#FRONTROW: The 8-4-4 system is not the problem; the way we teach is

A good 14 years after I learnt about The Mole Concept in chemistry, I’m yet to find a way to apply it in my life. Not that I haven’t tried, I really have.

It’s just that there aren’t many opportunities in everyday life to consider particles and how they’re grouped or whatever the formula of a mole is, unless you’re a chemist of some sort.

There are numerous other topics from different subjects that made me feel extra stupid, and which have yet to show up again after high school. For many of them, I was able to cram enough to make it in the exam without really understanding much.

At least 500 clever people from here and beyond converge in Nairobi this week to consider a possible overhaul of the entire 8-4-4 education system, much derided by the same people who went through it.

The curriculum experts will receive a proposal from the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD), which has  reportedly been assessing the education system since last year.

The central shortcoming of the current setup has been well documented, and anybody who has spent more than three minutes in Kenya can recite it by heart.

It “promotes and glorifies mastery (cramming) of content at the expense of everything else,” Uwezo Kenya Country Coordinator, John Mugo, told the Sunday Nation.

MIND-NUMBINGLY BORING

When I was in primary school, we did seven subjects, and I remember most of them to be mind-numbingly boring. I went to one of the better primary schools in Siaya District  (Karapul), but that did not make it any better.

I had only a mild interest in class work and had the attention span of a 3-year-old, an affliction that appears to have become even worse as I grew older.

We didn’t have many practical classes, even when we did art and crafts or home science.

We also didn’t sing much during the music classes, since the teachers were more pre-occupied with preparing us for exams than getting us to engage with the course material meaningfully.

We did many mock exams, we had too many “tuition” sessions and most of us ended up getting better than acceptable grades in the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education.

A few of us even got our names in the paper, which made the teachers ecstatic.

High school just rinsed and repeated the same process, but with a lot more intensity and twice the pressure. For my undergraduate degree, I could have still scored straight As if I had just got the course outlines and read the texts for each lecture.

There was a twist, though: my alma mater had a strict attendance requirement and would automatically fail students if they didn’t attend 75 per cent of lectures.

So students brought their bodies to lecture halls while their minds continued to wander. It reminded me of my high school chapel tradition of a 15-minute meditation before mass every morning, which we mostly used to extend our sleep.

A fortnight ago, I flew to Mauritius to chat with Ghanaian-born social entrepreneur, Fred Swaniker, and see his disruptive take on higher education.

The African Leadership University (ALU) has just opened its first campus on the Indian Ocean island and plans 25 more across the continent. I sat through a class, incredulous, as the facilitator asked his

multicultural class if they would like some music as

they read the text he had just e-mailed them. It is called the “university of the future” because of its unique take on education. It is doing so by “integrating students’ learning with the real world, empowering students to take ownership of their own learning,

equipping each student to think entrepreneurially, and employing the most engaging and inspiring teaching methods.”

ALU’s undergraduate degree takes only three years, and they spend four months of each year in one of the guaranteed internships with their employer partners.

“If you think about the scale of what we’re doing – to create 3 million leaders in Africa over the next 50 years, this thing could be the single most transformative thing to happen to Africa in the 21st  century,” says Swaniker.

It is in such high demand, that it had 6,000 applications for the 180 slots that were available in the inaugural class, and 40 per cent dropped out of existing institutions.

“Our aspiration is not to create Africa’s best university, we’re trying to create one of the world’s best universities,” he says.

The 8-4-4 is system not the problem, and replacing it with 2-6-3-3-3 or reverting to the pre-1985 7-4-2-3 won’t fix the output. Stop treating the symptoms and instead tackle the cause; how we teach: emphasise practical skills and stop condemning students

based on one exam.

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I wish pollsters would reveal who funds these surveys

Pollsters are increasingly preferring to announce their results on Sundays. It is a brilliant decision designed to get maximum media coverage of their surveys.

Sundays are often slow news days, which means they’ll get prominent coverage on prime time TV and in the papers the next day.

So Infotrak did just that with their new poll that says President Uhuru Kenyatta would win with 44.5 per cent of the votes if an election were held today. Cord leader Raila Odinga would garner 30.8 per cent of the votes in the same scenario.

Naturally, the former prime minister’s party quickly dismissed the poll as “irrelevant”, especially as it also said the Jubilee party was more popular than ODM.

The general election is not until August next year, so we’re at least 17 months away from that spectacle. But it is never too early to start putting out these things to test the waters, right?

Curiously, the pollsters never reveal who exactly funds some of these surveys or what their motivations for doing them are. I don’t believe that anybody is motivated by the desire to understand people when they ask 1,800 different people what they think

about politicians. Someone has to pay for it, and there is something to be gained in publicising it, right?

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Spare us the PR stunt, nothing has really changed

The government’s terror spin operation is in full swing this week, with a slick production called Courage Under Fire with a fancy American voice-over.

It has been airing all week on national stations and presents an airbrushed version of what exactly happened last April at Garissa University College.

With dramatic soundtracks, snazzy graphics and world-class production values, it seeks to convince the public that security agencies have worked tirelessly to “dismantle” the terror networks that carried out that attack.

But have they, really? Most of the students were moved to Moi University’s Eldoret main campus and we moved on.

But a terror scare at that exact same campus left 22 injured last week in a cruel situation for Garissa survivors. Two days later, several more were wounded at Kenyatta University.

There have been no deliberate steps taken to secure institutions across the country from future attacks. Remember Strathmore University?

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FEEDBACK: On our lack of appreciation for our own languages

Your article has challenged me to learn the Meru language and denounce the words “I don’t know my mother tongue”.  I confess I contributed to making that “mzungu” speaking Kikuyu video viral when I shared it with a few Whatsapp groups.

You are spot on that there is nothing outstanding about an African speaking English or French, so it shouldn’t be newsworthy when a Westerner speaks Kiswahili or Shona.

Your article  opened my eyes to the trend among my peers of not teaching their children their mother tongues. It is, indeed, only those without a strong identity who exalt what should be ordinary.

Wendi  Kibaara

I  have enjoyed reading #Frontrow (ever since the Caramel Lounge article, that is), because it is always injected with the right dose of sarcasm and humour, plus, it always says what I am thinking, only more articulately.

I was wondering what bothered me about the “mzungu” video (as do articles in which we profile “wazungu” who can speak Swahili), but reading last week’s article made me get to the heart of my discomfort.

Now to my critique and genuine concern: Is this not that same kind of video that you would ordinarily play on your show? Case in point, a White choir singing in Kiswahili was once featured on the show.

So it beats the purpose, doesn’t it, when you preach one thing in your article and drink another in your show.

Faith Oneya

Thanks for your article. I get annoyed at functions when people explain that they are not so good in their mother tongue or Kiswahili.

Have you ever met a German who says that they have forgotten German and now speak English? Or an American who says they have forgotten English and now speak French? When will we learn to be proud of our languages?

Consolata

Your article spoke volumes. I think that we Kenyans, and Africans for that matter, need to not only accept our beautiful dialects and languages, but also learn and teach them to others.

This will help us develop pride in who we are and where we have come from. We also need to ignore the Western culture and colonialist thinking that make us believe that we are inferior to the White man, yet we have so much to offer in this rapidly

changing world. I believe that if we top being hypocritical regarding this issue, it will not affect our society.

Tweba Senoi