Towards a Citizenship Education for Zimbabwe

Abstract

This paper examines post independence Zimbabwe’s attempts to introduce a form of citizenship education in the nation’s education curricula, first in the name of Political Economy introduced at secondary school level shortly after independence in the early 1980s but abandoned soon afterwards, only to resurface as National and Strategic Studies in 2002 at tertiary institutions, specifically, at polytechnics and teachers’ colleges. Observations based on the situation on the ground and documentary evidence indicate that attempts towards the provision of some form of citizenship education in Zimbabwe’s education system have encountered some problems in the past which have largely been unresolved and continue to hound current efforts. This paper posits that the problems hampering the implementation of an effective citizenship education curriculum stem from the nature, scope, justification, modes of provision and the adoption strategies of citizenship education. The paper argues that for citizenship education to take root in the country’s education curricula, it needs to be clearly defined, well justified and properly disseminated into the user system so as to secure ‘buy in’ from the various stakeholders and participants in the education system.