Going over my son’s homework with him on the weekend, I realised that this Zimbabwean economy is affecting and confusing these children in primary schools.

Their mathematics textbooks rely on $ and c – that is dollars and cents. For an example 7c was shared amongst 7 pupils and each got one cent. Correct! Now, the reality is the teacher has to start explaining to the class what a cent is, before he/she is being asked that question. A 45 minute lesson will last an hour, trying to make some sense of cents in the face of these millions and billions.

The Ministry of Education should do something about this subject which is now proving to be difficult to teach, otherwise teachers will have to ignore cents and say million or billion or (mita and bidza) as is common with even pre-school kids these days. Whatever we are doing in this present Zimbabwe, let’s remember our children in primary school, because this is the foundation of the education system.

This entry was posted on May 19th, 2008 at 3:44 pm by Dennis Nyandoro and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.