Nothing wrong with 8-4-4, all it needs is content change

The largest car park in the University of Nairobi is on the Main Campus. We call it the 8-4-4 Car Park because it is next to the 8-4-4 Building, an iconic piece of architecture, which we put up when the university cycle of the new system caught up with us in the late 1980s.

The auditorium in this building has better acoustics than the larger Taifa Hall. This 8-4-4 facility is, therefore, ideal for teaching and public lectures.

The 8-4-4 Car Park is my favourite because, compared to the others, it is the easiest for me to drive in and out. And so, the other day, after parking, I caught myself staring at this slice of our educational heritage called the 8-4-4 Building.

And as I stared, I kept wondering whether the apostles of the abolition of the 8-4-4 system would want us to demolish it or rename it and rewrite its history. And if we renamed it, how long would it take for people to forget it was once called the 8-4-4 Building?

I recall the long, endless hours we spent in our academic boards and in Senate trying to align our programmes and syllabuses to the new system. And I remember how excited I felt at the introduction of the so-called common courses.

I saw them as a way of incorporating in our syllabuses what Americans call breadth requirements, the idea that if you’re studying the humanities and social sciences you should have at least a nodding acquaintance with what is happening in the natural sciences and, of course, vice versa. I saw this as the perfect antidote to the narrowness that had characterised Kenyan education.

As for communication skills, the common course that stood out, I thought we were going to give our students something they would need for the rest of their lives. What would humanity be without communication skills?

I’m not myself a product of any of the two systems that were designed by independent Kenya — 7-4-2-3 or 8-4-4. I went through a different configuration – 4-4-4-2-3. We sat the Common Entrance Examination in Standard Four, the last year of primary school. In those colonial days, we were taught and examined in our mother tongues.

MISSIONARY ZEAL

If you passed this exam, you went to intermediate school, that is, Standard Five to Standard Eight. The exam in Standard Eight was in 1963 changed from Kenya African Preliminary Examination to just Kenya Preliminary Examination. We didn’t have multiple choice in this exam; we wrote complete sentences in English, which was the medium of instruction in intermediate school. Those of us who passed KPE did four years of secondary school, at the end of which we sat what was called the Cambridge School Certificate.

Those who made it went to Form Five and Six, after which they did what was called Cambridge Higher School Certificate. And finally, a bachelor’s degree in the University of Nairobi took three years.

The vast majority of the teachers in secondary schools in those days were British. I don’t know about the ones in other schools, but the teachers we had at Friends School, Kamusinga taught with a missionary zeal. They did not see tribe in us; in each one of us they saw a student who needed an education. These teachers were committed to education in the truest sense of the word.

“We are training you for life,” they used to tell us. John Woods, the headmaster, used to warn us against memorising the things we read in books. “We don’t want to read identical answers in your exams,” he would say. “You should convince us you’re doing some independent thinking,” he would add.

The British Quakers, the key sponsors of the school, stocked up our library with all manner of books . My students don’t believe me when I tell them that by the end of Form Six, I had read all of Shakespeare’s 36 plays and most of Tolstoy. But that was how well-equipped out library was.

The trouble began in the late 1960s and early 1970s when the government Africanised and politicised the administration of these schools. Don’t get me wrong: I have nothing against Africanisation.

But the fact of the matter was that this Africanisation often took the form of tribalism. Students were no longer just students; they wore a tribal label. And teachers were no longer just teachers; they came from a tribe.

My first encounter with the 8-4-4 system was when I went to America in 1974 to do my postgraduate studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. A bachelor’s degree took and still takes four years. The American students had and still have eight years of elementary school and four years of high school. The difference is that they don’t have to sit a national exam at any stage.

And to go to a university, in addition to their high school grades, they write a personal essay on how they resolved a moral dilemma in their lives. The personal essay ideally reveals not only their personality but also their creative and critical thinking skills.

On a few occasions I was invited to talk to high school students. I remember how curious they were. They would, for instance, ask me whether Africa was like the United States of America, comprising several states. I do remember one of them following me after my speech and asking.

“Do you guys still live on trees?” The question annoyed me, perhaps unnecessarily, but I said, “yes” and left the student gaping at me.

COMMUNICATION SKILLS

The doctoral programme at UC Santa Cruz had something they called teaching experience as a requirement; so they employed me as a teaching assistant. It was in that capacity that I got to understand the four-year segment of their university education. At that time, American education had become the envy of the world. One and-a-half decades before, the Soviets had sent the sputnik into space.

This had shocked Americans into re-examining the content (not the structure) of their education. By 1970, Americans had landed on the moon. The Civil Rights Movement had had its effect; and multiculturalism had become an educational principle. Indeed, I was attached to Merrill College, which specialised in Third World Studies.

The American 8-4-4 system, like ours, rested and still rests on three educational pillars: critical thinking, creative thinking, and problem-solving. Americans emphasised something they called writing across the curriculum, which in turn incorporated the three pillars. In every discipline, students were taught strategies for writing well. In our system, we teach communication skills for only one semester. And the consequences are unfortunate: nowadays, our PhD students walk around looking for people who can help them write their theses!

Americans have performed miracles with their 8-4-4 system. They have gone into space. They have established the best universities in the world. They have invented the Internet. They have created a democratic culture that other countries can only dream of. And they have done all these without changing their 8:4:4 system.

My argument is simple: There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the 8-4-4 system. There is, however, a lot we can do to enrich it. We can ask our teachers to teach for life. We can ask them to incorporate in their teaching strategies for critical thinking, creative thinking, and problem-solving. And, yes, we can bring back the practical subjects that were part of the original package of 8-4-4, but which we discarded. Finally, we can demand that the Kenya National Examinations Council and the universities set exams that test application and critical thinking, rather than rote learning.

We don’t have to waste money and overburden our parents just to introduce a system of dubious value. We can more profitably enhance the salaries of our teachers so that they’re able to buy new books in order to keep up with developments in their different disciplines and improve their teaching styles.

I say once more: We don’t have to demolish the 8-4-4 Building at the University of Nairobi. It cost us a lot and it has served us reasonably well. But we can streamline our performances in the auditorium.