If you want brainless robots, then prison-like schools are the way to go

What you need to know:

  • All boarding schools share several features with prisons. Wardens (teachers) that for the most part don't care about the welfare of the children, for one.
  • Independent thought, revolution and questioning is frowned upon. Do you remember what happened to the people who dared contradict or disagree with the teachers in high school? Particularly if they were right?
  • It's easy to make rules when you've forgotten what it feels like to be a child and you simply don't care. In my view, the only people who should have a say over where their children are going in times of calm or danger and how often they can see them are the parents.

Our boarding schools were modelled on prisons. So it doesn't surprise me that we are treating our children like they are convicts in cells.

Think about it. All boarding schools share several features with prisons. Wardens (teachers) that for the most part don't care about the welfare of the children, for one. And this is not necessarily their fault, by the way. Yes, there are teachers out there who don't give a damn, definitely. In fact, some go to the extent of defiling their students, and that's a terrible, terrible thing. But for the most part, I do believe that our teachers suffer from the same fate – or close to – that our police do – a complete lack of motivation. When you're not being paid enough, and you're not seeing any results for your labour, your suggestions and attempts at doing better are ignored and your standard of living is so low, you care less what the prisoners – sorry, students – in your charge are up to. You're really not being paid enough to care. Yes, money isn't everything, but more often than not, the people who say that have enough to go around.

Another element that our schools have in common with prisons – compulsory labour. Most schools have some sort of programme that is supposed to build up the inner mettle of a child (key word here – child). It's very similar to prison labour. I don't know about the boarding school that you went to, but mine had typical jailbird activities – cleaning grass, slashing grass, disposing of grass, creating stone pathways where there were none, weeding foliage and huge trees that had been around for decades before I was born, scrubbing classrooms, dorms, toilets – the whole shebang. Prison labour makes an obscene and immoral amount of money in the United States, by the way. Cheap labour and a chance to look like you actually care for your students – sorry, prisoners? It's a no-brainer.

VICTIMISED FOR SPEAKING OUT

And don't forget that prisoners cannot and should never question the wisdom of the wardens. Independent thought, revolution and questioning is frowned upon. Do you remember what happened to the people who dared contradict or disagree with the teachers in high school? Particularly if they were right? I remember, because I was one of them. Victimised for daring to have a voice, and being consistently told to be more obedient because I had so much potential. Yes, potential to regurgitate answers onto an exam sheet, a skill that has proven completely pointless in the Kenya we insist on polluting today. Why weren't we taught critical thought and analysis? Or, something more helpful than the lies in our history books – how to do taxes?

But you see, you can't teach critical thought to a populace that you are trying to control, because heaven forbid they rise up against you. Give them the Bible in one hand, to keep them pacified, an educational syllabus that makes them robots in the other and a scarcity mentality to rule them all, become greedy and never push the agenda of a united country forward. It's easy as pie, if you start the brainwashing early enough, making them wake up at 4am from the age of six to go to school. A new form of colonisation, if you will.

Recently, in a bid to move closer to a system of robotic inmates, Amina Mohamed removed visiting days from the school calendar. Here is where schools differ from prisons, in that even prisoners have visiting days, so I don't know where we are trying to go with this nonsense of forbidding children from seeing their parents or having any sort of experience with the outside world.

SADISTIC SCHOOL MANAGERS

The outside world is so much more than what we are confined to in the four walls of a dorm room. Not seeing your parents is more of a distraction than seeing them once every three months – which, in my personal view, is still not enough. And what is so terrible about visiting days anyway? Shouldn't we question more why students are so desperate for a taste of home to the point that visiting days are a threat? What are they being subjected to in those schools that every 'funkie' is a chance to just get away? Are we scared of our children, so we make them scared of us?

Which brings me to why parents are so willing to hand over the entire shaping of their children's lives to sadistic school administrators and a Ministry of Education that is not invested in a healthy, happy, humane adult. When a girl is raped in a school, it is that same school that tells the children to cover up the crime. And the same school that tells them that you cannot take your children away from a school that clearly cannot protect them. I wonder why parents have children if not to nurture and protect them, then I remember that these parents are victims of this prison system too. Remember earlier when I talked about a lack of independent thought?

Personally, I'm at the point where whatever damage Matiang'i and Mohamed have done can be kept to themselves. They can go to these prisons they are so enthusiastically constructing. It's easy to make rules when you've forgotten what it feels like to be a child and you simply don't care. In my view, the only people who should have a say over where their children are going in times of calm or danger and how often they can see them are the parents, otherwise education as a whole, is deeply lacking in efficiency, humanity and empathy. But if brainless robots are what they want, then this is the best way to do it.

Twitter: @AbigailArunga