Author: John Mupanga Mwanakatwe
Title: The Growth of Education in Zambia since Independence
Publishers: UNZA Press
Pages: 376
Price: K100
THAT a book that was a standard textbook for undergraduate studies at the University of Zambia as well as a reference for researchers in the field of the history and evolution of education in Zambia should go out of print in the 80s until 2014, is a serious indictment on the education credentials of this country.
Clearly, the late John Mwanakatwe, the first African in Zambia to obtain a university degree and the Minister of Education at independence, and indeed an educationist through-and-through, would not allow such a scenario.
Before his death in 2009, he had been toying around with the idea of revising his first book The Growth of Education in Zambia since Independence, which was first published in 1968.
This book gives an outline of Zambia’s colonial and missionary educational heritage, and how this was inadequate to meet the country’s manpower needs at independence. He describes the rapid expansion that had to take place immediately after 1964, how these ambitious and far-reaching plans were implemented, and plans for the future standardisation of opportunities within the educational system, in the rural and urban areas.
Dr Sichalwe Kasanda, managing consultant at the Zambia Institute of Education and Innovation, says the book, in terms of its education depth and breadth, was then and still is the first of its kind to be authored by an indigenous Zambian since independence.
However, a lot has occurred in the education sector from the time the book was published, hence the need for a revised version.
In order to preserve the historical perspective of the title, the original text has not been revised, at least not extensively. However, sufficient new material has been added to ensure that the country’s educational developments after the 1970s to this day are reflected.
The revised version has contributions from former senior school inspector and lecturer at the Zambian Open University Marko Tembo, Dr Kasanda, head of Department, Education Administration and Policy Studies, UNZA school of Education, Samuel Siantontola and former permanent secretary in the Ministry of Education Barbara Chilangwa.
According to Dr Kasanda, this revised edition engages the reader to reflect not only on the demand, supply, financing and governance of equitable access to schooling, but also on the fundamentals of quality education – globally and locally – and its conceptualisation, customisation and realisation.
“Contrary to what the title may suggest therefore, the book does not only give an insight on the quantitative growth of education in Zambia, but it also provides a more comprehensive profile of developments in the sector since independence to date.
“This revised version may not be taken as a mere historical account of Zambia’s education challenges and milestone achievements, rather it should, serve, instead, as one of the reader’s key sources of understanding Zambia’s educational past and present and, possibly for setting a meaningful agenda for the country’s education of the future,” Dr Kasanda writes in the preface to the book.
Although Dr Kasanda says the book should not be taken as a mere historical account, it has some interesting old information which may interest the present.
The issue of language for instance! In Chapter 15 the book deals with that.
The book acknowledges that one of the most difficult problems of educational policy in the post-independence period concerns the development of an appropriate language for instructing pupils in primary schools.
This is one chapter that has not been revised, and such, provides a very useful historical perspective of the problem of language.
“There is no lingua franca in Zambia. Instead, there are 40 vernaculars spoken by just over four million people scattered over a wide geographical area. True, several of the local languages and dialects are similar, as practically all of them belong to the Bantu language group. Therefore, it is not unusual for native speakers of one local language with a remarkable degree of fluency,” Mr Mwanakatwe writes.
So, owing to the close affinity of local languages, the colonial government selected four of them as official languages for administrative and educational purposes.
The book says although two or so more local languages later gained semi-official status, Chibemba, Chinyanja, Chitonga and Silozi continued to serve as the main official languages of the country in addition to English.
It acknowledges that on deciding on the appropriate medium of instruction in primary schools, it has been necessary to consider the five official languages in Zambia; Chibemba, Chinyanja, Chitonga, Silozi and English, none of them a lingua franca.
“On political grounds alone, it is very difficult to adopt anyone of the official vernacular languages as a medium of instruction in primary schools without exciting tribal passions and creating serious discontent and unrest.
“In making tactful enquiries, the author has heard confessions from even the most extremist tribal adherents that imposition presupposes that teachers would be available in sufficient numbers throughout the country to teach efficiently in the chosen vernacular, so that the much needed uniformity is obtained. Such a supposition is definitely unrealistic,” the author says.
In the past, the general principle was adopted that in the early years of an African child’s formal education, instruction should be in the mother tongue. If therefore, a child began school in his tribal area where one of the four official vernaculars was spoken, he continued to learn through the medium of his mother tongue until he reached the fifth year, when English was gradually introduced as the medium of instruction, in other words as the language used for teaching all the subjects of the school curriculum.
By the time the child reached the sixth and seventh years, English replaced the vernacular altogether as the medium of instruction. In the fifth and subsequent years of primary school, the child continued to learn the vernacular and might study the language at a secondary school.
“Chibemba, Chinyanja, Chitonga and Silozi may be offered by candidates in the Cambridge School Certificate Examinations. Apart from children who started their education in one of the four official vernaculars as their mother tongue, there were also children who began learning through one of the minor vernaculars and then changed to one of the third year to a main vernacular closely related to the minor one, followed by a change again to English as the medium of instruction in the fifth year.
“Even today, except in areas where the English medium of instruction has been adopted, it is not uncommon to meet a child who began education in his mother tongue but changed to one of the main vernaculars after two years, only to change two years later to another foreign language English, as the medium of instruction,” the author says.
Anyhow, the book, in which first President Dr Kenneth Kaunda provides the foreword, also covers indigenous education, teacher training and teachers immediately after independence, the education of adults, the education Act of 1966, training for citizenship, the re-organisation of education and the human resource challenges between 1964 and 1975.
Others are universal basic education 1990 – 2003, capacity building, educational materials and basic education sub-sector investment programme, educational expansion and growth 1993 – 2000 and the role of Zambia education projects implementation unit and pathways to development of education in Zambia. KK
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The growth of education in Zambia
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