Kenya's success rises and falls on our education curriculum

Murang’a Road extends from the Globe roundabout to around Pangani and then becomes part of the Thika superhighway.

It is unclear why the road is named Murang’a, yet it leads to many other counties. The road is known for its old buildings and houses a rarely talked-about institution: the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD), formerly the Kenya Institute of Education (KIE).

The signboard does not front the main road; you have to make a small left turn from town to see it. The institution has no grandiose buildings, another reason it is hard to notice. 

Yet the future of this country could be determined by KICD more than at the ballot box. It is through KICD that the content of what our children will learn is determined, more so in their formative years. That content will determine their careers, attitudes, views on life, neighbours, leaders, the universe and most importantly work and economics.

 Is Protestant Work Ethic in our CRE syllabus? The content will determine the competitiveness of our no longer young nation. Who determines what our children learn in school?  It is mostly the government. Parents are not much bothered, including the most educated ones, as long as their children pass exams.

In both Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) and 8-4-4, they even complained about their involvement! Should parents and other stakeholders have more say in the curriculum?  

What students learn cannot be unlearned later in life. That is why it should go through lots of consultation, even deeper than the constitution. The literacy level has gone up and most parents would have a say. And they are well-informed. A majority of parents are unable to leave the official government curriculum; they are stuck with it. The affluent have choices. Let me share two examples of why curriculum reforms should involve more stakeholders and hold the key to the socio-economic transformation of this country.  

In Class Five, we studied very new and interesting topics in maths, such as probability, base-2, and tessellation.  

Probability was taught in Form Three under 8-4-4 (I’m not sure of CBC), while base-2 in high school computer studies is subject to confirmation. Tessellation is not taught at all.  The tile patterns in your house or office give you a good idea of what’s tessellation. 

A public outcry over new maths led to a shift back to “Carey Francis” maths. Why does this matter? Kenya‘s renaissance in computer science was shifted decades later by keeping off base-2; its zeros and ones are the building blocks of computer science. Probability is the basis of statistics and big data; that too was postponed. Why do we focus so much on early man from Zinjanthropus to Ramapithecus when we know so little about modern man, including ourselves?

Why so much focus on evolution while teaching creation? How do we resolve the student’s cognitive dissonance? Why do we have a statue of a dinosaur at the entrance of the National Museum of Kenya and not any other animal?  

One big question is why our curriculum is not as current as foreign music and movies. Most youngsters know the top hits and current movies.

Why not the cutting-edge ideas in science and technology? Are Nobel Prizes ever in our headlines? That is why computers promised by the Jubilee administration were revolutionary; it would make it easier to update the content without waiting for the long publishing process of books.

Beyond involving more stakeholders, we need more links among the different school levels. What do primary teachers know about kindergarten and secondary school? What do university lecturers know about the high school content? 

I noted even universities participate in music and drama together with schools. How about science and technology and the link between home and school and school and the workplace? Do we have tracer studies of our graduates? They would provide great feedback on improving the education content. Recruiters have good feedback. How global is our curriculum, and how does it expose our children to global trends and experiences? When do our children come to internalise how Japan, Singapore or China became economic powers? Did we copy the content of the US curriculums as we copied their constitution? Finally, we can’t forget the hidden curriculum - what children learn out of the class. It competes with the official curriculum.

What do they learn from our peers and the media? They learn it faster and more easily because it is not as structured as the school, and it is multimedia! 

The content of the curriculum, not the distribution of years is the fulcrum on which a great education rests. Why doesn’t education and its content excite us like politics?

Next time you pass by KICD, think of how it affects our lives. When are we having our Sputnik moment?