There’s more to national exams than scoring high marks

By Godwin Siundu

The Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education examination started on Wednesday, with more than 300,000 candidates offering themselves to the examiners to determine who proceeds for higher education.

As the students endure an agonising period of examination and another of waiting for results, a number of questions remain unanswered.

My concern is whether, after many years of Government and individual parents and students’ investments, the examinations give us any indication that those who pass have acquired the necessary skills, values and attitudes.

Decision of who joins which university for which course will be based solely on the basis of academic performance, with no regard for the lessons in the hidden curriculum.

Undue pressure

Apart from gate-keeping at the entry point of universities and other middle level colleges, these exams have over time failed to measure any other aspects of the learners’ development as all rounded individuals who can form and pursue morally acceptable values that should define our nation.

For starters, there has been undue pressure on the candidates to pass examinations by all means, which has led some to disregard virtues of honesty and indulge in different forms of cheating.

Sadly, there have been reports students are aided in this dishonesty by errant teachers keen to ensure high pass rates to win good public opinion of themselves and their schools.

This dishonesty has unfortunately found its way to other institutions, and has contributed in a large measure to the escalation of social and moral problems.

An emergent trend has been the tendency for some of these students, some encouraged by their parents, to study courses considered lucrative in the world of employment, often without regard to the ethical dimensions to human knowledge.

A look at the application trends among Module Two students — called parallel or self-sponsored students in various universities — reveals a situation where far more students apply for courses in medicine, law, architecture and engineering. Courses like religion, Kiswahili and others that prepare students for teaching careers are threatened with non-registration in the near future.

The unfortunate outcome of this scenario is that we are producing professionals who are dissatisfied with their work and who, having lost touch with the humane aspects of their jobs, tend to be insensitive to human plight.

Switch jobs

A number of graduates who prepared for a career in teaching tend to switch jobs at the slightest opportunity and end up as bankers, journalists, small-scale businesspeople and even musicians.

The allure of what is adorably called ‘the corporate world’ and the entertainment circuit has been so overpowering that many of our youths are going to desperate lengths to succeed in careers that, only a few years ago, were considered frivolous and unworthy of an organised individual’s pursuit.

In future, we shall only have reluctant teachers who take up teaching to bid time for other employment options. At the heart of this seems to be the desire by a majority of us to celebrate social visibility above all else.

It is no secret many of our youths imagine themselves as Michael Jacksons in the making. And some of them are encouraged by parents and guardians to fall for the seduction of the celebrity mania in town. This is fine.

What disturbs is whether raw and sometimes undercutting competitive spirit is the way we should point out for our youth.

It seems that for many of our youths, the ideal of service to society has been totally disregarded in pursuit of individual achievements, where self-fulfillment is replaced with self-gratification.

Why should our youth be made to believe academic or professional success is all they should care for at the expense of other values like hard, honest work, patience and fair play? These were strings, which for long held our society together.

Unbridled competition

The question we should ask is whether the drive to have our students emerge tops in all they engage in is ultimately a good one, or whether such a desire actually distracts them from developing other aspects of their humanity that are more important in their normal functioning in the wider community.

The spirit of unbridled competition, as is manifest in the Kenyan public especially among the youth, is cultivated and nurtured in schools where pressure to succeed academically almost enslaves students to their ambitions.

It is important we broaden the base of our examinations in the learning process and ensure that, apart from academic achievements, students are also rewarded for the acquisition of important values like honesty, trust and selflessness.

That will ultimately insulate them against material temptations that militate against the higher ideals of serving humanity.

Therefore, there is there is need to ensure out of the final grades students are assigned, a percentage of it should be from the learner’s observed behaviour rather than merely written responses.

—The writer ([email protected]) is a lecturer at the Department of Literature, University of Nairobi.