The challenges of Curriculum (Re)development in Post Independence South Sudan?
BY: Olal Andrew, SOUTH SUDAN AUG. 6/2011, SSN; The Transitional Constitution of the Republic of South Sudan, 2011 aims to construct and build a strong democratic, just society where citizen has equal opportunities and rights and where our communities can live and co-exist in peace and harmony. The Constitution places pre-eminent value on equality, social justice, human dignity, democracy, human rights and right to freedom from poverty, ignorance, illiteracy, poor health and hunger. The Transitional Constitution provides the basis for the (re)development of the curriculum in South Sudan. The education system and its curriculum are supposed to express the vision of society that the constitution envisages to construct. At the deepest level, the selection of what we include in our school curriculum should represent our core common positive cultural values including the values that inspired our liberation struggle. The national curriculum must develop and inculcate these values in our school children. The challenge however, is how to integrate and translate the above constitutional goals into the national curriculum. Our current curriculum is guided by a learning model that sees education as passing of knowledge from a teacher to a learner. The curriculum is underpinned by assumptions and beliefs which falsely conceive knowledge and knowing as transmission of information from someone who knows to that who does not know. It is a disempowering curriculum because it promotes rote learning and memorization or low order thinking among students. The conception of education as transmission obstructs learning and denies the learners the opportunities to develop deeper understanding and thinking of what they are learning. If our national curriculum is to genuinely contribute to nation-building and to the achievement of the constitutional goals it needs to be democratized. Our curriculum will be democratic to the extent that it actively engages learners in the process of knowledge creation, re-creation and in thinking deeply about what they are learning. An education practice guided by this conception of knowledge and knowing is likely to develop in learners a flexible and critical spirit or mindset. A flexible and critical mentality is required for development of a democratic society. Our educational practice needs to encourage the development of critical thinking in learners. When learners think deeply and are able to perceive the problems contradictions facing society, they are highly likely to look for better solutions and ways of solving and resolving the problems and contradictions. Hence, the curriculum primary objective should be the development of learners’ critical consciousness. Our curriculum needs to put a lot of emphasis on research and in developing the capacity of our students to (re)recreate and innovate based on what they are learning. Our education can only lead to true development of our society when it develops in the capacity of our learners to general generate local solutions to local problems. One of key challenges facing our country is the high need to develop a society where all of our people share an ideal feeing of unity and solidarity and where our people share a common identity. Our education should play a contributory role in nation-building. This can be achieved by employing our national curriculum as a tool for nation-building. The curriculum should stress the teaching of our history, common positive cultural values and it should inculcate in our young people a strong sense of national identity. Developing in our young people the ability to think in national rather than in tribal terms and including building their national consciousness and unity should constitute important elements of our national curriculum. The national curriculum should include the study of the conditions of our nation: natural landscape, culture, contemporary realities and history, opportunities and the challenges facing the nation. This is important for building national identity. It will help our young people to associate themselves with the nation and support its development. The lack of a unified or harmonized curriculum is one of the challenges facing our education system. Curricula from Sudan, Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia are still being used in some of our schools. This shows that we do not yet truly own and control our education system and curriculum. The Ministry of Education must the necessary measures to address the curriculum gaps and to set up concrete targets/dates of phasing out all the alien curricula from being used in our schools. Education that is being provided in our schools is abstract and academic in nature. Productive work is very much de-emphasized in our curriculum. The neglect of productive work in our education system and the curriculum deprives our nation of much needed contribution to increase national economic output. Moreover, it breeds among our children and students contempt for manual work. The contempt most of our youth have for manual work can be seen in almost all the ten states. If our country is to genuinely orient our development to rural life, then our education should consider productive work as an integral component of our school curriculum. Our education system and curriculum should seriously and urgently integrate the culture of work in the curriculum because it only by working hard that this country will progress or will catch up with the rest of world. Olal Andrew The author can be reached at [email protected] COMMENTS, PLEASE CLICK HERE Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author(s) and do not represent those of the website. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "JFD info" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/jfdinfo?hl=en.
