We are a nation that does not celebrate genuine hard work

Meshark Nyesi a former street boy is celebrated by his teachers after emerging as the top candidate at Kibos Primary school in Kisumu with 410 marks in the 2020 KCPE. [Collins Oduor, Standard]

The recently released Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) results have led me to have some very informative conversations with a few of the candidates as I sought to congratulate and encourage them on their performance. Today, I will share some insights I gathered from one such conversation with a few children who sat last year’s KCPE.

“Does hard work really pay?” That was one of the questions asked by one of them, who had been a consistent top performer and hard worker. “Yes it does,” I quickly responded. “Then hard work is a very unfair employer,” the boy retorted with a pained expression. I sought to know why he reasoned that way. That is what my reflections will be based on today.

The boy had consistently performed well and scored well over 440 marks in the regular school examinations. The teachers had prepared the children well and gone over and above managing their expectations, advising them that there was a concept called “standardisation”’ that sought to equalise children from private and public schools or from big towns and small towns. The children seemed to grasp that concept and worked hard all the same. The full realisation of how cruel standardisation can be sank in on April 15 when the results were released and all his peers had scored below 400 marks.

Was there some obvious error with the results? Was this the result of some harsh standardisation decision? Did the top performers all of a sudden drop? Is this system fair? The questions were quite difficult to answer. No, this was actually an intentional boardroom decision in a bid to portray public schools as better performers compared to private schools, girls better than boys, village schools better than city schools, and so on. How do you explain this narrative to a 14-year-old? Who is the real beneficiary of such decisions? Well, the jury is still out there.

Parents and guardians whose children are suffering the reality of a botched system, one that seeks to equalise its citizens by taking from one lot to give to another lot, have to manage their children by either seeking to explain what they do not even understand or get them psychological or spiritual counsellors to guide them through failed expectations, broken dreams and a sense of failure and defeat.

Fast forward (time really flies), these same children work hard through high school, sit their Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (hopefully this time no one standardises their results), go to university, get good grades and sadly they get locked out of the job market since the system just does not allow for smooth transition.

I can only imagine what would happen if such a person with such a loaded portfolio of injustice was to land a job with the government, where they have access to public funds or some level of influence and control. Maybe this time hard work will pay fairly? How I pray that they will act justly, if only to correct the system, one person at a time. Unfortunately, the system produces so many unemployed graduates that it negates the value of hard work.

Pressure to perform

My interactions with children who have just completed KCPE continue. I get to share the insights as I interact with them and I am learning a lot. Maybe too much to enable me share with others so that we all learn and hopefully this learning will create the much-needed change that we require and that would lead to behavioural transformation.

On average, children in Standard Eight start their lessons at 6:30am and end at 5pm. This is a total of more than eight hours of continuous classroom learning. (No debate invited over these statistics). This is without factoring in homework and personal study time.

Teachers will collude with parents to withhold anything that comes in the way of books from their children, including weekend activities, personal time, playtime, sports, other hobbies and even TV time. The children will grudgingly oblige and agree to sacrifice all the little luxuries that eat into their valuable study time. They will surrender every inch of their will and yield to academics, all in a bid to get a “good grade” and get a chance to join a “good” high school.

All this sounds good, until the results paint a different picture. When the reality is so far from the set expectations and when the harvest does not correspond to the sowing; how do you prepare a child to accept a different result from their expectation? Do we really prepare our children for what society deems “failure”?

I have come across very confident children who start losing their confidence due to the recently released results. They wonder if they are good enough. “Are my teachers disappointed? Did I fail my parents,” they ask. We have a responsibility to re-write the narrative.

Let every teacher do their best and teach in the best possible way they can, allow the children to do their personal best with no threats attached. In the meantime, let the learners continue investing time in their studies while still having time to relax and pursue other hobbies and positive interests.

Prepare children, teachers and parents for results that are purely regulated by systems and vary with boardroom decisions, and have nothing to do with their level of hard work and preparation. This way, the child gets to have a wholesome experience in school and the policy makers get to have their day and their way without crushing anyone’s confidence.

Possibly, add this to the beatitudes: “Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.”

Value-based education

I have observed in my sermons that we need a value-laden nation, homes and schools. A principle is an external truth that is as reliable as a physical law such as the law of gravity. When Solomon said “a gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger,” he stated a principle that is both universal and timeless. Principles are important because they function like a map, allowing us to make wise decisions. If we ignore them or deny their reliability, we become like travellers refusing to use a roadmap because we dispute its accuracy.

While we may acknowledge the reliability of many principles, we only internalise those we deem important. When that happens, the principle has become a value that serves as the internal map we use to direct our lives. A value, then, is an internalised principle that guides our decisions.

What we lack in Kenya are not principles, we lack values. We believe that hard work brings wealth. That is a principle that applies everywhere. However, we have become a nation that does not celebrate genuine hard work. If an education system is not based on principles and values, our children cannot trust hard work as a value; hard work becomes an unfair employer!