Have we really debated the new curriculum?

Sometimes you gauge the value of a nation from the behaviour of its media. Surprised? I will tell you a story.

In March this year, I found myself in the sprawling, yet chaotic capital of Kenya, Nairobi—a city that hardly sleeps.

Well, as expected, just after stepping on their pale and dry land, my first stop was at a newspaper shop. You know, the papers help a traveler, without boring natives with inquisitive questions, to capture issues being discussed in the public.

I captured three main issues. One, there was a matatu (minibus) strike that paralysed the capital’s public transport system.

In fact, it was even a lead story on BBC radio and TV. Two, there was the release of their Form Four examinations. And three, there was a party convention for Raila Odinga’s party.

If it were in Malawi, unarguably, Odinga’s convention story, being the largest opposition gathering, could have passed for a lead story in the media, both electronic and print.

Not in Kenya.

My news value and judgment was extremely challenged after I noted that Kenya’s two main dallies, The Daily Nation and The Standard, had led, for three consecutive days, with the release of their Form Four examinations.

On the first day, the two dailies announced the results by concentrating on the three secondary schools that came out the best. The story covered six pages from the front page.

On the second day, the two dailies, as if they share editorials, concentrated on talking to the best students in various subjects—in fact they had their front pages coloured with pictures of best students.

On the third day, the dailies run exclusives talking with teachers, parents and school committees from the best schools. This time they covered five pages.

I asked Mercy Juma, a companion who showed me the best and the worst of Nairobi: why such extensive coverage of Form Four examination results?

Her response was short: why not?

“Come on Mercy,” I insisted, “these are just examination results. After all an 87 percent pass rate is good news and good news in journalism is not news at all. What about Raila’s convention? The Matatu strike? You only covered them once; in fact, they were on page 10.”

She laughed in quite a deriding way.

“You see, education is Kenya’s major priority. It always comes first. In the media, it’s a serious news item. Our exclusive coverage of the results reflects the philosophy and our editorials don’t compromise on it,” she said.

She even asked: Don’t you do that in Malawi with regards to education?

I did not have an immediate answer. But I only told her that in September this year, we are rolling out a new curriculum in our secondary schools.

For those, like Mercy, who don’t know, government, through the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, is rolling out a new curriculum this September.

To mean, if you have a child who will start Form One this September, they will be learning new things—different from what those who will be in Form Two learnt.

Your children, in the new curriculum, will have nine compulsory subjects. There are some interesting changes that have been made. For instance, history will now be a compulsory subject. Already in most schools, history teachers are quite few.

There hasn’t been a deliberate effort, so far, to increases the intake of history teachers to meet the demand which this new curriculum is bringing. Beyond that, I got perturbed when I heard that new history textbooks are ‘being written now’. The question is: how will these children learn, then?

This new curriculum—which is heavily rooted in advancing science and technology—has also seen the splitting of physical science into physics and chemistry. But already secondary schools are struggling with the teaching of sciences because of a critical shortage of qualified teachers and lack of laboratories in Community Day Secondary Schools (CDSS)—schools where almost 60 percent of our children learn. How, then, will this new curriculum perform?

Equally baffling is the fact that most teachers in secondary schools are yet to get briefings regarding this new curriculum. Yet the curriculum is rolling out this September. Are we really serious with our education?

My deepest pain is not necessarily the fact that government has, unarguably, rushed to roll out this new curriculum. Rather, how, as a country, we have buried our heads in the sand over a critical shift in our education system without serious debate over its viability.

As it stands now, the curriculum is rolling out next month. But trust me, just like the Free Primary Education (FPE) in 1994 and PCAR in 2000, this new curriculum, again, will fail to produce the desired results. I am sure we will have our national complacency to blame for this.

I think, as a country, we need to change the way we value our education. We have a complete detached attitude to questioning what our children are learning in schools. We are only good at decrying the decline of education standards in the country.

Yet we hardly take time to raise our voices when there are major shifts in the education such as the new curriculum. This reflects even in the way journalists report and value education issues. We do not probe deep the way we do with political scandals.

That is why our lead stories stop at political news. Not that it is bad. But sometimes—let me end where I begun—you gauge the value of a nation from the behaviour of its media.