CBC a rehash of old curricula

More than 290 years after formal western education came to our shores, debate still rages on what is the appropriate education for Kenya’s youth. I am not suggesting that we should stop debating. We need a robust, progressive and sustained debate on education.

Over the last four years we have been immersed in what is an unending conversation about curriculum. The government is determined to phase out the current 8-4-4 curriculum and replace it with the competency-based 2-6-3-3-3. Before the 8-4-4 curriculum, we had the 7-4-2-3. The argument against the 8-4-4 curriculum, just like what was levelled against the 7-4-2-3 one, is that it is academic, exam-oriented and does not give learners entrepreneurial skills for self-reliance.

The proponents of the new curriculum argue that the current one contributes to Kenya’s high unemployment and somehow fuels the emergence of social vices, including violent crime, substance abuse and antisocial behaviour. Moreover, the proponents of the new curriculum argue that the 8-4-4 one “makes little provision for the recognition of the learner’s potential, gifts and talents due to an unnecessary focus on examination”.

Advocates for the new curriculum also suggest that it is aligned to the Constitution, Vision 2030 and the spirit of regional integration. The vision of the new curriculum is to nurture every learner’s potential and produce engaged, empowered and ethical citizens. Moreover, seven core competencies, among them critical thinking and problem-solving, creativity and imagination are at the heart of the basic education curriculum framework.

As one would expect, the new curriculum framework has many strong points and some troubling weaknesses. While I understand that the detail is in the framing of content areas and instructional design, the curriculum is still as prescriptive as the one it seeks to supplant. For example, six-year-olds are required to learn nine subjects in lower primary. Moreover, they are required to take 12 core subjects when they enter lower secondary.

The new curriculum is a testament that we are unable to move beyond the assembly line skills factory model of the Industrial Age. The framers of the new curriculum are anxious about developing knowledge and skills for the labour market, an objective many believe the 8-4-4 has not achieved. But I think this fixation with workforce development is the Achilles heel of the curriculum.

We live in a post-knowledge age, not the Industrial Age. Ours is the Conceptual Age, where abilities such as design, story, empathy, creativity, big-picture thinking and interdisciplinary analysis are critical. The streaming into arts and sports science, social science and STEM is a throwback, antiquated and antithetical to interdisciplinarity and the ideal of consilience. This new curriculum is a barren hybrid of the 7-4-2-3 and 8-4-4 curricula

We must remember that we are building a curriculum for Generation Alpha, children born after 2010, also known as the iGeneration. They are the most technological-immersed demographic to date. We can and must do better for the iGeneration. We must not re-package the deficient old curricula and present it as new.