WHEN the so-called Curriculum Review by the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education began a few months ago, we wrote in this paper, that it was a red-herring, a calculated vehicle to avoid taking up the revolutionary education developed during the liberation struggle, which education is more than equal to the challenges facing Zimbabwe, the panacea for what has ailed us since independence, the antithesis to the sickling that survived the overthrow of the British colonialists.
The highlights of the proposed curriculum changes resulting from the review, captured in The Sunday Mail of May 3 2015, reveal just how much this exercise has been a red-herring.
When in 1981 the Government of Zimbabwe, at the institute of the Minister of Education, Cde Dzingai Mutumbuka, established the Zimbabwe Foundation for Education with Production, to continue with the education developed during the liberation struggle in pilot schools as preparation for its launch across the nation’s schools, it was with the greatest ideological clarity and wisdom.
The founding fathers knew that as harshly as they had had to fight the cruelty of the British colonialists, there was no way the education system of the British colonialists would ever serve the goals and purposes for which they had waged the armed struggle, the struggle which had cost thousands of Zimbabweans their most precious gift, the gift of life.
Thus they knew what a vicious struggle it would spark to institute the revolutionary education from the struggle as the mainstream education at that point in time.
It was therefore a strategic delay, not an abandonment of an education which they had developed as the blueprint for an independent Zimbabwe.
It was a move to protect this priceless jewel while creating optimum conditions for its launch.
Education with production rejects the dichotomy between theory and practice, theory and productive activity which philosophy is born of capitalism.
In education with production this obscurantist philosophy which purports that there are some people who are ‘hewers of wood and carriers of water’, while a few are the thinkers, the theorists who manipulate the rest of the world with their intellect, is annihilated.
Thus in education with production, learners are ensconced with all aspects of learning from the earliest ages, they learn theory, apply it practically and productively.
They are sharpened to think through concepts, master them, understand how they can be put into practice and how they can be used productively.
There is no better educated person than this.
Theory is tested and perfected in practice and production, no-one can surpass the practitioner, the productivist who is the master-mind behind his practice, his production.
Some call it polytechnical education, but this is the education we developed during the liberation struggle, in both ZANU and ZAPU.
In earlier articles we have chronicled the spectacular successes of these schools and how the vicissitudes of our nation’s struggle against colonial capitalism arrested their progress.
ZIMFEP and its schools were assailed from all angles precisely because they were and still are the antidote for our problems not only in education, but also economically and politically.
Given what the ZIMFEP model entails, for the so-called Curriculum Review to suggest that it is a master stroke, an innovation even, to send children for a three month attachment after 11 years of schooling while they await their examination results is the height of deception, with all due respect.
How is sending children for attachment for three months better than a system whereby children are continuously in touch with the practical and productive aspects of learning right from crèche?
In the ZIMFEP model, at all stages, learners are engaged in activities that link their education with their real lives.
Whatever the subject, the children study it holistically.
Outside formal school hours, children choose a production unit in which to pursue a productive activity which interests them, in greater detail and with greater flexibility.
This is light miles superior to an apologetic three-month attachment after 11 years of schooling.
During the liberation struggle we took a quantum leap, we were and still are light miles ahead with the type of education we developed deep in the forests of Mozambique and Zambia with our revolutionary children.
Our children enjoyed this liberating education, they could think, their minds were unfettered, they could create, they could innovate, they were their own masters and it came naturally because all learning has theoretical, practical as well as productive aspects.
It is when learning is dichotomised that children have problems because they are being costed to learn in a manner that is contrary to nature.
This revolutionary education from the struggle is still alive, enshrined in the Foundation for Education with Production.
It is time to take it up and implement it across the nation’s schools so we transform our nation.
It is what the people have been voting for since February 1980.
The people have said that it is ZANU PF, the embodiment of the two liberation movements which they want to lead them, them who defeated the British colonialism.
Zvinomiririrwa namapato akarwira rusununguko eZANU neZAPU ndizvo zvavanoda.
Zviipe izvozvo?
The Nziramasanga Commission Report does not state an ideological position, makes no reference to the liberation struggle, which means it supports the status-quo, the ideology of the British and their capitalism.
The Report on the Curriculum Review by the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education typically like its surrogate mother, the Nziramasanga Commission Report, does not state an ideological position, leaving the British designed curriculum undisturbed so that it can reproduce and perpetuate itself.
Nothing other than the ideology of the liberation forces embodied in ZANU PF can destroy the ethos of the British colonialism in our school curriculum.
In Cuba they say: ‘Socialism or Death!’
In our liberation struggle we said: ‘Our Land or Death!’
Without heirs our revolution is dead.
For us therefore the question is not academic.
Dr Mahamba is a war veteran and holds a PhD from Havard University. She is currently doing consultancy work.