New curriculum: another education disaster

Sometime in early 2000, government, through the Ministry of Education, destroyed the steam of the content-rich Physical Science by introducing a watered-down subject called Science and Technology.

I just can’t figure out why government made that decision. But I can confess to be one of its casualties.

In 2003, while in Form Four—that should be the third week of the first term—I moved from Robert Laws Secondary School in Mzimba to a private secondary school in Mzuzu.

To my utmost baffle, when I first stepped into class at the new school, there was hardly a scribble of Physical Science on the timetable. The reason? The school, after government’s decision, opted for Science and Technology.

The result was tragic: all students were systematically forced to drop Physical Science for Science and Technology.

Fresh from Robert Laws where Physical Science was a key subject and one of my favourites, I tried to reason with teachers at the private schol to come to my recue.

I could hardly think of having a Malawi School Certificate of Education (MSCE) without Physical Science, so I asked the Science and Technology teacher to help me just with textbooks—if any. He came out reluctant. In fact, he advised I concentrate on Science and Technology. His argument was that the school did not even have a laboratory.

It took me time to come to terms with the reality of letting Physical Science go. I gave up and today, here I am without the subject on my MSCE. Because of that, I failed to apply for my dream course, Irrigation Engineering because, during entrance university examinations, we were heavily warned against applying for science courses if we do not have Physical Science.

In fact, one lecturer from the then Bunda College of Agriculture bluntly told us that University of Malawi (Unima) did not recognise Science and Technology as a science subject. Consequently—though I don’t regret—I ended up in the arts at Chancellor College.

Surprisingly, just two years after my MSCE in 2003, Science and Technology was scrapped from secondary schools.

Today, all I have are painful questions. Why, in the first place, did government introduce the subject? Was it really sure of what it wanted to achieve?

Frankly speaking, the gesture of introducing a subject into the school system and scrapping it off a few years later speaks volume of something terribly wrong with the way our education system is managed.

Ideally, I expect our education system to be soberly managed by a cautious and thoughtful ministry, which understands the delicate balance between theory and practice before taking new interventions to classrooms.

But the Science and Technology experience reveals a thoughtful, but myopic ministry, quick to develop and implement rather worthwhile innovations without due regard to conditions of those being targeted.

I thought the tragedy of Science and Technology could have been our moment of truth—a time to understand that top-down management of education is a quick invitation to failure.

Well, wiser ones were indeed wise when they declared the only lesson we learn from history is that humans do not learn from it.

In 2006, government, again after tense deliberation with donors, drew up a Primary Curriculum Assessment Reform (PCAR) and, in a flash, threw it to jam-packed classrooms for helpless teachers to implement. All PCAR reviews I have read stops at calling it a failure.

But when PCAR or Science and Technology fails, what happens to pupils and students? Are they not the ultimate failures?

I am sure you read last weeks’ story in Nation on Sunday about how government’s own research revealed the scaring scope of how Free Primary Education (FPE) has failed our children and future of the country.

Imagine FPE increasing Standard One enrolment to one million per year, but the number of those staying the course to secondary school remains static at 60 000 per year. What, fellow Malawians is happening to the 940 000? Where do they end up?

Frankly speaking, the failure of Science and Technology; PCAR and FPE do not spring from their underlying philosophy. I am sure these policies were rightly developed to address a particular challenge within our education system.

However, the challenge has always been government’s quest to haste such good policies to the classroom without addressing the volatility of the learning environment. They fail because there is always somebody at the top—is it donors, perhaps?—who want to get things done as quickly as yesterday.

I want us, especially when managing education, to learn to invest in change. It disturbs me to the bone when we always go to the contrary—in fact, that is where we are, again, going with the new curriculum set to roll this September 8.

I am not naïve, as an educationist, to the needs of a curriculum change. But, just like with PCAR and FPE, we are failing to exercise patience before we take drastic policy interventions to the classroom.

The new curriculum, which is heavily driven by the need to enhance science education, will see Form Ones, starting this September, learn Physics and Chemistry separately. But that is only a policy directive. Its implementation depends on the capacity of classroom situation.

Now look here: almost 70 percent of our children learn in Community Day Secondary Schools (CDSS). These are schools without adequate qualified science teachers and laboratories. How, then, will we achieve this science-driven curriculum? Of course, government is upbeat, arguing they are purchasing mobile laboratories for schools. But how sustainable is this? Why can’t government withhold the rolling out until that time when most disadvantaged schools have been given a hand?

Or look at History. The important subject, in this new curriculum, will be a compulsory subject. It’s good news. But what kind of History will students be learning? I am told the process of writing History texts is currently in progress. Really, when the curriculum rolls out three weeks from today?

There are quite a number of critical issues that demand urgent redress if the new curriculum can help achieve the intended. As it stands now, there is absolutely nothing that will change the status. If there will be change, then it’s for the worst—just like FPE.

That is why it is my earnest prayer to government to stop the rolling of the new curriculum until, at least, when most critical issues have been sorted out. Otherwise, just like Science and Technology, PCAR and FPE, this new curriculum will, in a year, prove another education disaster. Ladies and gentlemen, we are destroying the future of our nation with our own hands.