Morris Mtisi
IN the height or climax of debate surrounding the hot-potato New Curriculum, and the increasing temperature generated from churches and last week in Parliament.
Iately demonstrations by ZIMTA, the largest association which represents teachers in the country, it is my submission and hope of course that those who are for the New Curriculum find sanity and calmness to defend the initiative with more intellectual sense and fact rather than muscle and arrogance. And that those who are against it, resort to sober intelligent and factual resistance and not unorthodox hate-speech opposition, if rabid is too strong.
It is my submission that where two people are arguing it does not always necessarily mean one of them is wrong. It may also just be that agendas and objectives pursued are different, and people simply do not understand one another or simply see things through different lens.
You all know the mystery of the letter M (for Morris) it may look like 3 or ? or W depending on where one is standing (the angle) or what one is thinking and why? But it doesn’t change the M or the Morris no matter how people envisage him.
And hello people, argument and debate are not unhealthy so long as people remain calm, level-headed and reasonable, and not rabid. If the New Curriculum didn’t trigger debate and criticism, would it be a curriculum? I don’t think so. So long as people engage reasonably and not resort to temperatures and fevers, swords and daggers, it is my humble submission that the heat generated is necessary and healthy. Pure gold comes from extreme levels of heat subjected on the ore. The best gold is purified in furnaces where extreme heat is generated. The New Curriculum is ideological ore. It needs extreme heat to come out of the furnace of heated debate and criticism pure.
Do not forget the history of the War of Liberation. When its protagonists launched the project to take up arms and shoot the enemy to be understood, not everyone thought it was a wise idea, let alone possible. But look now how everyone is proud to be associated with its fruits including those who only read saw and heard about armed struggle but did not actually fight the war.
One day are the protesters and resistors of the New Curriculum not going to say, “We brought about this New Curriculum and implemented it. Now look! This is what we have achieved!” I personally hope not.
If money were available, perhaps it would make sense to put the implementation of the NC to a referendum. Democracy at work. And people perhaps win the vote against it, you are free to imagine. It would still not mean the NC is wrong. It would simply mean a vote has gone against sense or nonsense depending on where one stands. That is always the problem with voting. It is never always necessarily about correctness, but about winning. Can losers sometimes be the correct ones? I don’t know, but that is certainly digressing from the point. May be His Excellence the President on his wise counsel or volition decides to halt the NC implementation permanently or temporarily whichever he chooses, the former or latter. That too may only be a move to calm the storm, but not essentially to condemn the NC to an ideological dustbin.
Whatever our views or opinions, for or against the NC, informed or misinformed, wrong or right, one thing is clear. The NC is a can of worms. The NC is Pandora’s Box. The can or the box is now open, wide open, and we cannot pretend we have no idea what is in it. All patriotic Zimbabweans have a right to speak; speak about what they view as the jugular vein of national development-the Education of their children and posterity. Whether they know or don’t, understand or don’t, are wrong or right is certainly a different matter altogether.
This is only a personal point of view. I rest my case.