It is only through education that a child
born in Turkana like Dr. Akuro Aukot and another born in opulence of State
House like Uhuru Kenyatta can meet and talk together on equal terms. Put in
another way, we can comfortably say that education is an effective socially
equalizing factor. We are not born equal, and never have equal chances in the
pursuit of education. While some are born in environments that force one to get
proper education due to availability of resources and good training facilities,
others are born under punitive circumstances that negate proper intellectual
development resulting from institutionalized neglect and skewed policies. The
commonality in both cases is both children have brains.
State House
I may just ignore all rules and
paraphrase Shakespeare with his observation that some people are born great,
others achieve greatness, while some have greatness thrust upon them. If I came
from the loins of a founding father of a nation and gulped my first breath on
the red carpets of State House, played house in the expansive ranches of our
family and later travelled to Boston for university education, I would say I
had greatness thrust upon me. But if someone hand picks me from some secluded
corner for parliamentary nomination and puts me on pedestal to be president,
greatness is thrust upon me. The education push factors are stronger than pull
factors. It may take both the hand and leg of the devil to restrain me from
excelling, even if I enrolled for nuclear science.
Graduation Ceremony at JKUAT
On the other
hand, if I was born in a mud-and-cowdung-walled, grass-thatched hut in the
horrid heat of Northern Kenya, far from civilization and accompanying social
amenities that come with state capitals, the odds are far too strong
to let me excel. Each morning I trek bare footed for marathon equivalent of
miles to school and back. After every marathon I only return home to graze
goats in the scattered shrubs of Kapenguria, and in the evening lull myself
with meager fermented milk to slumber land. I can’t stop my stomach from distending
as a result of marasmus. Wobbly physique in the name of Knock-kneed rickety
legs, putting to shame Wobble Bug T.E in the Land of Oz, is a standard walking style while tawniness is
considered utter cleanliness. I can’t even stop my nose from running like tap
water; it is never a seasonal river without occasional interruptions of
handkerchief, where women have never heard of sanitary towels, or towel of any
nature for that matter.
At night we have to crowd an open fire
and if we are lucky a tin lamp would replace the fire as drooling eyes pour over
dog-eared exercise books that more often than not catch fire when the reader
falls asleep out of fatigue induced by straining and laborious day. Perhaps, luck
is on the side of our family which boasts of some emaciated goats that may just
die of starvation and dehydration come sunset the following day. Therefore, my
father must own one rusty AK47 and a handful of ammunitions just in case some
cattle rustlers come calling when the poorly equipped anti-stock theft unit are
incommoded by impassable roads. When an AK47 blasts in the wee hours of the
night, it is most likely from a raider and not a law enforcer. In my not so
friendly environment an adversary is incessantly planning to harm us; hostility
comes our way in concert from the sun above, hot sand beneath our bare feet,
the cruel wind whose direction changes faster that we can gulp one mouthful of water,
and from Ethiopian rebels menacingly crossing the border everytime they want to
test their guns.
In such circumstances, it takes a miracle
to reach school and discover that your class teacher successfully fought
rustlers previous night and reported to school in time, that is, if he is not
the raider who died in a shoot-out in a neighbouring clan. The pupils go
through the roll-call register in their hearts to record the number of times
the class teacher reported. The government knows and admits that in those areas
teacher-pupil ratio approaches infinity and no amount of strikes from KNUT will
reduce it. It is little wonder that TSC will not post a fresh graduate teacher
there in spite of hardship and other hosts of allowances. They need to add
personal danger (shifters’ and rustlers’) allowances.
As
a potential legislator (thanks to my degree should the president allow it), I
would recommend that anti-stock theft police unit go through early childhood
education to double their mandate as educators and law enforcers to mitigate
pupil-teacher disparity. I would even build an administrative complex in which
a school is located within a police station. I would also install big solar
panels and convey electricity to all the warring clans in northern Kenya so
that they fight in light, both day and night. If teachers and parents possess
AK47s why wouldn’t a specialized police unit thumb a few pieces of chalk each
day, in what we would rightly call community policing stretched to accommodate education?
The American Peace Corps did more than that.
Dr.Ekuru Aukot, CEO Committee of Experts on the review commission (A man from a place Kenya forgot)
The probability that my hypothetical
pupil in this case passes both KCPE and KCSE, proceeds to University and becomes
the CEO of CoE is infinitesimal. Imagine this student beats all odds to arrive
at the University of Nairobi and finds that another student who went to State
House Girls High School(where you can hear the president snore) while her
parents live in Lavington, failed to meet JAB intake threshold but ends up
studying law under module II. Here again the poor is short changed: he has to
work hard and end up doing a course forced down his throat by JAB while another
lackadaisical performer buys his way to law school and occupies a lofty civil
service position because the father is ‘who is who’. We have a national genius in lowering every
standard imaginable. After adulterating public universities with Module II/parallel
students we bend further to license a college on each floor of every building
in the city and still expect something good out of them. The only consistent
thing about our national character is inconsistency. We want a constitution we
can consistently amend to satisfy our ‘national’ political whims –degree or no
degree.
To think that even after commercializing
our education system and lowering the standard for mushrooming tertiary colleges
to occupy every floor of a CBD building whose first floor holds a highlife
nightclub overlooking an imposing petrol station, one without any curtailing
factors fails to hold a degree ( from either recognised or unrecognised
institution) is the opposite a miracle. The number of third-floor city colleges
is equivalent to the number of evangelical ministries and pubs combined. I know
one college without a microphone (leave a lone camera) but offers degree in
journalism and mass communication and is a constituent college of a recognized
institution of higher learning. A degree is being sold for a song in these
colleges, much like isolated cases of STDs (Sexually Transferred Degrees) in
public universities. Am I the first soul to make these allegations. How I wish
the Task Force on Education reviewing schooling curriculum held their sittings
in Lodwar and not Kenya Institute of Education!
A part from our national ingenuity as far
as lowering standards is concerned, we have a knack for rewriting selective Biblical
verses to make a practical sense. Didn’t we just say, “seek ye first the
kingdom of money by whatever means and the rest shall be added unto you”? I
have no doubt that if I was a rich Kenyan and my son or daughter failed KCSE,
she or he would end up in the Faculty of Law at the University of Nairobi. The
paradox 85 plus rich guys face now is to
acquire the precious degree papers by actually sitting through all the classes,
writing term papers, and sitting all end semester exams in order to put a name
on the ballot box. I know some of them already purchased papers from backstreet
colleges. Are these not some of the reasons for decline of our national
creativity and innovation when it comes to job creation and poverty eradication
through structural policy formulation and implementation? Has there ever been a
Kenyan ‘New Deal’ even after recurrent crises? The only deals I know of are
‘power sharing deals’ and ‘Tenderprenuership’.
I wanted to hide under my desk when over
85 MPs asked the Supreme Court to find the constitutional correlation between
education and leadership. I should reiterate that education is not equivalent
to leadership but polishes it. A legislator is a law maker, he must therefore
understand some merits of the laws he makes. The aim of education is to open up
blocked minds to such rigorous and thought provoking processes as policy
formulation, implantation and evaluation.
Koigi Wa Wamwere
One of our greatest national liberators,
Hon Koigi Wamwere (who is not a university degree holder) observed in his article
(Nairobi Star 2012-06-25) that Tom Mboya, Jomo Kenyatta, Abraham Lincoln, Steve
Jobs, and Bill Gates did not have university degree yet they revolutionized
human life in various ways. Nature is not so generous at producing geniuses:
that is why they are few and far between. Large majority of inhabitants of
Earth are average people who require thorough training to be completely
productive. If that was the case, we would close all our universities under
assumption that all our children are geniuses of every kind and will chart
their own productive ways in life without both specialized training and
supervision. But we can make such assumptions in country that imports razor
blades from China.
Regardless of our birth (low or high)
education is leveling us and squaring out a lot of disparities. Let those who
want to be legislators have degrees. The aim of education, as someone had
earlier said it, is to replace an empty mind with an open one. I find very
little or no distinction between legislation on one hand and policy
formulation, implementation, and evaluation on the other hand. How would an MP
who believes that forests have nothing to do with water cycle because rains
come from the sky, make an informed legislation on matters environment?
