwe’s children to brave unknown forests and flooded rivers to get to Mozambique and Zambia in the quest to train as freedom fighters so that they could come back to Zimbabwe to fight and drive out the bandits from England who had stolen their land. One of these thousands, John Mbaira tells of his journey from Gokwe to Zambia:
“That consciousness made me to directly foot from Gokwe to Zambia.
“Footing from Gokwe to Zambia is not a joke.
“It’s more than painful and it needs more than determination.
“Thinking of it makes me cry.
“I will never forget about it.
“So I went to the struggle with the full aim and knowing that life was not as easy as one might have guessed.
“What I wanted was to get trained and become a freedom fighter.
“Surely I was physically young, but mentally mature.” – (Schools in the Struggle:1991).This is what Zimbabwe’s children are capable of.
They have an indomitable will, they are achievers who are willing to pay the ultimate price for what they believe and want.
Five Ordinary Levels are paltry to such greatness of mind and spirit.
Dr Mahamba is a war veteran and holds a PhD from Havard University. She is currently doing consultancy work.