Kenya's education system is no longer Inspiring hope

 

I have listened to different opinions- some saying that it’s a way of expressing grievances, others communication breakdown, others now that corporal punishment is illegal and the list goes on. But I have a different opinion.

Anybody who has gone through our education system in the recent past (within past decade), will tell you that slowly our education system is losing its objectives, and what we are facing today is precipitation of serious underlying issues which the planners have failed to address. When our schools are burning, our future as a nation is on fire and we need to face this issue with a lot of sobriety. 

Education is no longer the key to Success 
Education has historically been the bridge to success, today it’s not. The E students are doctors, nurses, lawyers and so on, merit is no longer applied, but money. This simply means, the key to success in this country is money, not education. It’s not surprising that most of those schools that are burning are public schools, and your guess is as good as mine when it comes to who are majority in these schools.

When I was a student, in one of the then prominent provincial schools, currently a national schools, you could easily see the hard working folk, the ‘A’ student who believed that they have their future in their hands, today I do stalk at these bright students, they are either jobless or doing clerical jobs, while the lazy, troublesome guys I know are already lawyers, engineers, or working in big organizations.

In other words, our education is no longer responsive to the needs of the job market, and the result is that today you only succeed, not depending on your paper qualifications but who you know, what you have or who your father is. Well, our students are watching and that is why today the ‘celebs’ in our schools are the ‘rich’ goons, as opposed to the hardworking chaps.

Exam-based education system 
Secondly, we have over the years watched our education system drift from skill-based to exam-based. The parents of today went through either the old education system or this education system when you needed to pass with flying colors to succeed, and this notion still exists in the majority of parents’ mind and even those who failed in the exams have been pushing their children to perform.

The pressure has piled over the years and teachers being under pressure to show their school as a performing one, have resorted to what is called “drilling’ in private school, and even more crude methods in public schools (including suspending the under performers, denying them a chance to participate in co-curriculum activities, creating extra time in cases where students are told to report earlier in opening days than the rest, and the list goes on). Now, our students seeing they are about to be pushed over a cliff, they either try to cheat in exams, or avoid them at any given opportunity.

Role-Models in our society
Sometimes back, the professors and doctors of this country were the role models of the school-goers. They were mainly known to be people who rose from poverty to riches by working hard in school. I remember the mention of Mutula Kilonzo snr. Today, things have changes, politicians are the role models in our society and most of them have no genuine college paper. They intimidate anyone and just as it a case of group of men forming a committee to resolve women’s problem, these politicians are forming committees to discuss school issues, come up with resolutions and even make inflated statements that implicate those who are supposed to soberly face the situation and come up with viable solutions. Our students are reading double-standards, and they would rather try to game the system, just like the powerful politicians do. 

The button line: Our education system has failed to achieve its once intended objectives. We have desperate graduates being spilled out into the market every year, and that students behind them have no trust in whatever they are doing in school as the key to their success. Somebody told me that you can never achieve attitude change if you can’t inspire hope, let’s face it, our education system is not inspiring hope, and what we are seeing today is a tip of an iceberg, we need to address the underlying misgivings of our system. Let’s have an education system that gives students skills and hope, so that they will feel they need it. Only by that shall we have students protecting their schools and not burning them.