8-4-4 curriculum bestowed me with basic survival skills

I'm vehemently opposed to changing the 8-4-4 education curriculum to the proposed 2-6-6-3 system.

There is nothing seriously wrong with the 8-4-4 system as to occasion a complete overhaul. Those saying that the system encourages rote learning and does not instill learners with key competencies either do not live in this country, or did not go through the 8-4-4 system themselves.

I haven't studied outside this country but I can tell you I haven't seen any Kenyan student struggling out there, because they were fed on the 8-4-4 junk diet.

Kenyan students studying abroad are the pick of the academic bunch, wherever they are. If they weren't, those competitive scholarships targeting underprivileged children from third world countries would have gone to other Africans. 

The problem with this country is that we love skirting around the main issue. You know a friend who knows a friend whose mother leaked exams for her but you can't raise your hand and reprimand them because you are afraid your truth will cost you your friendship in high places, and the attendant goodies that come with it.

This country is filled with fair-weather hypocrites who love to put the blame where it doesn't belong simply because if we faced the truth we'd be regarded as irritating misfits.

As a result, we are now blaming exam cheating and half-baked graduates on the 8-4-4 curriculum because there's nothing, or no one left to put the blame on other than ourselves. So 8-4-4 is now being forced to take a hard hit because somebody somewhere has refused to put their hands up and take responsibility for allowing national exams to haemorrhage all over the place.

8-4-4, as originally designed, is the best any learner could ever have asked for. Those blaming the current mess on 8-4-4 were those students who were never attentive in class because they knew in the final year someone would come through for them with leakage.

There are problems I don't take to the tailor to sort out. I know how to do a hem stitch. This is a practical skill I learnt during my Home Science class, which is still relevant in my day-to-day life. I have basic survival skills that the 8-4-4 curriculum bestowed on me.

Kenya does not need any more new laws, or new curricula. What we need is a change of our national values. We need a value-system that teaches our children that they can fail in exams and still make it in life.

We need a value system that teaches our daughters that they can still get married to a street-boy and rehabilitate him from the ground up.

We need a value system that teaches our children that it is honourable to surrender your bus seat to an expectant woman on your way to work.

There is no education curriculum that will entrench a value system that is common-sense based. 

If exam cheating was a preserve of the 8-4-4 system alone, those who opted for the GCSE curriculum wouldn't have been accused of exam cheating too.

This country needs to have a honest discussion on the core reasons behind our graduates being half-baked.

When you work as a panhandler in the sugar mill, those engineers teach you that when you encounter a loose nut, the first step you take is to tighten it, not write a letter to the procurement department asking for a new one. The same logic should be applied here.