Kenya has approved a new system of education to replace the 8-4-4. This has generated healthy debate.
Representatives of teachers have wisely advised against producing a very good document which may be tricky to implement. On the other hand CS Matiang'i has encouraged critiques to focus on “how you should be involved rather than how you have not been involved”.
Education is defined as the process of receiving or giving systematic instruction at school or university. On the other hand training is concerned with developing a particular skill to a desired standard by instruction and practice.
One reason we are introducing the new system is to help those who are unable to climb the mainstream educational ladder be useful in the economy.
Educationists employ a learning model called the Bloom’s taxonomy of learning which has three domains: the cognitive, affective and psychomotor.
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We have argued that the 8-4-4 system imparted more knowledge than skills or focussed more on the cognitive than the other two of Bloom’s domains and said that was bad for the pupils and by extension the economy. In the cognitive domain, the teacher stands in front of a class and literary pours (through dictation or otherwise) into the heads of the learners, knowledge for them to mechanically absorb, remember and reproduce in an examination.
Those who cannot reproduce it are deemed to be failures. Many a times the teacher uses sources of knowledge that are either alien or outdated .
That way you get a learner who may very highly pass say a written swimming examination but if put in a swimming pool would drown. Alternatively you get a first class honours graduate of entrepreneurship who “tarmacs” for years looking for a wage employment opening.
The new system proposes to shift the focus from the K in KAS (Knowledge, Attitudes and Skills) to the S, hence terminologies like competence-based curriculum.
It was the great Chinese philosopher Confucius who in 450 BC pronounced three statements that make lots of both sense and cents to education. One – I hear and I forget or tell me and I will forget.
Two – I see and I remember of show me and I may remember and Three – I do I understand or involve me and I will understand.
Clearly the first Confucian statement relates to the K in KAS and that is what our country’s education system at all levels has put premium on. Pupils and students hear teachers in the class, remember it for the sake of the examination and forget it thereafter.
The last of the Confucian statements implies involving the learner with hands-on skills. This is what the new system has been designed to do. Of course there is the A in KAS- the attitude. It is said that you can take the cow to the river but you cannot force it to drink.
Likewise, you can give the learner the right knowledge about, say, entrepreneurship and inculcate the right entrepreneurial competencies and skills but if the learner has a negative attitude about self-employment, then the learner will not venture into self-employment.
We may be on the right track with the new system of education but we need now to focus on how to implement it.
Using the same (unretooled) teachers and the same facilities to implement the new system will be like pouring new wine into old wineskins.
When the new wine ferments further it might burst the old wineskins and get wasted.
Our teachers are just that – more of teachers than trainers.
The two concepts may be twins but they are not identical twins. At colleges our teachers are trained more in pedagogy and less in andragogy. Talking of learner centred teaching is leaning towards andragogy where the extreme takes the form of the learner choosing what he/she wants to learn.
The new system will aspire to identify pupils’ strengths and interests and help them develop the same. This is very close to saying that pupils will be taught what they like most hence the specialization idea proposed to start at secondary school.
Herein lays the good virus of andragogy. If I was asked to count some key success factors for the new system I would say: Set up a policy or some reward system to support and motivate the system. Retool existing educationists.
Establish the right infrastructure to accommodate the specialisations at secondary school levels. This might mean school based business incubators, 4K (kuungana, kufanya, kujenga Kenya) clubs.
Set up specialised tertiary institutions modelled on the famous Iten School where those who have an interest in athletics and games would join for their higher education. Finally, design relevant teaching materials
