Policy Shift In Education System Essay

Policy Shift In Education System Could Yield Productivity in the Economy
Though still in its infancy stages, one of the greatest policy shifts during our times is transformation from rote to competency based learning in the school system. This will eventually affect not only the way we do business but also the kind of business that we can each pursue. The shift brings to mind, the early influences during our formative years.
More particularly, during my first week upon joining secondary school in one of today’s national schools, we were introduced to all the courses expected of our studies. One of them was industrial arts, which comprised of woodwork and metalwork.
The first lessons involved introduction to various carpentry and metal
Nonetheless, there were those who gallantly excelled and continued pursuing the Industrial arts up-to form four. Still, others decided to transfer to full technical oriented schools, while in form three, aiming to exploit their skills and orientations even further. These paths led them to the then Kenya Polytechnic and Mombasa Polytechnic amongst others. I still meet some who finally ended up becoming successful engineers, contractors and workshop managers amongst others. Why this analogy?
The curriculum that is currently being faced out took shape in the early 1980’s and laid great emphasis in rote learning. This method of learning is a memorization technique that is based on repetition. The idea is that one will be able to quickly recall the meaning of the concepts and ideas once continuously repeated.
There are other learning approaches which include meaningful, associative and active learning. Meaningful learning, refers to a method where the new knowledge to be acquired is related with previous knowledge. Consider the example involving upgrade from driving a car to a
In short, active learning requires students to do meaningful learning activities and think about what they are doing. Eventually, this leads to analytical and critical thinking processes. Now the question is; has the education system being discarded been taking students through these learning styles? If yes, the majority students could have been discovering their orientations early during studies and charting their strategic direction early in life. On the same note, the 21st century science of motivation could have been well entrenched in our lives. All is not lost though, but only if the new system will manage to entrench new thinking in line with the 21st century dynamics.