Our youth are not the problem, we are the curriculum they learn from

Students linked to the Utumishi Girls High School dormitory fire that claimed the lives of 16 students appear before Chief Magistrate Ramadhan Abdulqadir at the Naivasha Law Courts. [Kipsang Joseph, Standard]

There was a time when the relationship between the state and young people was relatively uncomplicated. Young people were primarily students. As long as the school doors were open and the fees were manageable, the terms of engagement were clear: study, pass, grow, contribute. The state provided. The family trusted. The child complied. That arrangement was fragile — built, in many ways, on optimism and relative stability — but it held.

It no longer holds.