University Degree debate in Kenya is a question of haves and have-nots

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?