Dear. sister. Kadara. welcome aboard. it is time to come share Ideas, amoung
brothers and sisters from west, & freinds of westnilers. we shuld find
solution to help the needies in arua,koboko, westnile in general. together we
stand. devided we fail. our younger generetions need guidence from us elders.
all new members bring your Idears to this forum. I pleased with westnilenet
members to start this brilliant discussion forum for all. from majid alemi
junior. in BC.
________________________________
From: Kadara Kursum <[email protected]>
To: West Nile Net <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, April 17, 2009 11:09:23 AM
Subject: [WestNileNet] Fw: [email protected] has sent you a New Vision News
Article!
--- On Fri, 17/4/09, Akujo Amonye <[email protected]> wrote:
From: Akujo Amonye <[email protected]>
Subject: Fw: [email protected] has sent you a New Vision News Article!
To: "kadara kursum" <[email protected]>
Date: Friday, 17 April, 2009, 5:07 PM
We are peaceful souls.
----- Forwarded Message ----
From: New Vision Online Division <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Friday, 17 April, 2009 17:49:37
Subject: [email protected] has sent you a New Vision News Article!
Hi there!
[email protected] thought you might be interested in this article from The
New Vision online: http://www.newvision.co.ug
They also added this comment:
""
Curriculum change must focus on Uganda’s needs
By Morris Komakech
I applaud the education minister, Geraldine Namirembe Bitamazire, for her
unwavering desire to transform the repressive nature of our colonially crafted
education.
Dear Minister, reference is made to your recent efforts at revising the O’level
academic curriculum that has for many years, contributed towards the failing
standards of enlightenment in Uganda thereby, stunting our growth as a nation.
I refer to an article published on April 4, entitled, “O’ level subjects
reduced to 20 from 41; P.E. gains core status”.
In that article, a couple of “fundamental changes” to the number of subjects
that our children will be studying were highlighted. In the overall, your
directive represents a mere change of guards.
I believe that reducing the subjects alone does not help the situation, but
re-designing the entire curriculum from its primitive form does. Whereas your
good intentions are well stipulated, especially in advancing physical education
and also reducing the burden of curricular overload on our young ones, there
are key areas that should have been addressed.
Madam Minister, Globalisation has fused our worlds to the extent that global
competition for excellence is inevitable. The world will no longer empathise
much with our rather awkward attitude that makes us illiterate. In general, we
can no longer remain the sick child of globalisation.
The overarching implication here is that we need to strengthen our curricula
with flavours that nurture innovation and creativity. In technology, we
assemble generator parts with Tata tyres and proclaim inventing a car! In
music, our children sing hiphop, reggae and rap, all modes of communication
designed by repressed destitutes in slums of the world, still we claim stardom!
What innovation in our time can we trade favourably in the global arena without
sounding and looking ridiculous?
Therefore, to understand curriculum that is enlightening and libertaing, we
need to inject in our students some aspect of critical thinking. In your new
policy, you released religious studies and clamped them together with
agriculture as electives.
Now we know that over 80% of our population are employed in subsitence farming
or some sort of agriculture. One would expect that agriculture and all its
practices gains core status to replace obvious subjects like Geography!
Our children need philosophy to enable them indulge in creative reasoning and
critical thinking. This way, they will ably bring to use, the enormous amount
of knowledge they muzzle into practice. Entrepreneural and business oriented
subjects such as commerce, accounts and customer/client service must be made
compulsory to promote the understanding of adding value to our natural
resources in terms of income and poverty reduction, notwithstanding
trans-cultural studies.
I am not suggesting that English language is not important, but it is neither
essential considering that most succesful business people in Uganda are from
the so-called semi-literate lot who could only qualify for ESL (English as
second language) here in Canada.
For Africa to break loose from this clientelle-consumer culture, we must
promote trade and commerce in our local languages, including Swahili. Our
social realities are circumscribed around our natural being in our natural
ecological niches. It is therefore imperative that our curricula focus on
exploiting culturally sustainable growth within these human realities.
On technical studies, that is befitting for a young curious mind. However, this
does not add any significant value to a student who excels in these areas but
has no support for continuity at higher levels. There are very limited options
for such students.
While in church over the Easter weekend, President Museveni was quoted to have
advised parents to guide their children on selection of career. We know that in
Uganda, one gains respect for having pursued traditional professions such as
medicine, law, engineering, etc.
In the global world, it no longer matters what profession one takes, what
matters most is how creative and competitive that individual is at all levels
of human engagement. These additional ability, of training our young minds to
reason beyond their forefathers’ ability is what we continue to deprive them
of.
I contend that a senior four student in Uganda is loaded with a lot of useless
knowledge than a typical Canadian of equivalent grade or higher. The difference
is that the Canadian child will out-maneuvre their Ugandan counterpart on
applicability of knowledge, critical and creative thinking, reasoning as well
as being innovative.
The writer is a Ugandan living in Ontario, Canada
You can also read the article online at:
http://www.newvision.co.ug/detail.php?mainNewsCategoryId=8&newsCategoryId=459&newsId=678287
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