As the election dust settles, anxiety builds on whether all the promises made by elected politicians are indeed issues we should be yearning to be actualised. Notably, is the promise by Kenya Kwanza team to scrub the CBC system!
As the maxim goes, 'Good leaders follow their people's wishes, but great leaders show the way and coax people to follow'. We must stop making populist decisions on vital programmes that have far-reaching effects on the progress of a country. Not all that the majority support is right in the name of democracy, some issues are better left to experts.
CBC, unlike the 8-4-4 curriculum, is a timely system that if managed effectively will transform this country to developed status in the shortest time possible.
Formal education is one of the most misconstrued ideas in most parts of the world, especially in Africa. It's worth understanding that school does not provide intelligence, but a standardised, categorised and uniform knowledge to aid learning.
Conventionally, formal education has been perceived favourably by society. Education was and is still thought to be the only way to success in many countries, and any individual who failed or fails to pursue formal education is condemned to failure.
Save for a few countries that are highly rated on curriculum efficacy, such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany, many, including Kenya, still struggle to find the right curriculum system that best suits the original or real essence of school education.
Formal education ought not be taken as anything different from personnel recruitment field, since all serve the same purpose. School is where countries get to discover the diverse potential of their citizens with the sole purpose of dispatching them to challenge areas where their unique abilities can be utilised for the profit of humanity.
With this understanding, therefore, and in order to realise distinct capabilities among the younger population, the provision of wide and diverse fields to test the interest and abilities of our children is very necessary.
The 8-4-4 system seemed to put more emphasis on power to understand and memorise the information presented or read on government-provided materials. This negated and condemned learners with other abilities that are also crucial in society. These include hands-on technical skills or even athletics, which do not necessarily rely on memory capacity but are dependent on other faculties of human endowment.
Concerns about the increased learning expenses and heavy teacher-learner workload, to mention but a few, must not be allowed to destroy a noble programme that holds so much promise and hope to transform and equip our workforce.
These challenges could easily be relieved by encouraging learners to utilise readily available materials, while the government works on ways to ensure enough infrastructure.
However, like any other operational curriculum, CBC should not be immune from criticism and should be improved based on informed feedback from all stakeholders.
It's my plea, therefore, that the Ministry of Education opens all available windows and encourages discourses geared towards refining this well-thought-out and timely system.
International relations and diplomacy scholar
