REMODELLING OF EDUCATION IN KENYA AND ACADEMICIZATION OF SPORTS AS A CORE CURRICULAR DISCIPLINE

The European education in Africa, also christened as formal education, is an agemate of colonialism. Its introduction was purposed to provide skilled labour to supplement the economic and administrative deficit of the colonizers. The suppression of precolonial African educational system was both deliberate and strategic since, it is in the congenital human nature to conquer and dominate. The introduced European curriculum was tailormade for global north market needs. In the early twentieth century, human capital was desperately needed to drive the industrialization demands within Africa given the delayed era of mechanization. The Western curriculum was thus introduced in Africa for both basic and limited purposes. The leading educationists of the age were emphatic on the integral development of a learner and thus, sports were introduced as a co-curricular, and due to financial constraints, it was either optional or ignorable. Moreover, majority of the pioneer learners in Africa were either approaching age of majority or were majors readier for coupling. Sports and sporting were indispensable since they had evolved to become a conduit for cultural education. The onset of western system of education disregarded the various African sports perhaps tagging some as either anachronistic or preliterate. The western sports were promptly introduced rendering the indigenous ones obsolete. More significantly, the pioneer western educators were in urgent need for clerks and the demand for western educated work force was exponentially rising. Given these compounded factors, the possibility of introduction of sports as a career path would not only have sounded farfetched but also preposterous. Additionally, sport career had not attained professional competitiveness in global north as it is today. Africa is at crossroads to reinvent herself as a formidable force in the world market. Without underestimating the past encumbrances, the continent requires a senatio et radice in various fronts that continue to delay the detonation of potentialities. Sports’ championship happens to be one of the embryonic areas that Africa can easily remain unbeatable. Strategically, the African countries need to invest in the remodelling of respective educational systems to upswing sport from being Extra-curricular or Cocurricular to Core-curricularprogram. The learners’ mindsets have to be modulated to view sports as a lucrative career at par with other presently ennobled occupations that yield both influence and affluence. The bias of sport-science as either non-academic or a tailormade career for lamebrained should be passionately obliterated as it plays as a major impediment to unlocking the infinite potentialities vested in the African sportsmen and women. Over and above, sports need to be appraised as a scientific branch of knowledge giving birth to numerous career paths and opportunities. This academic corpus employs to study tenets of educational changes as sine qua non for building sports career among African youths as well as innovative paths in the institution of sports science for sustainable global future. program. The learners’ mindsets have to be modulated to view sports as a lucrative career at par with other presently ennobled occupations that yield both influence and affluence. The bias of sport-science as either non-academic or a tailormade career for lamebrained should be passionately obliterated as it plays as a major impediment to unlocking the infinite potentialities vested in the African sportsmen and women. Over and above, sports need to be appraised as a scientific branch of knowledge giving birth to numerous career paths and opportunities. This academic corpus employs to study tenets of educational changes as sine qua non for building sports career among African youths as well as innovative paths in the institution of sports science for sustainable global future.

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