Review intake system: Not all of us can excel in every subject

Depending on how recent reports on education reforms are interpreted, either the dumbing down of Kenya is in top gear, or planners in the sector have become so liberal as to change our understanding of what education is all about.

The first one, lowering standards so as to accommodate as many learners as possible, would be a great pity because it negates the need for competitiveness during exams.

The second — basing university admission entirely on subject clusters — is killing the dreams of thousands of youths.

EXAMS

Early this week, the Kenya National Qualifications Authority announced that failure in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examination should no longer be a barrier to the pursuit of higher education, and that one can get an ‘E’ grade and still go on to acquire a doctorate in his or her chosen field.

There is nothing wrong with this assurance, and the modalities of achieving such dizzying academic heights are clearly spelt out, but if exam candidates get to believe in it, there is no reason why many shouldn’t promptly fall asleep.

OVERRIDING GOAL

The pursuit of excellence should always be the overriding goal of education, and national exams are still the best measure of academic achievement.

This can only happen through hard work, for not many of us are born geniuses. How then do you tell students: Don’t worry, even if you fail, you can first study to become an artisan, get a certificate, then a diploma, and only then can you hope to be admitted to university through the credit transfer system?

Since another dependable way of separating grain from chaff, so to speak, has not been found, we must take care not to lull students to somnolence with assurances that even if they fail in Form IV, they will still do wonders in later life.

Nobody is telling them that if they slacken their efforts early in school, they will find themselves attending lectures with the chaps they left in Form One, while their former classmates will be busy building careers.

FAILURE

However, having said that, there should be comfort in the knowledge that failure in exams and even dropping out of school are not the same as failure in life.

Examples abound of people who were academic dwarfs in their youth but turned out to be great statesmen, academics, scientists, philosophers and writers.

For instance, the great theoretical physicist Albert Einstein, who is regarded as the father of the nuclear bomb, was an indifferent student and was thought to be a retard, but it turned out he was just bored with the humdrum.

Others who dropped out were naturalist Charles Darwin who came up with the theory of evolution, while Sir Isaac Newton, who is associated with formulating the law of gravity, never finished his first degree.

BILL GATES

Closer to our age, Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard University in his second year to go start his own software company, Microsoft.

Today he remains one of the best examples of what a combination of genius and enterprise can do. It should give hope to those who have faced ridiculous strictures against pursuing the degree courses they wished and qualified for in public universities.

This is actually the second of my criticism of our educational policies.

Many students this year are hurting because they were never considered for the courses they applied for on what appears to be flimsy grounds.

CLUSTER SYSTEM

The implementation of the relatively new-fangled cluster system leaves a great deal to be desired.

There is no earthly reason why a student who attains a mean score of B in the KCSE exam and wants to study, say, electrical engineering, should be denied the chance just because he did poorly in Kiswahili. I know a student who scored three As — in Maths, Chemistry and Geography and a C+ in Physics — but couldn’t be admitted for any engineering course.

During their annual meeting in Mombasa this week secondary school principals raised this point about this cluster system, lamenting that students who excel in the sciences but flop in the arts are being locked out of their preferred courses, or missing admission altogether.

They called for a review of the system but maybe it is time the authorities reviewed the university placement system altogether.

It is not humanly possible for anyone to excel in every subject on earth. Not even acknowledged geniuses are capable of doing so.

Magesha Ngwiri is a consultant editor. [email protected]