The Chicken and the Egg(s)

I suspect that my readers will be pleased to hear that I am feeling like my work is moving a bit faster now. First off, it has been a bit of a treasure hunt to figure out who to talk to about what. Other obstacles have included finding the proper phone numbers, succeeding in explaining myself sufficiently on the phone, figuring out how to get to the correct offices, and finding the people present at the promised time. In some cases I have been more successful just showing up somewhere unannounced.

The more people I have met, however, the more doors that have opened to me. As a result I think I now have a pretty good picture of what IT curricula are actually available in Zambia and to whom. The next trick is going to be figuring out what to do with this information. The need for IT education is certainly there, but figuring out which curricula will be the most useful to which population is another story. I’m starting to have some ideas, but will report more on this later.

Now I should move on to the title of this post, the Chicken and the Egg(s). Here’s what I have discovered at the government education agencies and schools that I have visited. Education in Zambia is highly test based, and curricula need to be developed that pupils can perform practical and written exams on at the end of grade 12. Currently there is no secondary school computer curriculum approved by the Ministry of Education except a (only partially appropriate) computer science curriculum developed in the UK for the Cambridge International Examinations body, and there isn’t much encouragement to teach this curriculum.

So, why hasn’t the Zambian Ministry of Education developed and promoted its own curriculum? Well, there aren’t many teachers trained in IT so it wouldn’t be fair to push an IT curriculum on them. And why aren’t the teacher’s colleges training teachers in IT? Because there is no IT curriculum. Which will come first, the teachers or the curriculum? Similarly, there is little educational money allocated for computers and computer labs. Why is there so little money allocated? Well, not only is the school system quite poor, it would be silly to put money into computers when there no curriculum. And, why develop a curriculum if there aren’t any computers?

So the chicken and egg infinite loop continues, at least for secondary education. However, I am pleased to report that I have recently seen a primary education computer curriculum that the Ministry of Education is almost ready to publish! The purpose of this curriculum is to expose pupils to the purpose and power of computers, and teach them some very basic operation. It will focus on practical skills and won’t conclude with an examination. When they do publish this curriculum, they will make it optional in schools due to a lack of computers, but hopefully it will get out there with the few schools that do have computers. It’s progress!