Educational Innovation in Zimbabwe: Possibilities and Problems

Abstract

As soon as Zimbabwe achieved full independence, on April 18, 1980, it launched a thrust for a new educational program that the national government believed would be different from any in the past. To appreciate Zimbabwe's enthusiasm for educational innovation one must understand the rigidity of the educational practices of the colonial period, especially those from 1965 to 1979, when Ian Smith served as prime minister. It is clear that throughout the colonial period education in Zimbabwe was designed to promote and protect the political and socioeconomic interests of the whites and to keep the vast black majority in a subservient position.1 This means that during the entire colonial period, particularly from 1965-79, the Africans were denied equal educational opportunity, because if they were educated in the same way as the whites they would have threatened the political domination that the whites had enjoyed for so long. For example, on April 20, 1966, the Rhodesian minister of education, Arthur P. Smith, announced a number of policy changes in the education of the Africans.2 Among the changes that irritated the Africans were the following: senior secondary schools would enroll no more than 12.5 percent of the primary graduates, and the junior secondary schools would enroll another 37.5 percent. This new policy was to take effect at the