Who will save parents from greed of book publishers?

The new school syllabus, set to arrive in 2016, has had Kenyans making comments about what bits to lop off and what to add.

The national conversation about what should be made standard learning for our young ones is the most important conversation the nation should have with itself.

If we get it right we will improve the stock of our human potential and help build a prosperous future.

The publishing industry is extremely happy at the coming upheavals in the syllabus and is set to experience a windfall.

This syllabus reset comes about a decade after the last one. Like the last one, it will usher in reams of “new” books, meaning super profits for publishers.

The story about Kenya textbook publishers is one that involves the International Monetary Fund, government incompetence, and unalloyed corporate greed.

In the ’80s the IMF’s and their sadomasochistic ministrations required the government to amputate large chunks of its education budget and this imprecise surgery ended up cutting off perfectly good flesh alongside the gangrenous corrupt mass.

About the same time the government was changing from 7-4-2-3 to a new educational formation, 8-4-4, yet the increase in subjects by the new curriculum was met with a shortage in educational spending.

The 8-4-4 syllabus lacked books and this enabled “entrepreneurs” in the “free market” to unleash the “animal spirits” we learn about in economics and start selling books to parents.

PRICE GOUGING

Unfortunately for us, the animal they were channelling was the hyena. A study in the Nordic Journal of African Studies found that, on average, between 1991 and 1997 the price of a textbook went up by more than 230 per cent, which is several multiples of what inflation at that time was. Some books went up by as much as 700 per cent.

It should be noted that even government parastatals, whose job is to advance education, were not left behind in the price gouging. Between 1991 and 2002 the price of one primary mathematics textbook increased in price by more than 850 per cent.

Comparing prices between today and two decades ago shows that, almost every year, textbook prices consistently go up by more than the inflationary concerns.

Despite having several players, including the government, joining in, the market has remained an oligopoly, with the state and the private sector working in cahoots to keep prices high.

What is it that publishers put in the books?

The list and details of the information required in the curriculum is available from the Kenya Institute of Education (KIE), which guides the publishers.

Consider mathematics. Our entire syllabus for all basic education consists of ideas that have been agreed upon for hundreds of years.

Calculus, meanwhile, has not changed since Leibnitz discovered it 300 years ago and all that a secondary student needs to know is firmly established.

Logarithms cannot change unless you change the base or the accuracy. This did not stop the Kenya National Examinations Council from putting out a new version of their log tables — at a higher price, of course — despite it having exactly the same information as the old one. If the mathematics does not change, why should the books?

Also used to justify new books is a cynical musical chairs of topics. For example, when I was in high school they decided to split the topic on alcohols into two and cover it across two years.

This grand decision required, as you would expect, shiny new books where the same information could be presented.

There is very little investment required in writing most textbooks for basic education because a lot of the information is open to all humanity.

The writers of these books are more compilers than actual scribes. There is not enough furrowing of the brow and ferretting out of new facts to justify such prices. Publishers of textbooks are often rentiers who barely need to move a muscle to make their profits.

The publishing industry is divorced from any pedagogical merits and infested with shysters thinking of a quick buck. It piles unequal burdens on the poor.

The whole industry is proof of how the so-called free market can fail and end up having higher prices for consumers. Most parents would sensibly prioritise textbooks above other needs in order to help give their children the best possible advantages in life. The aim should be to make textbooks as freely available as possible as we sort out the student-teacher ratios.

The government can publish textbooks cheaper and better, distribute farther and faster, and do it all for less. It has the capacity to print also, considering that the Kenya Literature Bureau and the Jomo Kenyatta Foundation are owned or controlled by the government.

Public schools still buy about 60 per cent of all books, yet a lot of that money goes to private companies. Privatisation of textbook publishing has led to both the government and parents paying more for books. The cheating must stop.

STORES THAT PACK OWN SUGAR OUGHT TO SELL IT AT A BARGAIN

Local supermarkets have turned to in-house packaging of fast-moving food products as a way to round out the balance.

They can cream more off the top by owning the entire chain of the product, and sugar has been the main target, thanks in part to our porous borders and the fact that many of us are unconcerned about diabetes.

The whole point of having an in-house label is to ensure that it attracts price-sensitive consumers and anti-consumerist types who do not believe the spivs in advertising.

A label cleaned out of all the marketers, promoters, advertisers will end up being cheaper and indeed more ethical than one with a phalanx (a word no marketer would know since it has more than two syllables) of admen constantly bigging-it up and creating “awareness”.

I blame the marketing industry for a lot of things — like global warming, consumerism, and smashing women’s confidence to bits — and so I welcome all attempts to wrench its cold fingers from our wallets and probes from our brains. Marketing’s job is to get everyone enslaved in debt from buying things they do not need.

I noticed one strange thing, though, at local chain store: their branded sugar was a lot more expensive than other brands that have to sink a fortune into self-promotion and unbelievable advertisements of middle-class children who are not fat.

But wasn’t the whole point of buying these conspicuously muted brands to save and thumb our noses at the marketers? That is how it works in other supermarkets.

What is the point, then, of cutting out the madmen and their shouty placards if we only end up with a higher price than other brands?

THE IMPREZA SHOULD BE SOLD TO ONLY WOMEN

What would be the collective noun for a gathering of Subaru owners, if we ignore the stench of testosterone, hair gel, and alcohol? A pubescence of... an incoherence of... or a puerility of Subaru drivers?

Collectively, Subaru owners are repellant. Singularly, they are irritating. Of course Subaru is a synecdoche.

When we say “Subaru drivers”, what we really mean is “Impreza drivers”. All other models are uncontaminated by the hordes of boy-men driving them.

The Impreza is a fine car ruined by its owners. The car has become shorthand for jumped-up masculinity, showy and preening attention-seeking. It is usually an admission of living above your means, low self-esteem, and repressed feelings.

The statement “I drive a Subaru” is usually followed by the question, “Isn’t enlargement surgery cheaper?” The statement “he drives a Subaru” is used by women talking to their friends about a man they just met and usually means that the man is thin-skinned, infantile, and vain.

Though I have no proof, I imagine that insurance owners charge Subaru drivers more. They must. In all accidents, unless exculpatory video evidence is produced, the law is that if a Subaru is involved, then automatically the driver is to blame. If both cars are Subarus, then whoever has the spoiler will be blamed.

The car, particularly in its ocean-blue incarnation, has become a receptacle for public disdain, and at Nation Centre, we are always a minute away from some idiot revving up Kimathi Street and setting off a cacophony of alarms.

However, during the weekend, I encountered something odd, something rarer, perhaps, than a birth at the Vatican. It was a female Subaru owner.

She looked as if and seemed to be a well-adjusted member of society and did not exhibit any antisocial behaviour.

The car should now exclusively be sold to women until the loutish behaviour associated with male drivers is no more. Perhaps, finally, the Subaru can be detoxified and brought into the fold of acceptability, a bit like the Vitz.

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