Education sector leaders must embrace change

There has been a lot of talk about a new curriculum and a new educational system and it is quite clear that the government is ready to get on with it.

Quite obviously, there are serious efforts along these lines because, as we can see, teachers are being trained on the new curriculum during this holiday period.

True to form, the secretary general of the Kenya National Union of Teachers has vehemently opposed the operation. Unfortunately, it would seem quite a good number of his members have chosen to defy him and are attending the training sessions.

Several of his union officials in branches around the country have taken it upon themselves to go and interfere with and scatter the training sessions.

A number of them have actually been arrested by the police and this has introduced an awkward and unprofessional situation.

The Kenya National Union of Teachers has for a long time been viewed as one among the most professionally run trade unions.

My late father, who played a little part in the founding of that union, used to tell me and my brothers that that union was founded to agitate against the missionaries who in any case were the owners and managers of schools at the time – the 50s.

The shift came in the last century with the enactment of the Education Act of 1968. Naturally, the new government had to take control of the flow of information and what could have been a better avenue than taking charge of the education system?

We are now in the 21st Century and many things have happened with regard to the way education, among other things, has to be managed.

It is time to rethink our strategies; whether we are government officers, unionists or educational administrators.

It is this 21st Century Kenya that we want to move forward and not individuals or the past.

As a matter of fact, each one of us – government officers, unionists, teachers or whoever – must come to terms with the fact that all this is not about us who came from the last century. It is about the young ones who are going to school in the here and now.

None of us – in spite of whatever position we hold – has any right to interfere with how children/students of this 21st Century must grow.

It has to be a concerted effort and from what I understand, the move to the new curriculum was publicly discussed among the relevant stakeholders, including the teachers’ unions.

Not so long ago, I was invited by two groups of secondary school principals from Kiambu and Meru to address them during their county conferences. The topic I chose to talk to them about was “The Principal of the 21st Century”.

DN Oped dropcap: We started by analysing what the landscape of this century and the learners thereof is. Then we went on to look at what the education of this century should be. I mentioned to them that there is a coalition that was founded some years ago called Coalition P21. This is about the “Partnership for 21st Century learning”.

DN Oped dropcap: This coalition identified certain skills that must inform today’s education. The 21st Century education must instil in learners creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration. I would have to be the first one to admit from my experience at the university that many – or most – of our students do not have any of these skills when they come from secondary schools. They communicate and collaborate best and are creative only when they have personal interests, but the majority of them cannot subject their thinking to any critical analysis. It has to be the job of our education system to fix all this and I thought that this is part of what the new curriculum is aimed at. Whoever opposes this effort is obviously not focused on matters of this century but on old-time dynamics.

Education today must be about giving our students skills that they need in order to succeed in this new world. It must be about helping them to grow in confidence to practice those skills.

Indeed even for us who are older, 21st Century skills focus more on making sense of the available information, sharing it and using it in smart ways. That is what our new educational curriculum should be about and anybody who declares themselves as having an interest in education ought to think seriously about their duty in this matter.

The other thing about our education system is that as we were growing up and even as we have been supervising the growing of the generations behind us, every individual was considered to be the same as everyone else. I remember in my primary school days there was a fellow in my class who sat next to me. The poor chap did not follow much what the teachers were teaching but he was an excellent artist.

When we were challenged to draw a cow or anything else, he always came out first. I personally had no clue in those matters even though when we did exams I passed and sometimes quite well. What if some attention had been paid to that classmate of mine with regard to his gift of being able to draw.

The 21st Century education has to be different from what we have always known. For this to happen, leaders in the sector have to be forward-looking. They have got to be people who have the courage to embrace change and even to experiment and initiate such change. Those who do the planning like curriculum developers have to consult widely and provide leadership that is based on values that address the needs of Kenyans.

Unionists in this day and age have to be proactive and support changes that aim at improving our quality of life in the future. In short, every stakeholder has to be a transformational leader.