Education For Self Reliance

Author(s): Julius K Nyerere
Publisher: Julius K Nyerere

Page 16

24 PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL ACTION
eved. But it will have to be done deliberately, and with the conscious intention of making the children realize that they are being educated by the community in order that they shall become intelligent and active members of the community. One possible way of achieving this would combine for primary school pupils the same advantages of learning by doing as the secondary school pupils will have. If the primary school children work on a village communal farm-perhaps having special responsibility for a given number of acres -- they can learn new techniques and take a pride in a school community achievement. If there is no communal farm, then the school can start a small one of their own, by appealing to the older members to help in the bush-clearing in return for a schgol contribution in labour to some existing community project.
Again, if development work-new buildings or other things are needed in the school, then the children and the local villagers should work on it together, allocating responsibility according to comparative health and strength. The children should certainly do their own cleaning (boys as well as girls should be involved in this), and should learn the value of working together and of planning for the future. Thus for example, if they have their own shamba the children should be involved not only in the work, but also in the allocation of any food or cash crop produced. They should participate in the choice between benefit to the school directly, or to the village as a whole; and between present or future benefit. By these and other appropriate means the children must learn from the beginning to the end of their school life that education does not set them apart, but is designed to help them be effective members of the community-for their own benefit as well as that of their country and their neighbours.
One difficulty in the way of this kind of re-organization is the present examination system; if pupils spend more of their time on learning to do practical work, and on contributing to their own upkeep in the development of the community, they will not be able to take the present kind of examinations-at least within the same time period. It is, however, difficult to see why the present examination system should be regarded as sacrosanct. Other countries are moving away from this method of selection, and their abandoning examinations altogether at the lowest levels, or combining them with other assessments. There is no reason why Tanzania should not combine an examination, which is based on the things we teach, with a teacher and pupil assessment of work done for the school and community. This would be a more appropriate method of selecting entrants for secondary schools and for university, teacher training colleges, and so on, than the present purely academic procedure. Once a more detailed outline of this new approach to education is worked out, the question of selection procedure should be looked at again.
This new form of working in our schools will require some considerable organizational change. It may be also that the present division of the school year into rigid terms with long holidays would have to be re- . examined; animals cannot be left alone for part of the year, nor can a