Who else is disillusioned by CBC

My issue with this system is not the home works. This CBC assumes that children at 14 years of age have already known what they want to do in life. For comparison, in the current 8-4-4 system, 14 year olds are in std 8. With CBC, at 14, you either choose arts or languages or sciences before proceeding to high school. This will solely be based on some basic exam, thus setting your child on a rigid path. There is no chance for children to master languages unless they choose that path. Currently, Kenyan students can get admission to universities in europe without having to sit for language exams, this CBC will see an end to this.

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I have read the document on which CBC is based. There are a lot of issues on that document that bother me a lot. These include;

  1. It assumes that there was no education system in Kenya before CBC. Instead of building on what was there it imposes a system straight from another country

  2. It ignores all the realities that exist in Kenya and assumes that what has worked elsewhere will work here. The countries quoted in the document such as Germany, Malaysia, Finland, Sweden, India have different economic and cultural realities

  3. It assumes that all the infrastructure, manpower and materials to run CBC exist in the country which is not correct

  4. It assumes we have uniform standards of living as you would find in a highly developed country. For instance, it says that ICT will be at the centre of the implementation. Thus it assumes everyone involved in it has ICT equipment and is ICT literate

  5. It ignores the fact that we have curricular and extracurricular activities. It wants to turn extracurricular activities into academic subjects. It offers a baseless proposal that one cannot be successful in both curricular and extracurricular activities. If you are good in sports you are assumed unfit for academia

  6. It confuses basic education with tertiary education. It proposes that after senior secondary school some students will receive artisan certification and go into employment. If secondary schools are for attaining work skills what’s the role of higher education. How do you certify a 17 year old for employment?

  7. It assumes the country has no unemployment challenge. This means a 14 year old is condemned to a rigid career path with the assumption that enough job vacancies awaits them. Nothing can be further from the reality

  8. It is clear to me that these are foreign inspired ideas. The ideas have been imported and imposed without local adaptation
    We need to critically examine this system. We should suspend it immediately until all concerns raised are addressed.

We should trace our path back to the original 8-4-4 curriculum.

credit: Ephraim Njega Facebook

The proposed evaluation methodology cannot work in a corrupt country like Kenya. How do you expect a school to rate its candidates poorly knowing too well that what it awards to their candidates will contribute 60% and KNEC exam only 40%. Education in this has really been messed up. Top government officials rooting for this funny form of education have transferred their children to British curriculum in top private schools. They have nothing to loose in this experimentation.

844 was a disaster.

At 14 I knew what career path I was interested in.

Many people even in Campus are not sure about what career path they want to take , taking rigid paths this young is not good ! many parents will naturally force their kids towards STEM subjects

There’s a very good book about CBC. It’s called, “The deliberate dumbing down of America,” by Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt. She was a Senior education official in Reagan’s government and got so bothered with the education reforms she was witnessing in the country, she wrote a book to warn and inform parents about it. To summarize, CBC is designed to train a child to go from school to work while discouraging critical thinking. The child learns to rely on the government or corporations for direction. And no, she’s not a conspiracy theorist. The book is well researched and she quotes Actual documents circulated by the people who implemented CBC in America. If she says CBC was implemented to make kids dumber, it’s not a hunch, she has proof. So basically, with CBC, y’all will have some of the dumbest kids in Africa in a few years. And it’s by design.

Most Kenyans have no time or even interest in sitting down to think through government policy on any issue and their implications for the future so they blindly parrot what they hear on Radio or TV

844 is bad because the media says so, CBC is new so it’s automatically better

I posted something yesterday and it was too long, so I truncated it. I think I’ll post the rest but first, a disclaimer: my goal is not to elicit anger or hatred for the government or any country, it’s to brainstorm. And I wouldn’t be posting this if it wasn’t for the children. I’m not saying this is the gospel truth, it’s just a scenario from my own perspective. And I’m open to more perspectives. So, here goes…

Currently, there’s a drive to abolish boarding schools. I know someone who schooled in a private, Nyeri boarding school on purpose and ended up getting into a national school. Imagine if they lived, say, near Nyakhemincha (and I mean no disrespect to the school). That’s a straight A student forced to study in Nyakhemincha because of disconnected policy. So let’s use America as a case study. The family would be forced to move to Nyeri or wherever, if they can afford it, because their options are suddenly limited. That scramble to live near good schools is what, among other things, led to the creation of ‘school districts’ in America. Because the value of living near a school you consider ‘good’ for your child has been suddenly inflated, property taxes follow. It’s that cute little system where you pay the government to live on your own land, in your home that you acquired with your own sweat, without their help. Not because you need to pay taxes for schools, but because educating your child has become so needlessly stressful, you’ll do anything the government says just to get back some semblance of peace. So, when you are at home thinking about how you’ll educate your child, someone somewhere is drooling just thinking about all the taxes they’ll make you pay once the school reforms are finalized. And I didn’t pull that out of my behind, it’s what is happening in America. You know, the place they got this system from? Right now, kids get into a high school based on merit, not location. Call me old fashioned, but I’d rather the future generations continued to value intelligence.

And if it seems like I’m exaggerating. Remember the school buses? They used to be unique, each with the schools colours. Some names printed normally, others in calligraphy, whatever worked for that school. But they were imaginative. Now they are all yellow, like in America! Next, they’ll paint the prison buses yellow, if they haven’t already, to complete the joke. My point? It’s a slow process. From kcse reforms to the buses to now. So I don’t think I’m reaching when I say finding a school for your child might turn into an extreme sport soon with CBC. If you think doing “homework” every evening is a hassle, just wait. So, yeah, I’m with the other poster, I would rather 8-4-4. But that’s just me.