BY AMARA SESAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2021, 7:28 PM
Our children are dying;that's the crux of the matter! And these were supposed to be the most precious beings in our lives. What happened to the values we were taught, or were we really taught any at all? What happened to valour and heroism....
We have listened to all the conversations on what to do to secure schools, insights on the gloomy future of millions and millions of children that cannot return to school the next day for fear of being kidnapped or brutalised, the number of armed guards we need per school and blah blah blah. What we haven't heard is the root cause analysis and how that informs the design of programmes that ensure children's safety in this age of uncertainty.
Children are dying! Have that in mind when designing solutions for their safety in schools. And beyond the physical deaths, there is an intellectual genocide that beckons. Not to talk of the attendant cost of future defence and (mental) health budgets. This, indeed, is a case of the blahs!
If we go back a little bit in time, we see that most of our solutions for children, especially the girl child, we're designed to fail. Bullying and sexual violence has been endemic in schools for decades. Whilst some have reacted swiftly and done everything possible to suppress it, some others, including higher institutions, have become havens for perpetrators of this violence.
We won't let up and we won't keep quiet. Our children are dying and this is a curriculum problem. We have got to go back to the curriculum design table, analyse the root cause of some of our perennial problems and design modules and courses that speak to our present challenges.
It's no longer a colonial project. All the tools are in our hands. What shall we do?
Name of Series: From Hieroglyphics to Microchips: A Century of Reflections on Education and Technology
for collaborations on education-based projects:amarasesay.amir@gmail.com
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02 September 2022
