The Interview: ‘Pledge part of national education curriculum’ Minister Dokora
Minister Dokora

Minister Dokora

OVER the past few weeks, there have been stories concerning the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education about the National Pledge, uniforms for teachers and mandatory HIV testing for all pupils. The Herald’s Christopher Charamba (CC) sat down with Primary and Secondary Education Minister Dr Lazarus Dokora (LD) to clarify these issues and learn more on the new education curriculum.

CC: There has been controversy around the National Pledge and because there was no consultation before this was implemented. Do you think that in the process you alienated the parents or other stakeholders?

LD: Why don’t we start with matters that bring us together as Zimbabweans? The pledge is part of a national curriculum and it is not to be treated in isolation.

Those who follow the trajectory of the history of education of our people in this country will know certain facts. In the first instance you could look at the periodisation prior to European penetration in our land. It’s a rich and fertile area to explore which will provide a take on education.

Where in a pre-colonial society the education of the young was such that there were no failures in the sense in which we conceptualise a person that has failed a programme or a course. Each young person was ably managed and guided towards the achievement of critical skills that were both of a soft nature, knowing the value system, and the survival skills that enabled that young person to mature into an adult of equal competency to the rest of the communities.

When you look at the colonial period itself, one of the things that is visible is that the settlers were very particular in creating arrangements for the education of the white child from 1890. When they sat in their governance structure, in an Order in Council in 1903 they did provide for the compulsory learning of English as a medium of communication for those that would be settlers in the territory.

Quite clearly, it was to ensure that those that came from the Germanic extractions, French backgrounds or elsewhere would have to learn English. It wasn’t idle. In 1907 or 1908 they also passed an Order in Council as what you would translate broadly as the Master and Servant Act which governed the relationship between the natives and the settlers.

Looking at these Acts, you can see they were trying to call largely the missionary factor and the so-called liberal whites who were providing a more elaborate education for the natives. That Master/Servant Act largely controlled the medium of communication.

You don’t talk to a native in their language. You use Chilapalapa or Fanagalo or something of that sort. Of course, the argument was that the native communication medium did not have stable vocabulary. When you look at it from a linguistic point of view, Chilapalapa itself was guilty of that because its vocabulary was dependent on the two or three languages that were in contact in any of the social spaces.

It was part of a strategy by the settlers to put brakes on the development of our people and destroy confidence in their own systems. Make them believe they had no language of any credible value.

There were the so-called liberals, some of a missionary sort which led Doke to develop in 1926 what they called standard Shona. They put together five or six languages and then started to call these languages dialects of the main language they coined. Though each time anybody opens their mouth they speak in their particular language, not in a standard form.

In 1922 the settlers mandated Frank Tate to look at the education system. The outcomes of that commission chaired by Tate were used to buttress European education so that you have the European system which was free and compulsory.

As we went into the Fox Commission in 1935 even though he spoke about the need for skills for the whites, it was more skills for the white child and not for the natives. The missionaries made efforts and by 1952 they had another commission to try and understand the needs of the territory and this was chaired by Kerr.

Now Kerr’s suggestions said we should embrace all races because the population of the territory was growing and the economy needed to be grown with it. But for the whites of that time, the recommendations by Kerr could not effectively be implemented.

He began to speak about wanting a more diversified curriculum particularly in secondary, a more skills oriented curriculum. However, the settlers in Southern Rhodesia took that to mean for the whites. Those of our people who went to missionary schools sometimes benefited from an approach that assisted them to gain skills and academic disciple and moved on.

In 1952 you should also appreciate the fact that this was also on the eve of the Federation of the three territories. Some of the recommendations that could have been useful couldn’t be attended to as the Federation dominated by Southern Rhodesia dictated that each territory should look after education of its native populations but the Federal Government had the responsibility to the European race.

You then come to 1962/63 when again they ask for a review of the education system and they appointed Professor Judges. In his report of 1963 he then makes the suggestion that we should remember what Kerr had said earlier and embrace and harness the potential of the various races in the territory.

For the whites it meant that the European child got this highly enriched curriculum that was more practical and tech oriented as well as the academic discipline. For the blacks the settlers began to think in different ways. Putting the missionary efforts aside, they started to think that maybe we should have blacks who are highly specialised in the practical domain and benefit of the theoretical grounding.

Lewis-Taylor chaired a committee in 1974 which attempted to bring to reality some of the recommendations of Judges. In spite of the effort to get a general diet for all kids there began to be very clear lines of separation.

CC: What do you mean by clear lines of separation?

LD: In our history of education in this country you start to hear about an F1 stream where the academic disciplines were being pursued. There were very few if any practical or technical vocational disciplines. In fact, if you were in an F1 stream school you were punished by doing the practical.

Saying in a psychological sense, to do the practical, and often it was dig a hole or other such, was useless. You would see the uselessness of the practical.

Then you had the F2 stream that was also designed to say it should be bereft of any theoretical grounding. You can join metals together but you have no basis for understanding material science. Why do these metals behave the way they do?

Then you had this middle ground of the Asians and Coloureds who were also trying to find a niche for themselves. Trying to survive between the groups. At any rate 1974-75 was the height of the Second Chimurenga and so the settler regime found itself introverted, looking at strategies to survive the war.

This led to a distortion that continued into independence. At independence the then Prime Minister, our President Robert Mugabe, tasked the first Minister of Education to collapse the distinctions in education and create a national curriculum and system.

This is when you begin to see in the 1980s the first decade where thousands of parents were bussing their children into the former Group A schools. It was an expression of sovereignty over territorial space I think at this time. It was witness to the policy which has largely continued until recent years where you could literally say a school never gets full what gets full is a stream.

You can see the first stream form 1-4 and a second and third stream continuing because parents identified certain spaces as being advantageous to their children. If you followed what I said about what the whites were doing to further nest the institutional spaces where their children were going to attend school, its understandable that after independence these were the spaces that were highly privileged.

In the rural areas, there was physical expansion which was visible, because the schools were far and apart and education there had never been prioritised by the colonial government. So the President led a model where parents would mould bricks and get the building sand and other materials and the State would come in and put a roof, doors and window panes and so on.

That is how the rural areas began to expand into this phenomenal achievement which is what we are today. But at the same time in the urban areas, the spaces remained constricted but the layering of streams in the schools continued.

By the beginning of the second decade of independence, you then get the President beginning to speak about yes we have unified our system and collapsed the Asian, Coloured, African and European division into one system, but what is it that we are doing in terms of the content, and orientation and skills being provided to the young people in our education system?

In 1995 in particular he spoke to Parliament at some length about the need to deal with the issues of the curriculum. And indeed three years later he appointed a commission of inquiry into education and training chaired by Professor Nziramasanga.

The commission worked over two years and did a tremendous amount of research. They travelled to various continents, America, Europe, and I think New Zealand and Australia as well as some African countries. They produced a report in 1999 which is a public document.

When you then look at some of the key things that they found, they decried for instance the absence of values, a sense of anchored values. To say yes we are doing very well to provide academic skills of thought but what are the practical skills and the software skills like Ubuntu/Unhu. Who are we? And we need a diversified curriculum.

You can almost loop back and see what it is that the Europeans were doing for their children and now in 1999 the situation had changed. But still the desire for a tech/voc component which is significant was very clear, and that those things which we do well we should continue to do.

The third component this thing I have mentioned, first to say they were looking for a sense of mooring and anchored values. What is it in Singaporean education that makes the young Singaporean assert themselves as I am Singaporean?

CC: Was this then the basis on which the introduction of the national pledge was brought forward?

LD: This is the search for values. After the 1999 report, our Ministry took some steps, not all together complete but some steps, attempting to mainstream agriculture, attempting to bring into view the ECDs.

We said attach, and I have spoken in public fora about that word attach, that it misdirected the recommendation. The ECDs were literally placed on the edge of the school yard and the parents came up with their own coinage of it, zero grade. We have no such thing in the actual instruments of the Ministry but it was the physical exponent of a policy that had not quite succeeded.

Come 2013 we have a new constitution. The first home grown constitution since the one that had been a product of negotiation at Lancaster. That home grown constitution spoke to the values of the liberation war. It spoke to the responsibilities of an institutional nature of ministries such as mine to say that the constitution must be taught as part of a programme of education of our people.

This is so they know their responsibilities, how the State functions, their obligations and the expectations that flow from the rights that are provided for in the constitution. So in 2014 the Ministry sought authority from Cabinet and we were given the green light to go our and consult and that’s what we did.

We expended a lot of time in 2014, public meetings, in the newspapers, radio, TV, you name it, culminating in the huge uptake of the Mai Chisamba show where we had over 4000 people wanting to participate because there had been so much interest generated. Quite clearly we then decided that there be appointed six experts who went through the evidence.

What were people talking about and desirous to see? The idea that their children must be disciplined, their children must have skills, their children must love their nation, their children must be respectful of their colleague and elders and so on.

And where do we find the underpinnings of this? In the constitution itself. We said they are echoing matters that 15/16 years ago the Professor and his team also observed, that this absence is a terrible absence.

So when you look at the constitution and look at the preamble, it is there for all to see. Indeed, you have words that constitute the national school pledge where the first line is extracted as is from the preamble itself, elevates the divine and the place of the divine in our mortal lives.

Only after that do we then make the acknowledgement of the flag. The flag is one of our national symbols and again it is in the constitution with its colours. These are the sets of colours that are defining our flag into perpetuity and kids must understand what those colours mean. You can’t just say that’s our flag but what do the colours mean? What does the black mean? What does the red represent? What about the yellow or the green?

As you unpack these colour patterns you are also simultaneously educating the child into the ethos of this nation. It can’t happen at Sunday school; it happens in a school. And then of course the fact that the preamble acknowledges and offers respect to those that died for the country during the Chimurenga/Umvukela. This is part of our history.

Then of course the fact that there is an expression of our inheritance and sovereignty over our natural resources, God given. I don’t think Zimbabweans need to be reminded what these natural resources are. From platinum to gold to diamonds and so forth. These youngsters grew up knowing that these riches are part of their heritage.

CC: Where then does the divide with the Christians come into play? Do you think their objections are justified?

LD: I don’t know where they are getting that from because if I am speaking in this way and saying that this is the preamble then you know that it is not about me. They should be directing their attention to the constitution and not me.

CC: You spoke about having a diverse curriculum and now there are reports that the Ministry has banned scripture union in schools. Is that part of this new curriculum?

LD: Those reports are part of the same diatribe that has been following. I don’t know, I hear about it and read about it in the media. They talk about me saying that all teachers must wear uniforms, they talk about me saying all kids must go for HIV testing, they talk about me I think saying that I said the sun would rise from the West or something like that.

We don’t communicate policy through Whatsapp platforms or through Facebook and so on. Of course there are some people who think it is fun to do that. We don’t know whether they have a serious agenda or otherwise. You even hear these stories about SU and even the bible and so on.

I hear about these things also. But you see I can’t say when I hear about these things today then I go and say “oh no it’s not that and oh no it’s not this.” We have a programme of action here. We have concluded the curriculum review process and we now have a framework which was accepted by cabinet in September and we are now proceeding to implement.

CC: How far along are you in terms of implementation?

LD: We are in phase one right now. And phase one among other things, I think we are almost complete now with production of new syllabuses. We have also mandated Zimsec to make arrangements to do pilot testing.

We have trained over 65 000 teachers on early reading initiatives, on making sure that they understand the different levels that pupils might be and once they have that skill they know when they introduce a new set of concepts how should they be able to cope with the different levels of appreciation of that content.

As I speak we have also completed the training of trainers. So that is cascading and it is rolling out well. We are also working on a media product.

CC: Perhaps lastly, there is the food programme that the Ministry is carrying out. What stage is this programme at now?

LD: It is one of the key deliverables within the context of the new curriculum. The new curriculum has a lot of implication. Kids must remain active and alert and if I want them to be like that, then we must also provide for their nutrition while they are in school.

Cabinet gave us authority to do a phased approach to school feeding. We are starting with infants and we have said to all our schools get yourselves into form. You need a kitchenette; you need a security outfit where you can store grain. They have access to grain as it is being distributed now through the Ministry of Labour and the GMB.

Some schools have already started, some on account of those constraints of putting up the security infrastructure for their grain, have started with other foods. I was in Mazowe for instance, where they said they have started with maheu and we will move onto the solid carbohydrates maybe by the end of the term.

So that is meant to be countrywide. We have also received some financial outlay from Central Government to assist schools to buy certain things. I visited Manicaland and saw in Chipinge a plentiful supply of fruit. Where I got to I don’t know if that’s universal there, one dollar purchases 40 good bananas.

So as you can imagine, 40 is the standard class size and with one dollar you can assure them of a banana. But then of course you have to transport the material from there to the rest of the country. But at least schools can now enter into relationships and partnerships so that we can feed these kids.

This is just one of the frontiers in the new curriculum. The other relates to infrastructure deliverables. I have just been to Mazowe as I said where the Japanese Ambassador donated six classrooms to a school that was housed in a tobacco barn and now they are in their own space.

Going forward we have just finalised the documents with the colleagues in finance and in public works and I am waiting on the Secretary and her team to sign on the financial advisor who are IDBZ and also advertise the post of consultant so we can now begin to do the joint venture delivery of our school infrastructure.

That is a matter which is very close to our hearts. Remember what I said in the first decade of independence, in the first decade it was more of the assertion of sovereignty over space and creating these several layers of streams. We have schools with 4000 kids and learning space is inadequate. We have to decongest those. So again we are surging ahead in this way.

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