Rushing into education shift will cripple our own future

 THE standard-based curriculum, as I understand, is developed on a piece-meal basis and not guided by the overall school education curriculum from elementary to secondary. 

While this meets the political calendar, it is dangerous for our society’s future. 

A properly designed curriculum would have undergone a number of processes involving technically qualified personnel and subjecting it to peer reviews and pilot trials to ensure it achieves its learning goals and outcomes intended or prescribed; this takes time.

It seems obvious now that all these processes were circumvented and the materials were sent directly to Singapore for mass printing by inexperienced publishing companies with spelling and grammar errors. 

We all know the value of education in the knowledge-based economy and era we now live in.

The current government has made tremendous investments in school education in ensuring we meet the Millennium Development Goals and improve our human development indices. 

I fear now that we may meet this by merely mass moving young people through the school system only. 

What do they learn and how effectively are they being educated? What type of future do we envision for PNG and is our curriculum developed to achieve that?

If the manner the current elementary education curriculum developed is allowed to go through and sets the basis for developing the primary and secondary school curriculum, then we would be moving the OBE out of the frying pan and directly into the fire. 

The cascading impacts of that right through to higher education and onto the job market will be catastrophic. 

The vision for a happy, wealthy and wise PNG will be severely compromised with the type and standard of curriculum we now set. 

We certainly do not want a curriculum that results in little knowledge, or worse, the wrong knowledge, which in both cases is dangerous for the society. 

That will handful our future generations in ignorance and land them in poverty. 

G Bopi

Port Moresby