Curriculum Innovations and Traditional Culture: A Case History of Kenya

Abstract

The modernization process in the Third World often presents situations in which western educational ideas are being transplanted into significantly different socio-political climates than where they first originated. Educational methods and techniques, borrowed from the more developed states primarily because they seem to have worked there, should be analysed critically in their new setting to discern how universally applicable they really are. One such case, the use of popular curriculum planning techniques by the East African nation of Kenya, has produced some unpected consequences in a society seeking to use education to foster rapid national development. In Kenya a decade of serious efforts to improve the primary school curriculum by relying increasingly on standard curriculum design procedures has not borne as much fruit as originally anticipated. As in any complex educational situation there are multiple, varied reasons for Kenya's low returns on new curriculum, but the crux of the issue seems to have been largely overlooked. Upon closer examination we shall see that by viewing curriculum change primarily as a technological matter, deep cultural and philosophical issues have been minimized which are actually crucial to effective curriculum change. Since curriculum developers in Kenya are merely following practices widely adhered to in the western world, the underlying causes of failure assume more than just local interest. A review of curriculum change in this developing nation thus becomes an examination of general curriculum theory and practice.