A major distribution of school supplies got under way today across Zimbabwe in an effort by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the Government and international donors to ensure that every primary school student receives a textbook for all core subjects.
All 5,575 primary schools in Zimbabwe will receive the supplies thanks to support from the Educational Transition Fund (ETF), a multi-donor funding mechanism launched a year ago to mobilize resources for the education sector with a view to improving the quality of schooling for the country's children, UNICEF said in a press release.
The fund responds to numerous shortages of teaching and learning materials, textbooks and supplies in schools. Currently, around 10 pupils share every text book, while 20 per cent of primary schools, have no textbooks at all for English, mathematics or local languages.
"This week children went back to school because of this visionary partnership between the Inclusive Government, international donor community and the UN. Children will go back to school with books and learning materials for the first time in years," said David Coltart, the country's Minister of Education, Sports, Arts and Culture. "It is a profound recognition that education is the foundation of Zimbabwe's recovery."
Over the past decade, Zimbabwean communities managed to keep their children and maintained high national enrolment, despite a declining economy, rising unemployment, an orphan crisis and an under-resourced education sector, which was near collapse.
The ETF is the first large-scale, external support to the education sector in the past decade and will provide learning resources to every primary school.
The distribution will see a total of 12,000 tons of school supplies, including stationery and 13 million textbooks, distributed in the next three months.
Some 20 per cent of the textbooks are being printed in Zimbabwe and the remaining in other countries in Southern Africa. A supply chain will ensure that textbooks, stationery and other school supplies from the UNICEF distribution centre are distributed to 22 hubs across the country and further transported to every school.
"The distribution exercise we launch today is undoubtedly an enormous endeavour. Yet, we relish the challenge as it is a crucial first step to restoring Zimbabwe's education system to its former glory as well as restoring the pride Zimbabweans have in educating their children," said Peter Salama, UNICEF's Representative in Zimbabwe.
The next phase of the ETF will focus on providing teacher guides and textbooks for marginalized indigenous languages approved by the education ministry, as well as Braille texts.
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" ... in an effort by . UNICEF .. and international donors to ensure that every primary school student receives a textbook for all core subjects. .."
Ah.
Aren't these whites just nice to the kids? These whites who
killed our Lobengula and Mbuya Nehanda AND
commandeered the lands of our ancestors
- and the very vermin who impose economic sanctions that destabilize the land and impoverish the people and starve to death many kids in ZIM today - then they say they didn't do it!
Somehow someone in ZIM still gives them access to the impressionable minds of ZIM's youngsters.
WRONG.
Hint: Those foreigners rush to fund - AND HENCE DIRECTLY AND INDIRECTLY VET - textbooks and the curriculum. They even involve themselves in agitating our youth against our way of life as we know it.
A strategy for imperial domination through manipulation and the brainwashing of thew country's young (and hence the future adult) minds.
A strategy that incubates future, anti-social, unpatriotic bad 'citizens' like Tsvangirai and Biti.
Hint: Consider Kenya where these foreigners have been involved in brainwashing for decades. A failed society. A failed education system. The kids know all that is wrong with Africa and nothing that is wrong with UK. The kids and adults brought up in that foreign-controlled education system would propose that the native's struggle for freedom was wrong and slavery was a necessary evil. One gets the impression that the history of Kenya started with the invasion of the white man.
[If the Germans conquered and colonized the UK - say after the WW2 - what would the kids and adults in UK today know about Germany or the UK before WW2? Why is the present and future minds/self-awareness of the patriotic Zimbabweans still being controlled by the white man?]
Why is it that the whites (often through their benign imperial arms, the UN and the NGOs) ALWAYS scheme and rush in to fund the education system in foreign countries? Much more effective, less costly, longer lasting means of control - psychological warfare.
- - - - Some years ago, I starred horrified at the workbook of an 8-year old kid in an African country (of known culture of the extended family system) to find that he was taught that day
- at that age
- IN a foreign language, ENGLISH
- in that UK-funded "free primary" education system -
that his grandmother is NOT a member of his family - something called "nuclear' family. Discriminate. Exclusion. Imperialism through language and learning. So what does the future hold for our 'extended family system' of our ancestors in Kenya's societies? [Can the educators in Kenya (and Zimbabwe) tell us what is wrong with our culture and why our kids - our future - under 12 have to be taught about themselves and the world in English? OK. Why not French or Spanish or Germany or Chinese or isiZulu...?]
- - -
If foreigners want to be nice, then let them release the money to be spent on roads and bridges - while the natives mind their own education. Unless the white rhodie thinks that after the decades, nay centuries, of white imposition the native cannot man his education. Yet there were elite institutions of learning in Africa long before they appeared in Europe ...
More on this foreign imposition and brainwashing later.