Applicability of Deweyan Pragmatism to Zimbabwe's Contemporary Education System

Abstract: The current textual analysis seeks to estimate the applicability of Deweyan pragmatism to Zimbabwe’s system of education as encapsulated in Curriculum Framework for Primary and Secondary Education for period 2015-2022 [also known herein as Government of Zimbabwe or GoZ (2015) or Curriculum Framework 2015-2022]. This undertaking comes against the background of Education 5.0 which occasioned a recent move by the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education, Innovation, Science and Technology Development [MoHTEISTD] in collaboration with University of Zimbabwe [UZ] to scrap Western educational philosophies (Deweyan pragmatism included) from Zimbabwe’s teacher education syllabus. Thus, the author is perturbed specifically by the imminent disregard of Deweyan pragmatism as a result of the unmistakable exaltation of the heritage-based philosophy within Zimbabwe’s new teacher education syllabus. Having synopsised pragmatist ideas, the current reflection juxtaposes Deweyan pragmatism with Zimbabwe’s Curriculum Framework 2015-2022 in terms of instructional aims, curriculum content, instructional methodology, ideal teacher and school system. Observably, the fundamental aspects of Zimbabwe’s education system as portrayed in Curriculum Framework 2015-2022 essentially turn out to be of a Deweyan making. Notwithstanding a few points of divergence between Deweyan pragmatism and Zimbabwe’s Curriculum Framework 2015-2022, the former is on the whole applicable to the latter. This finding readily harmonises with Wuta’s (2020) observation that there is a close connection between pragmatism and the Unhu/Ubuntu philosophy which currently undergirds education in Zimbabwe. The current reflection, therefore, demonstrates that the idea of peripherising Western philosophies like Deweyan pragmatism is more emotive than rational. This article, thus, implores the MoHTEISTD and UZ to revisit their position (that of excising Western philosophies) with due sobriety so that they consider restoring Deweyan pragmatism in particular to its rightful place in Zimbabwe’s teacher education, specifically in the Educational Foundations (Philosophy) syllabus, for the good of the country’s primary and secondary education sector