Why reading is key to country's new curriculum

Ability to read puts the cumulative experience of humankind at the disposal of each person - Charles E. Silberman, The Open Classroom Reader.

The curriculum reform initiative that education stakeholders have endorsed when the Ministry of Education presented to them has the potential to change the educational landscape in this country.

First, it sets out to identify and nurture the potential of every learner - throughout all the phases of education.

It has also provided room for a differentiated curriculum.

It has created three pathways to enable every learner to pursue a career path according to the learner’s identified abilities and inclinations.

The proposed curriculum aims at deliberately promoting what in educational jargon is called high order thinking skills - skills that are particularly important in the global and information-based economy.

To cope with this world, students ought to have the capacity to think deeply about issues, solve problems creatively, work in teams, communicate clearly and learn to deal with a flood of information courtesy of ICT.

The Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development, in recognition of this reality, has recommended Competency Based Curriculum (KCBC), which in its basic education curriculum framework, blueprint, it defines as “the ability to apply appropriate knowledge and skills to successfully perform a function.”

Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development has, under the competency-based curriculum, identified competencies that the Government wants developed and subsequently applied by learners at basic education levels.

Finally yet importantly, the curriculum has embedded national values drawn from the Constitution and the established religions.

Education Cabinet Secretary Dr Fred Matiang’i has given all the assurances to the clergy to the effect that the curriculum will not only focus on the development of the intellect of children but also provide for the development of the character.

All these curriculum goals will require learners to acquire strong literacy and numeracy skills - the ability to read, write and understand.

Concealed in the whole curriculum reform initiative is a review of the role reading, writing and arithmetic (3Rs) will play in realising the ambitious but crucial educational outcomes inherent in the reform process.

The ministry has taken a strategic interest in the place of reading in respect to the whole question of quality Education.

This is because reading is the foundation of all learning.

Its importance has some countries, such as South Africa, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Uganda, to make reading a national priority.

In formal education, reading is the tool. Learning in modern formal education without reading, is unthinkable.

It is the skill needed to understand all written instructions and knowledge.

Without the ability to read, the learner, or anybody seeking new knowledge, is unable to learn properly.

Reading is the medium through which knowledgeable and skilled people share their knowledge, beliefs, and habits of thinking on and about issues including issues on technical areas.

Reading is the key to quality education and that is why it is an integral part of the curriculum reform.