Thread by @wmnjoya

These are the gaps in the CBC discussion:

1. We have glorified curriculum over every other aspect of what goes on in the classroom. We Kenyans have been boxed by GoK into thinking that curriculum is everything, and GoK has an interest in making us think that way. #cbcmustfall

The most urgent reforms we needed in the school system was not curriculum content but pedagogy. We needed a new way to teach reading, and that had already been developed was starting to be implemented. The results were amazing, teachers, parents and kids were excited.

We also needed the education to stop being tied to exams, because it was making teachers drill and torture students so that parents are happy with exam results. But that is a philosophical and economic problem, not a curriculum one. Exam obsession is fixed OUTSIDE the classroom.

Exams are an economic problem in the sense that exams are made necessary by limited opportunities. The economy hasn't grown, people. The government remains the biggest single employer because the political class is threatened by innovation from the people and blocks it.

But now you can see why it was in GoK's interests to change the curriculum. It was to distract us from the political problems behind education. Curriculum is paper and tables. It's easy to change and then bark orders at teachers. It takes no thinking or work by the bureaucrats.

Even the changes to teaching that I mentioned earlier were pushed under the rug because it was not reported, and so there was no glory our PR president. Replacing the system (CBC is a system, not simply curriculum change) was more dramatic and better for the optics.

2. The second problem with CBC discussion is that the teacher perspective is so ignored. Teachers are the adults in the classroom but nobody ever asked us what we think is the problem with 8.4.4, or if the problem was even 8.4.4. Nobody answered our questions about how CBC works.

I had been writing about education problems before 2017. Not even once, did I mention 8.4.4. I talked about bad policy, nonsense from private sector, abuse of teachers, the stupid and colonial education policy we have of education for manpower. CBC addresses none of these.

Even now, the question of if to abandon CBC or not doesn't see the issue from the perspective of teachers. From a teacher's perspective, the main thing CBC changed was the teaching approach. Kids are not going to learn anything significantly different, no matter the curriculum.

The stability of the education system is provided BY TEACHERS. They are the ones who adjust in the classroom and protect children from the vagaries of the bureaucrats in Jogoo House. So whatever decision we make, what matters is whether teachers are able to stabilize the classes.

We are going to panic if we don't see this role of teachers. And the truth is, part of the disaster if CBC was that it was accompanied by threats, toxicity and torture from Nancy Macharia, Matiang'i and Magoha who treated teachers like soldiers and not like nurturers.

All this, I said in 2018 on NTV. I said KICD was using alienating tactics that kept telling us about "experts" so that we don't ask questions. I repeatedly asked for the research which KICD used to come up with CBC. To this day, we've never got it.

Then remember that CBC was accompanied by the disempowerment of KNUT that eventually pushed out Sossion. There was an increase in paperwork for teachers, a belligerent CS Magoha, and general intimidation of teachers. CBC wasn't about just curriculum.
theelephant.info/features/2021/…

If we continue not to see the important role teachers play in the classroom, we will be where the government wants us to be, panicking about change.

The real disruptors of our system are the bureaucrats. I said this a year before CBC was implemented. wandianjoya.com/blog/talk-of-a…

3. The third problem with the CBC discussion is that we have forgotten how insidious the concept of competence is.

"Competence" is so cynical, and when it is applied to children, it is even worse. Competence is not what we Kenyans think it is.

Competence is bare minimum skills. It's not excellence. It is not creativity.

If someone is employed to be an editor but cant write, that's incompetence. It means the person lacks the basic skills of an editor.

But you can have a person who can edit, but is not suited to edit a biology textbook because of their limited knowledge in biology. That is not incompetence. It is simply the limits of that person's knowledge.

You can take them for a biology class or get someone else with a biologiy training. But to call that editor incompetent is a stretch.

Kenyans used the word "incompetence" to judge 24-year old fresh graduates inability to do what 40 year olds do. That's not incompetence.

If a child can write legibly, that's competence. But if a child writes calligraphy, that's excellence. If a child cannot write that calligraphy, that does not mean the child is incompetent. It just means the child cannot write calligraphy. And calligraphy is not required skill.

So if you want competence, you don't replace the syllabus. You teach better, because lack of competence isn't about no creativity and the nyef nyef KICD was telling us. Lack of competence is lack of the BASIC skills. So we teach the basic skills better. We don't teach competence.

So KICD saying that competence will nurture talent should be classified as the lie of the century. Competence is a ceiling and a pathway to limit where a child can go. It's not the white middle class dreams of ballet and drawing God which Sir Ken Robinson gave in his Ted Talks.

All these contradictions are the problems with CBC. The replacement was opaque and based on lies, and it used threats to teachers. If we get rid of these problems and allow teachers to stabilize the system, we can make the right decision for our kids. #cbcmustfall

But you know why that can't be done?

Empowered teachers will steal the thunder of civil servants at @tsc_ke and @EduMinKenya, and will steal the glory if our narcissistic president. Conialism left us with a government that hates people. That's why.
#cbcmustfall