Something must be done to put students back in their place

What you need to know:

  • Ban politics in schools altogether.
  • The idea of students electing student councils does not make sense.
  • If they are allowed to campaign for election, they will definitely copy all the vices indulged in by their seniors in national politics including bribery, calumny and violence.

My father was an old-time schoolteacher who devoted well over half his lifetime – some 50 odd years – to the profession. A sharp dresser and strict disciplinarian, the old man could not stand slovenliness or tardiness of any kind among the young, and he used the rod so liberally that up to this day, he is still a legend – the kind of person of whom people still speak in awe because of those traits that are in rather short supply today.

He was not alone; most of his age-mates who became teachers were cast in the same mould. In those days – the generation spanning the tail end of colonial rule and the first decades of independence – a teacher was everything. He was at once a role model and a scourge, a sought-after arbiter on local disputes, a church elder and one of the more educated people villagers and, therefore, a natural community leader.

To such people, a pupil was someone to be seen, not heard, unless asked a direct question, which he had to answer promptly if he was to escape a rap on the knuckles. In short, many such teachers were tyrants, but they only behaved so for the good of the children, not because they were sadists. Today, if they were to wake up and discover they could be jailed for punishing errant children on the spot, they would prefer to go back to sleep.

BURN SCHOOL

Something happened along the way so that today, a student can buy a jerrycan of petrol and burn his school because he did not like something the principal said during parade, Standard Six pupils can take machetes to school to teach their teachers a lesson, and a student can be elected by his mates, call himself president, and sit with adults in school management boards.

How did we ever come to such a pass? It is set in black and white in the Basic Education Act 2017 that management boards will also include representatives of the student councils. Those who came up with such a notion; what were they thinking? Obviously, this late development was aimed at aligning the Education Act with the Constitution, but in their democratisation zeal, they may not have realised just how absurd the whole thing sounds.

This is why Education minister Fred Matiang’i sounded amazed that such nonsense could creep into law, and expressed his reservations in expressive language. His sense of outrage was obvious. You simply cannot pamper your students in that manner and expect to instil discipline. Is it any wonder that prefects were at the centre of the bullying scandal that tainted the name of the revered Alliance High School recently? Is it any wonder that teachers have become increasingly unable to guide or mentor students in any meaningful way?

Something must be done to put students back in their place. My unsolicited advice to Dr Matiang’i: ban politics in schools altogether. The idea of students electing student councils does not make sense. If they are allowed to campaign for election, they will definitely copy all the vices indulged in by their seniors in national politics including bribery, calumny and violence.

ELECT POPULAR

And even if this did not happen, the students will inevitably elect the most popular fellows who are not always the right choices. Just what was wrong with the old system in which teachers picked prefects to help them run schools? Who came up with this new-fangled notion that students should have a say in who enforces discipline?

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child which came into being in 1990 has many admirable features but it seems our education authorities took too much to heart its admonition on democracy. Says Cap 141 (4) of the Kenya law: “In any matters of procedure affecting a child, the child shall be accorded an opportunity to express his opinion and that opinion shall be taken into account as appropriate taking into account the child’s age and degree of maturity”.

This is a paraphrase of Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, with the disclaimer that this does not mean that children can tell their parents what to do. But that is precisely where we are going if we keep copy-pasting strictures originating elsewhere regardless of our circumstances. At this rate, teachers will have to start moving around with bodyguards at school.

Magesha Ngwiri is a consulting editor.