Are our local schools giving way to international ones?

THERE IS a Senegalese proverb that goes; “If you borrow a man’s legs, you will go where he directs you.” This saying suits well an encounter I had with one director of studies at one of the premium schools, about the trend of education in this country. Our chat was about the merits and demerits of international schools (schools that offer international curriculum) versus schools that offer the local curriculum. The conversation resulted in him confiding in me that from the look of things, any serious parent should think about giving their children international education if they are to compete globally! I argued with him trying to cite examples of good traditional schools that offer the local curriculum which produced competent citizens in the past, who have even moved on to compete globally. He maintained his position, summing up his views in a few words “… in today’s world your LDKs (Lycee de Kigali) and Byimanas are no longer fashionable.” Anyhow, both of us laughed it off and our attention focused on something else.However, this conversation kept on tickling my mind, as I reflected on the surge of schools offering international curriculum (Cambridge exams, they call it) on the African continent as a whole. Whereas the role of international schools should be to assist expatriate families relocating to Africa with the education needs of their children, we have taken international schools to be fashionable and superior to schools that offer local curriculum. In so doing, we have qualified our own local education system to be inferior and the net resultant impact is the continuous falling standards in our local education system. Because we are under the illusion that the international schools offer superior quality education than their local counterparts, now it has become fashionable for every parent (at least those who can afford) to have their children go to schools that offer international curriculum! Unless proven by research, I would bet that international schools are not in any way superior to local ones when it comes to academics! Apart from exorbitant school fees and exotic lifestyle, international schools have not much to offer. If critically assessed, parents should know that through international schooling we are unknowingly disconnecting our children from their roots and values. Indirectly, we affirm to the children that anything local, anything national is inferior! This is the mindset we inherited from colonial periods and it continues to haunt us to present. This scenario reminds me of Mosese one of the characters in Imbuga’s Betrayal in the City when he lamented thus; “It was better while we waited. Now we have nothing to look forward to. We have killed our past and are busy killing our future”. Like Mosese points out, if we blame colonialists for killing our past, aren’t we killing our present and the future through the values and models we script on the tender minds of our children? There is a saying that it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks, so how do we expect patriotism and nationalism to permeate to our children when we are the very people who disconnect them from their local roots and feed their mind that everything western and exotic is better? After these youngsters have graduated from High schools in international system we work so hard to send them to universities abroad! The big question here is, when and how shall we strengthen our own education system and institutions? In conclusion, it is imperative to note that the quality and type of education we give to our children will eventually form their behavior, attitude and life perceptions. Again, it’s an illusion to think that international schools necessarily offer superior education than their local counterparts. Our schools would perform better and improve their standards if we pumped in the same amount of school fees that we pump in international schools.International schools have social-economical detrimental effects on our society. Socially, any education that falls short of imparting peoples’ sense of identity, continuity and social values should never be accepted- at the extreme end international curriculum could be viewed as a vehicle of cultural imperialism. From the economic perspective, international schools import all their resource learning materials majorly the textbooks and this is detrimental to the growth of our fragile indigenous book sector. Above all, the unfortunate reality is that the more we embrace the international schools, the more our local education standards will continue falling!The writer is an educationist, author and publisher