The process of curriculum development is facing serious issues in Afghanistan. These issues are interference of bureaucrats, the absence of involvement of school and university teachers/lecturers etc.

Experts sitting in curriculum development boards in MOE (Ministry of Education) do not use academic resources properly for revising outdated sections of school textbooks. They should seek professional expertise and I’m sure they will offer innovative solutions for meeting the needs of curriculum development in Afghanistan.

Someone might have a question that what is curriculum? I would say that while thinking about education, the most important idea that comes to mind is curriculum. Curriculum is a channel that school/university administrations need for giving educational and life skills to students.

However, unluckily, in Afghanistan’s context, this idea is highly misunderstood due to which students do not get enriched educational experience in schools/universities.

Curriculum does not change in Afghanistan. Process of curriculum development in Afghanistan, I would say that curriculum is not a static process, but it is a dynamic exercise that must undergo changes according to our society’s new demands.

In Afghanistan curriculum development is a static process. There are many reasons for the failure in developing proper curriculum. Some of them are discussed below:

Issues in curriculum development

Curriculum is outdated

Firstly, the curriculum is outdated, which does not meet the local needs of Afghanistan society. The curriculum problems, notes that our present generation is learning the same knowledge that previous two/or may be three generations have learnt.

As students from different parts of the world get difficult mathematical and scientific knowledge by activity-based learning, our students are forced to know scientific concepts through cramming.

For example, in school textbooks there are many scientific and factual mistakes. It is sad situation that experts designing school textbooks of sciences/mathematics at secondary level do not pay attention to the concept of scientific and factual correctly.

Involvement of government officials

Secondly, the involvement of government officers in the development of Afghani curriculum is proving harmful to our education system.

Someone could suggest that the current process of curriculum development is based on a uniform policy for the whole country that has its particular aims and goals, but I think that it is not possible to apply national educational policy to different regions of the country with equality.

For example, there are many underdeveloped areas of Afghanistan, where parents do not have adequate resources to send their children to schools. The drop-out rate from schools is high, because parents cannot afford the expense of education easily.

Hence, a new educational policy has to be made by government officers for poor students, so that their problems of education can be solved.

One way of doing this is to build schools, where students are allowed to study in evening time, and where books having basic knowledge about core subjects such as English, Mathematics, Science, Pashto, Dari and Islam as well as comparative studies are taught by trained teachers.

Lack of academic research

Thirdly, the problem that the process of curriculum development faces in Afghanistan is improper academic research for writing school textbooks. We can point out those experts sitting in the curriculum development boards use materials of their own choice for instruction in schools.

I must say that most of the times the chosen content is not up to the mark. This should go through textbooks approved by a board system in the country, it becomes clear that no suitable research/evaluation system is created to revise curriculum.

Absence of school teachers’ involvement

Fourthly, it is seen that the academic experience of teachers from different schools is also not considered in designing and revising school curriculum. Daniel Tanner and Laurel N. Tanner in their book, “Curriculum Development: Theory into Practice,” suggest that without intelligent participation of school teachers, meaningful curriculum development will not be achieved.

Tanner and Tanner say that teachers, who are involved in bringing out educational change, accept and adopt the new ideas more quickly than those teachers who are not involved in carrying out change.

Useful evidence suggests that in countries where well-educated teachers were not involved in the curriculum development process, they did not accept new changes in school textbooks.

Result of weak academic skills of researchers

With lack of academic skills in researchers responsible for designing curriculum for schools, the most important feature of curriculum, i.e. content suffers a lot. Students follow rote-learning process, because the content of their books does not match to their educational skills.

In order to make students problem-solvers, I would argue that our books must contain questions that relate to problems we face in our daily life. By answering those questions, students will learn to solve issues in difficult situations.

For example, while studying the concept of speed in science, students must be given questions related to real-life examples of speed such as speed of a car etc., so that they know the application of the concept.

MOE (Ministry of Education) must contribute to solve curriculum problems in our country Afghanistan. MOE should have developed a curriculum that provides activity-based learning to students and gives problem-solving skills to them.

Peace and prosperity are not impossible in Afghanistan, if our local and national leaders pay respect to their national interest!

View expressed in this article are of the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Pajhwok’s editorial policy.

 

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