Tanzanian students – or better still Tanzania’s
education system – made a splash last week when the 2012 ordinary level
secondary school examination results were released.
Close to 54 per cent of examinees scored the lowest grade possible — Division Zero. In 2011, 32 per cent failed, so things are getting worse.
As if that were not bad enough, the students cheeked the Tanzanian education authorities by writing vulgarities and insults on the answer sheets, once they couldn’t answer the questions.
Tanzanians are supposed to be the region’s politest people, so this tells you in what horrible state etiquette is in East Africa.
Not surprisingly, the story attracted a lot of interest on the Internet and was widely discussed on social media. The majority of the people just despaired.
Some suggested education reform. Others concluded that the exams must be the problem, and needed to be changed. Yet others thought Tanzania has a really big problem, its students, and needed to import new hardworking ones from somewhere.
Tanzania’s students are, however, a mirror of their East African compatriots. Although students in Kenya and Uganda do better, examination achievements are in decline there too.
I think what makes Tanzania’s problem worse, is what should otherwise be its strong point — too much teaching in Kiswahili.
A few years ago, the Nation Media Group did a survey in Kenya to find out why so few people read the Kiswahili press. The majority of people replied that reading a Kiswahili newspaper reminded them of their worst time in school — Kiswahili class.
Invent stuff
Apparently, most Kiswahili teachers tend to be
boring and authoritarian, and that sucks a lot of oxygen out of
learning. One bad Kiswahili lesson kills the day. So first, countries
like Tanzania and Kenya need to sex up the teaching of Kiswahili.
The other problem is a philosophical one. School children in East Africa are still taught pretty much the way things were done 30 years before the Internet and mobile phones. Secondary school students today have several times more information in their heads that they get from the Internet and TV, than we did. We knew little, they know too much — although a lot of it might be junk.
These kids therefore need to be taught less. Subjects need to be broken down into languages, numbers (maths), science, and general knowledge (current affairs/social studies) and creativity (art, design, music). Things like religion are a waste of children’s time. Let the mosques and churches take care of that.
Then, and most importantly, schools should establish “skunkworks” where children spend a lot of time fooling around and trying to invent stuff. As a general rule, most things that children can Google should be got rid of from school curricula.
Bad teachers should be sent home with generous packages so they can do something else. The remaining good teachers should be paid a high salary, and the rest of the available education funding spent on teaching a few subjects very well. No school child below 15 years of age should have to study more than four subjects in school.
Charles Onyango-Obbo is Nation Media Group’s executive editor for Africa & Digital Media. E-mail: cobbo@ke.nationmedia.com. Twitter: @cobbo3
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