New Education Curriculum Stirs Outcry in Zimbabwe
Saved under Education, News, SOUTHERN AFRICA, Zimbabwe
Tags: education minister, Lazarus Dokora
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A Teachers union is soliciting for 500 000 signatures from members with the aim of petitioning President Robert Mugabe to stop the implementation of the new curriculum introduced by education minister, Lazarus Dokora.
Dokora, in January this year, introduced a new curriculum in the primary and secondary education system “without” consulting teachers and other stakeholders.
The curriculum, among other subjects, introduced the writing of dissertations by form four students and mandated the same to go for industrial attachment.
The new curriculum also did away with subjects such as Geography, while bringing in a “Muslim” subject which replaced religious studies.
Also introduced was sexual reproductive health studies in primary schools.
Last week, the Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ), held a stakeholders meeting in Harare, where they deliberated and resolved to approach President Mugabe and appeal for the abandonment of the new curriculum.
Teachers said they were not given enough time to scheme and understand the new curriculum.
“We are going to apply a multifaceted approach as this meeting has agreed which include litigation, naming and shaming the ills and shortcomings of this curriculum so that we try to knock sense to the government ,” PTUZ President Takavafira Zhou, announced after the meeting.
“We are not against government but what we are simply saying is that we want to be consulted and we do not want to be ruled but to be led properly and our massage is that the basic and best thing is to leave the education system as a terrain of professionals not politicians,” said Zhou.
PTUZ secretary general Raymond Majongwe said they wished to petition President Mugabe and parliament as well as challenge Dokora’s unplanned decision to force teachers to implement the new curriculum without giving them time to study it.
“It is the future of our children which is being destroyed because as we speak teachers are not teaching because everything brought by Dokora is relevantly new to them.
“We hear that Dokora is saying that we were consulted, but the truth of the matter is that we were not consulted. Our involvement and observations were not factored in, so when they talk of consultations it must be direct day light robbery and thievery that culminated in a document that does not summarize the truth,” said Majongwe.
He added,” So, in as far as we are concerned in the submissions that we are going to be making to whoever wants to listen to us, this process was fake, it is a clear fraud and it does not fit and pass the litmus test of what it was meant to achieve”.
