Decolonisation cure to our flawed education

Graduation ceremony at Moi University, Uasin Gishu County, on December 21, 2017. In 2015, the Education ministry revealed that 49,050 graduates exited Kenyan universities. PHOTO | JARED NYATAYA | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Education was introduced in Kenya during the colonial period to selectively create an elite class as the rest remained workers for capitalist expansion and extraction.
  • Most children from peasant, artisan, trader and pastoralist backgrounds go to district schools, which send one or two students to the university.
  • My best students and those who follow rules are still tarmacking while the weak ones easily get jobs through their connections.

I read with dismay Nation columnist Kamau Ngotho’s article (DN, Dec 27, 2017) stating that the clamour for degrees messed up Kenya’s education system. Interestingly, he was echoing the ministers for Education and ICT.

The assertion is an indication that the three men do not understand the history, philosophy and sociology or psychology of education in Kenya and what ails the sector.

Education was introduced in Kenya during the colonial period to selectively create an elite class as the rest remained workers for capitalist expansion and extraction. Sadly, we still produce graduates to meet the demand of the capitalist firm and the government.

The capitalist firm is based on the principle of extraction of surplus and transferring it to the mother country. Foreign direct investment has continued this extractive nature of labour demand.

I have seen many people laid off as capitalist firms adopt new technologies. When I lived in Ngumba Estate in the 1980s, I used to see many workers employed by East African Breweries. But, come the 1990s, the numbers were reduced when EABL adopted new production technologies.

FOREIGN INVESTORS

Out went Tusker Village, as it was known, and today it is occupied by the modern Garden City Mall, which houses many foreign investors who, due to the kind of technology that they use, do not need many workers. Not to mention that any surplus is taken out of the country.

It, therefore, defeats reason to start blaming lack of jobs on education. The real culprit is the capitalist firm, which seeks the cheapest labour and the most efficient technology.

With population growth, especially expansion of the middle class, the desire for university education also increased. The middle class would go to any length to secure an education for their children as that was the only way to ensure they got employment in the corporate world and the government.

Most children from peasant, artisan, trader and pastoralist backgrounds go to district schools, which send one or two students to the university.

The mean scores in these schools is ridiculously low. I have been on the board of three in Kiambu County that have posted failed grades in the national examination since 2015 to last year, even after cheating had ended. This clearly shows our education philosophy and practice in exam is the problem.

ELITIST

Our education philosophy is still very elitist and extractive — it is geared to meeting coloniality goals of surplus labour to serve the interest of capitalism. We still aim at producing labour for settler colonialists — who, today, are corporations and the State.

We limit access to liberative education to a selected few in exclusive schools. We use all measures to sieve out the majority. The time key education stakeholders realise that all have a right to quality education, we shall move.

Jobs are no longer advertised. Recruitment is through networking, sponsoring and mentoring. Workers are sourced from pools of people employers know or are recommended in their networks. Usually from elite families who have gone through the pipeline.

TARMACKING

Unfortunately, the competent ones never have such chances because they have nobody to connect them. My best students and those who follow rules are still tarmacking while the weak ones easily get jobs through their connections.

Acting Education Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i should come up with a decolonised, inclusive, creative, critical, insurgent and reflexive education system that will imbue the values of our country.

We need to re-examine our moral ethic and decolonise our education, not attribute blame where it does not belong. For example, disenfranchising our youth by marking them down.

 Dr Kinyanjui (PhD) is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Nairobi. [email protected].