Thursday, February 20, 2014

Open Letter to the Education Minister: Rote Learning is Producing Failures


In July 2013, I wrote this letter to the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Education and the issues therein were not addressed in the response. 

In the spirit of goodwill, I wrote the letter as a Zimbabwean parent with both high and primary school going children locally and who made a serious study on the education system based on the statistics available.

It is highly commendable that Zimbabwe has one of the highest literacy rate in Africa. We thank the government for that. However, I argued that we need to move beyond the literacy rate and achieve productivity and usefulness of the products of the public education system.  

Background

For a better reminder of the statistics, here is a selection of the national performance in the Ordinary Level examinations, as sourced from the local media: 

Year
1984
1985
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
Pass rate
21.9%
14.5%
13.4%
14.3%
15.3%
14%
12.9%
13.6%
12.8%


1996
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
11.8%
14.6%
15.7%
13.2%
14%
13.8%
12.8%
10.2%
12.2%


2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
14.2%
9.9%
14.4%
19.3%
16.5%
19.5%
18.4%
20.7%


Notes: 
1.        The statistics of some early years (1980-1983, 1986-88, 1997) are missing
2.        1989 – 39.2% passed no subject at all, and another 36.7% passed 1 or 2 subjects
3.        2003 - full exam localization


Observations

For the years under review, the lowest and highest pass rate in Zimbabwe's academic ordinary level exams has been 10% (2007) at the height of an economic crisis and 22% (1984), respectively.  

This means that Zimbabwe has had between 78-90% failure rate for its ‘O’ Level exams since 1984! If this is not scandalous, it is a dysfunctional measurement of the academic performance and human potential of our children.

We need to be comforted by the specific measures to be taken in addressing this unacceptable situation. Unfortunately, the purported failure rate of our children has been wrongly diagnosed. Albert Einstein would say, No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”

The Presidential Commission of Inquiry into Education and Training (Nziramasanga Report) of 1999 is still to be released and implemented other than being mentioned indiscriminately and casually.

We are in a country that has been and is still reducing 78-90% of its young people into being convinced that they are hopeless failures. This creates a citizenry that surrenders or gives up its own deep sense of human worth, causative power and responsibility because of such an academic exam failure rate.

In my view, a one-size education system that fits all is irrelevant and counter-productive.

Our pitfalls

It is my well-considered view that our education system has a fixation with academic attainment and therefore is not identified with sporting and non-academic excellence. Schools are harshly judged around academic performance, as if academic achievement is the only measurement of being human. This may be the reason why our nation is doing badly at the Olympics and other competitive tournaments in various sporting disciplines.

The whole educational grounding is purposefully producing a hostile or uncharitable attitude towards entertainment, athletic and sports personalities around the world because they did not excel academically. Entertainment, athletics and various sporting disciplines may provide the biggest employment levels and a direct impact on the economic activities and value (“manufacturing and construction of sporting facilities, consumer spending, corporate activity and funding, sporting events, government grants/spending, sports marketing and broadcasting rights, employment/jobs/salaries, tourism…”).

There are also instances where sporting excellence has been undermined by the attitude of seeing non-academically talented as less human. This has caused school and college top athletes to stop being serious about their sporting talents because they would want to pursue their academic studies. China, the USA and Australia are top sporting countries and they offer sporting scholarships and greater learning flexibility for sporting students.     

After the compulsory basic primary education, the technical and sports secondary education learning should have general learning of “classical liberal arts” education.     

Pillars of an Educational System

There are critical and defining seven pillars of a public educational system – structure; infrastructure; content (curriculum); human capital; the efficient administration of the public examination system; cost and government and incentives for corporate funding for schools and students; and location of schools.

Structurally and according to learners’ abilities, there should be three types of schools or streams for public secondary education:
1.      Academic Education School” (AES) (consisting of Arts, Sciences and Commercials), taking one to academic universities;
2.      Technical Education School” (TES) should be considered as an option for secondary education for those of technical ability: Metalwork and Welding, Woodwork and Carpentry, Agriculture, Building and Bricklaying, Fashion and Fabrics, Cookery, Music and Dance, Art, and Technical Drawing taking one to technical colleges and later technical universities. “The students are expected to get exposure to the industries, gain basic skills and processes for a particular industry, and develop technical skills to a degree where they are self-sufficient. An awareness of the industry and acquisition of basic skills seem to be on extreme ends of the continuum with advanced skill proficiency; and
3.      Sports Education School” (SES) should be considered as another career route based on individual talent in various sporting disciplines. This takes one to general or focused sports institutes/academies and various other tertiary specialised schools.  

Apart from a highly needed public sector investment in the infrastructure (buildings, teaching and technological resources, extra-curriculum facilities, libraries, and school certification, inspection and supervision) and human capital (teacher training and remuneration, and school administrative capacity), the nation needs to reorient and refocus the content or curriculum so that a fish is not judged by its inability to climb a tree.  

Reforming and Transforming the Education Content

Looking at content, how can anyone expect the swimmer Kirsty Coventry or athlete Usain Bolt to be a professor, doctor, lawyer or an engineer? How can anyone say that singer Oliver Mtukudzi or golfer Tiger Woods are failures in life because they do not hold university degrees?

Conceptually, seeking academic excellence from and/or not catering for the non-academically gifted children, destroys the whole fabric of individual human worth, the capacity to develop causative and moral agency and the responsibility of the majority 90% of the next generations of the country. But it is simply not possible to imagine and therefore to accept that only 10-20% are confident enough to think it is only them who are set for success just because they succeed academically. Zimbabwe (is) graduating far too many students whose exam results (are) not good enough for (academic) university entrance, but who (have) no practical skills and therefore (cannot) not find employment” (T. Barnes, 2003).
 
We need to have a content or curriculum that makes it possible for a person to identify his/her own natural or inherent abilities and to develop them into a skill, profession or vocation. This identification should be done at the end of primary school education in Grade 7 using a combination of scientific career personality tests and a public examination system. Such tests should be reconfirmed at the end of Form 2.

An educational content should help young people to shape their inborn or innate essence so that they can professionally manifest it in due balance, proportion and orderliness.

The most talented, innovative and creative people in the world have been found to be the less academically educated ones while they definitely need the services of technical and professional people to institutionally manage their talents, innovations and creations.

The public education content should assist students to “find meaning in our own lives, in other people, in discoveries, and in experiences. These things make us to have hope, to care and to love. They help us define what it is to be human. These elements provide the basis of a fulfilling human life on the here and now.”

It was after the 16th century that academic “rote learning” was formally introduced and replaced liberal education which made it possible for children to be “critical and creative in their thinking” in a rigorous way. Rote learning, technical or professional education for commercial vocations and trades allows one to just earn a living but not to become a full human being as what liberal education does to a person.  

Rote learning is a method of learning by cramming, repetition and memorization. “Rote” literally means mechanical, fixed or habitual and frequent parrot repetition of something learned triggering an uncritical and unthoughtful response to assumptions and their relevance in light of new scientific and technological discoveries and possibilities. “Rote learning can be an appropriate learning technique is in a special needs classroom. Students who are mentally handicapped or suffer from learning disabilities such as dyslexia or dysgraphia often require repetition in order to learn new things. In fact, some students with disabilities may only be able to learn by rote.” – ‘What is Role Learning?’ www.wisegeek.com/what-is-rote-learning.htm  

Rote learning is about reading, writing and recollection of spoon-fed ideas while lacking curiosity, whereas “classical liberal education” is about “thinking or disciplined analysis, communication or reasoned arguments, judgment and value cognition.” A curriculum needs to be “structured with a basis of rote learning followed by a much lengthier period of applied, practical study and critical thinking.”

How should the educational content or curriculum be framed? Let us illustrate using a child development exercise.

At home, workplace or any other social setting, do the following game: break yourselves into two groups.

Within ten minutes, one group should list the natural (unguided and untaught) fifteen positive attitudes and attributes of a child less than 5 years old, before conditioned by the schooling, social and religious system.

The other group should list the cultivated and learnt positive attitudes, attributes and tendencies of an adult person to live, to prosper, be well.”

The two groups should not influence each other and they should not use any other resource other than the intellect of each of the group members.

When the two groups are done, come together and on a clean sheet, create three columns. In the first two columns, separately list them. Pick out the common words or terms and list in the third column. You may find that the listings use different terms that mean the same. Reconcile the terms so that the two groups agree on one term in the third column.

At the end of the exercise, it will be noticed that 75-100%, the unguided and untaught behaviours of infants and adults’ cultivated and learnt positive attributes to live, to prosper, be wellare the exactly same.

The following have been found out to be common between the two groups – (1) engagingly active, energetic and passionate, (2) confident but not arrogant, (3) strong-willed but not stubborn, (4) experimental, adventurous and exploring, (5) effortful without blaming or excuses, (6) hopeful about possibilities, (7) joyfully and warmfully courteous towards anyone, (8) sense of sincerity, authenticity and truthfulness, (9) creative, imaginative and innovative about solutions, (10) easily adaptive to new situations, (11) a persistently focused and never give-up approach, (12) free-spirited and social unlimitedness, (13) observant, (14) inquisitive, exploratory and curious, and (15) open-mindedness and ease reception to fresh ideas or perspectives.
  
These unguided and untaught aspects constitute our “Essence Self” unrelated to the conceited Mind. If these are the unguided and untaught but highly perceptive behaviours of a child so young and are the same as the cultivated and learnt positive attitudes and attributes for adults to to live, to prosper, be well, how do they recede as we grew out of childhood? What does this inform us about our upbringing, conditioning and socialization in the family and education system as influenced by religion? This may mean the Essential Self during the ages 5-21 is being destroyed in the families and education system as influenced by low culture and literalist religions. The destruction conditions people to be prejudicial, unthinking and vainglorious believers who avoid the “use of sound evidence and valid reasoning.”

A discovered Essential Self makes it possible for us to realize and manifest our own internal faculties already resident in the recesses of our own humanity. This drives us to be creative and innovative thinkers of “critical thought, fair-mindedness, self-insight, and a genuine desire to serve the public good.”    

The term 'education' is the noun form of the verb educate. It comes from the Middle English ‘educaten,’ itself coming from the Latin term ‘educare,’ ‘educatus’ meaning 'bring up, rear.' It is linked to ‘educere’ meaning 'to lead forth' or 'bring out'.”

According to Webster's Dictionary: Educate: “to bring up or guide the powers of, as a child; to develop and cultivate, whether physically, mentally or morally, but more commonly limited to the mental activities or senses.” Education: “properly a drawing forth, implies not so much the communication of knowledge as the discipline of the intellect, the establishment of the principles, and the regulation of the heart.”

The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines ‘educe’ as to "bring out, develop, from latent or potential existence."

In terms of content, education is thus a process of two aspirational objectives: bringing out the child’s inner faculties within and leading forth the child out of ignorance about the self. In both instances, the idea of social upbringing and education is that deep hidden within the biological condition amid the conflictual human sounds, colours and forms about race, culture, gender, ethnicity and religion; and obscured from the delusion, disorderliness and coarseness of the mental state, is the latent and embryonic “Essence or True Self” in every person.         

Upbringing should be about making it possible for a person to later live a life of being a fair-minded critical thinker capable of building sound relationships, walking through life confident, true to him/herself and genuine to others, able to discover and manifest his/her natural genius (one’s own best, highest and greatest).

Through the educational system, a person needs to be developed and raised in an onward and upward direction whose disposition is a “moral sense” – understanding and accepting the impact of own actions on others; and “citizenship sense” – act responsibly and accept responsibility for own actions, learn cooperation and show initiative, and know the value and importance of making a positive contribution to the lives of others.          

The purpose of education (paideia,” a Greek word meaning “the upbringing of a child”) can be considered to be fourfold and its content should be make it possible to:
1.      1. Develop human genius or grand powers, faculties or capacities consisting of:
                    i.    Reasoning (the faculty to understand, think and examine rationally and explore logically, apply knowledge innovatively and make decisions responsibly to accept the consequences, results and effects of one’s choices, decisions and actions, i.e. to each person the fruit of that which he/she sows as "the fruit lies in the seed") This is the faculty that makes it possible to inquire, analyse, compare and further research so that a choice, decision and action is based on sound and sensible facts. By this faculty, a human being consents to lawful authority, vigorously explores and continuously re-examines established traditions and customs and socially conditioned existence according to new discoveries and convictions,
                   ii.    Causation (causative agency, i.e. the faculty of imagination, innovation and creativity to mentally and physically shape, fabricate, weave, mould and form) and
                  iii.    Discernment (the faculty of cognizing, freewill or the exercise of moral agency i.e. the ability to judge and determine what is good and bad, right and wrong). What is good and bad, or right and wrong? That which sustains the purpose of life, which is the human well-being or flourishing (“eudaimonia” in Greek). The purpose of human life was depicted in ancient Egypt at the end of the references of kings’ names or to their household, with a phrase, “ankh, wedja, seneb,” which meant “life, prosperity, health” or “to live, to prosper, be well.” In some countries, this has been immortalised e.g. the first and second article of the Virginia Declaration of Rights adopted in 1776; the declaration of independence of the United States Declaration of Independence later incorporated in the US Constitution by way of the Fifth (ratified in 1791) and Fourteenth Amendments (ratified in 1868); the Chapter III, Article 13 of the 1947 Constitution of Japan; Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) reads, “Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and security of person,” the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982) states “life, liberty, security of the person.” A healthy and supportive upbringing nurtures such a possibility. The result is that of an individual and public life of a high sense of honour or integrity in the work involved, dutifulness or responsibility to what is expected of us with fervency and strong eagerness, and better and sustainably improving standards of service.
2. Assist in the discovery of “thyself” for human worth, self-confidence and the actualisation of one’s potential to the fullest (i.e. “enabled to understand the processes of nature, the laws of growth, and the central place of human consciousness) “For through self-knowledge and self-awareness not only do we get to know ourselves, but we automatically become aware of the world or worlds in which we live; and
3.      3. Assist in the discovery of one’s talent or develop the competence of an art, craft or skill to earn a living using the human genius.

The word, ‘humanitas’ is associated with Roman philosopher-politician, Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BCE), which means a “better human being.” As an attitude and approach to life, ‘humanitas’ asserts a human’s importance as a virtuous cultivated being, confident of his/her human worth, courteous and genuine to others, honest in his/her social conduct, and active in his/her citizenship role.

A human being becomes a better human being by refining and respectably cultivating him/herself (Cicero, “De Legibus,” Book 1:25) through education and altruism.

According to Rabbi Moses Maimonides, “One whose merit surpasses his iniquity is a tzaddik” and every person can reach this level.

Therefore, ‘humanness’ means ‘a life with moral values’. ‘Morality’ is the system of the (1) Duties to Self (“Know thyself”) and Others (“Golden Rule”); (2) Fully comprehending the Cosmic Laws of Nature (the enduring perennial and self-evident Truths) and the Law of Causation, and (3) Living a full life of civic excellence (virtue and integrity) and active citizenship.

In a book “The Global Achievement Gap” (Basic Books, August 2008), the Harvard Innovation Education Fellow Tony Wagner set out seven core competences that every academic and non-academic student must master before the end of high school: (1) Critical thinking and problem solving (the ability to ask questions); (2) Collaboration across networks and leading by influence; (3) Agility and adaptability; (4) Initiative and entrepreneurialism; (5) Accessing and analyzing information; (6) Effective written and oral communication; and (7) Curiosity and imagination. This is not achieved through rote learning but “classical liberal arts” education.   

Daniel H. Pink points out that today’s graduates need to master six critical skills, aptitudes and competencies to succeed in a “conceptual economy” of the 21st century: (1) Design – the ability to conceptualize and think creatively; (2) Story – the ability to tell a story, to use metaphor and to write and speak clearly; (3) Symphony – the ability to summarize and synthesize information, to bring various ideas and people together to work as a team; (4) Empathy – the ability to immerse yourself in someone’s else culture, and to be tolerant of ideas contrary to one’s own cultural tradition; (5) Play – the ability to imagine, to be humorous, and to utilize game strategies in everyday problem solving; and (6) Meaning – the ability to seek out meaningful, non-material activities, to appreciate symbolism, and to develop lasting meaningful career skills – ‘A Whole New Mind: Why Right-brainers Will Rule the Future’ (Riverhead Books, 2005), www.d.umn.edu/cla/deanwelcome/whatare.php Again, rote learning is not the route for this conceptual mindset.

There is something about us that is natural, untaught and innate and we have lost it through rote learning, the kind of education we have received.

The “instinct, inclination or predisposition” to have a full life and live well is natural, untaught and born within. Our instinctively driven ability to cry and suck our mothers’ breasts for milk soon after birth is natural, untaught and born within.

Our ability to sit up, crawl, stand and then walk is only perfected but the beginnings are natural, untaught and born within. The conception in the womb, the multiplication of cells into billions and the full development of the body and its parts till birth are natural, untaught and born within.

That which is natural, untaught and born within is our "primordial state" or natural condition! This state or condition about us arises out of an indwelling "consciousness, intelligence and creativity." While these three are innate or inborn, they need to be discovered so that each of us can evolve towards our best and highest.

Conclusion

It is a national interest to understand and immediately do something about 78-90% of our young people every year who are full of despair about their employment prospects because of a structure and curriculum of an education system built on 100% academic pursuits. An increasing number of the unemployed and a highly informalised economy is unsustainable and a serious threat to political legitimacy of the gains of the liberation struggle as it debases and demeans the social and moral fabric of our country.

Our young people can easily become the entry points of a distorted national discourse, and easy targets for those intending to threaten and destabilize the nation. Such political destabilization uses the social frustration arising out of high unemployment largely driven by the lack of technical skills and the capacity to create jobs. 

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