Re: Why the curriculum should relate to life outside the class (The New Times May 10)

Editor,

From my experience many decades ago, and still vivid in my mind and helping me cope in my daily life of an old chap, there is no better syllabus complement than a small plot of land adjacent to a school, where pupils can physically and intellectually interact on daily basis with the milliard other creatures contained in a square inch of soil.

I have been suggesting the above initiative to a few learning institutions around here: that each of them start, right away, their school garden, and I even offered to help...each institution at all levels in Rwanda should own and get students at all levels actively and on daily basis involved in farming.

All classical subject matters; history, biology, sociology, administration, mathematics, chemistry, fine arts, etc. etc. should be related to the plot behind the school and constantly develop referring to it.

Even ICTs can be better taught in a down to earth more stimulant approach, as an application complement to the actual highly abstract teaching mode.

The plot would be a must, richer, and constantly consulted school laboratory, a real test and controlled microcosm of the outside world in which our youngsters would thus be more positively and direct practically prepared to live and interact in now and in future.

If not, schooling will remain bookish, learning through memorizing and parroting foreign things not immediately experienced and not so well locally integrated!

After all, we are basically an agricultural country, aren’t we?

Francois X Nziyonsenga