WHEN Minister Dokora first announced in Parliament that he was introducing the national pledge for all schoolchildren to recite, right from kindergarten, our response was that there is no heroism in tokenism.
We highlighted that it was insincere to ask children to recite the pledge when what they learn is opposite to that pledge.
Why task the children to say they recognise the fathers of the revolution when the school curriculum does not honour that revolution?
In response the Minister said it was not true that the liberation struggle was excluded from the new curriculum which was scheduled to commence in January 2016.
On Jaunary 13 2016, Christopher Farai Charamba of The Herald reports that the Minister of Primary and Secondary Education says the first phase of the curriculum change is on course to begin in the first school term of 2016.
But we have never heard of the new curriculum since the beginning of 2016. The first school term, instead of ushering in the new curriculum, schools have been snowed under with clerical work, a steady stream of paper work requirements literally reducing schools to secretarial hubs churning out these and other details, none of which have anything to do with curriculum changes.
It is unbelievable that so much can be promised and in the end nothing goes through.
To have whipped the nation into a frenzy of expectation about curriculum changes and then to drop everything without any warning is totally amazing.
If a child who is registering for ‘A’-Level history in February 2016 still has no choice but to study European History; the French Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte, what does this say to the child?
It is an extremely sad indictment of our education system and it makes our children very sad; it certainly says clearly and loudly that no curriculum changes have taken place.
Why should our children expend the best of their energies on something so alien?
So that when they complete their education they become what kind of lawyers, what kind of historians, standing on whose side of history?
Is this the kind of curriculum that will produce vana Chitepo, vana Tongogara, or is it meant to ensure that there is no resurrection of Chitepo, Tongogara or Tichafa Parirenyatwa; kutoshingisisa kuti mapfupa avo haamuke?
When we liberated our country, we had a number of drawbacks mainly because the Lancaster House Constitution had certain entrenched clauses and as a result there were many revolutionary changes we had to defer, but in time we did conquer these challenges and we put the nation on track to fulfil the goals of the liberation struggle.
Now it does not need a change in the Constitution to change our school curriculum.
So what is missing? Why does it seem like a Herculean task to change the curriculum, why does it seem like such a Herculean task to have our ‘A’-Level history students learn about Zimbabweans, Africans and others relevant to our reality and why is it not such a Herculean task to go against the will of Zimbabwe by prescribing that Zimbabwe’s children learn about their former colonisers and their relatives?
Zimbabweans and their children cannot be consoled that their children recite the national pledge after which they go and learn European history and nothing of Zimbabwe’s African history.
Zvokuti vana vanzi makunda dzidzo dzapamusoro kana mukatsvunha nhoroondo dzamadzinza avarungu ndizvo zvakarwirwa kuti zviputswe zvipere, vanhu vakati hatichadi zvehurungu.
Why is it the will to popularise STEM was implemented at the stroke of a pen and the programme to fund this has already been implemented within weeks of it being mooted?
In Zimbabwe, it is possible to change things quickly too.
So when such anomalies persist in our country then we still have a major problem somewhere.
We do not need a change in the Constitution to change the curriculum, but a change of heart, a change of ideological axis, a paradigm shift.
What is still true despite all these twists and turns is that Zimbabwe is still on course, the goals of the liberation struggle cannot change, they are still in place, and therefore what has to change are the institutions, not the goals for which this land was liberated, the goals for which so many freely and willingly laid down their lives.
So we are still waiting, but time is running out, we are still waiting for the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education to permit a curriculum that fulfills the goals of the liberation struggle.
As we have clarified many times before, the struggle had a very clear vision of education in independent Zimbabwe, a vision of an education that would further the goals of that struggle, and it is only this vision that can take Zimbabwe forward.
But if we persist on this course prescribing that our children learn European history and that, at the highest level of secondary education, then we still are far from that vision.
This kind of prescription is not meant to create revolutionaries out of our children but to sell their souls to the false god of euro-worship. It becomes a revolution that devours its own children.