By Enock Shirandula
emshirandula@yahoo.com
The introduction of the Competency Based Curriculum might be the best things to ever happen in the education sector.
Isn’t the idea of identifying the talent of a child early and properly nurturing it a wonderful idea?
The Ministry of Education came up with this noble idea yet some people have come up with a pot to do away with the noble idea by even going to court. One of the presidential candidates, who sat in the cabinet meeting where the idea of CBC was being discussed and passed, has promised to scrap off CBC once he is elected into office.
The initiative is bound to revolutionize the education system yet it is being fought by some ill-advised people. These people claim it is too expensive for an average parent, that it will be too much to involve parents who are already overburdened and that some parents are too illiterate to understand what their children are learning.
What we are forgetting is that “cheap is expensive”? Why should we limit the involvement of the parents in their children’s education? Who even said that illiterate parents are necessarily ignorant?
For once, let’s all open our eyes. How often have we found out that what is considered cheap is usually expensive in the long run? We are forced to buy so many of these so called “cheap items” when we could conveniently do with one “expensive one”.
Don’t we see that where parents and guardians are fully involved in their children’s education, the results are always there for all to see? A case in point is how Kalenjin parents are always proud of their athlete children.
We should be asking the national government to put more money and other resources into this venture rather than stop it. More teachers and other education personnel should be hired. The same should be continuously in serviced on the way forward.
CBC is not a concept that has come completely out of the blue. It is working elsewhere. It has worked perfectly well in the developed and developing countries like the US, France, UK, Russia, China, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, India, Vietnam, Singapore and the Koreas.
Why should we not go there for marking? Why should we spend all our time doing useless politics?
By embracing CBC, we will gain so much. We will be producing unique teachers, doctors, engineers, architects and wizards in computer science sports and so on. We should all embrace CBC.
We should do away with the culture of bad politics characterized by impunity and corruption that has always worked to our detriment.
The Writer is a retired educationist, the author of SO DIFFERENT, SHE WAS.
