Student unrest: Blame the adults, not children

One of the razed dorms at St Mary's Girls High School on July 9, 2018. PHOTO | SHABAN MAKOKHA | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Our youth is a time bomb in the stability of this country.

  • Our schools are burning, the students are relentless on burning more schools and no one from their side is talking.

  • Our children are very much aware that some of our top leaders are ex criminals, school dropouts with dubious academic credentials.

Our schools are burning, the students are relentless on burning more schools and no one from their side is talking.

Government officials are trying to contain the situation and the blame is perceived to be lack of values, indiscipline, strict supervision of national exams, peddling of drugs in schools and many others.

The Minister for Education is quoted in a local daily saying that Kenya is the only country in the world where students burn schools.

Overall, the problem is bigger than what we are observing and what we perceive. Our youth is a time bomb in the stability of this country. Forget terrorism, urban crime, poaching and even corruption.

What we are observing now is just a tip of the iceberg. The most unfortunate thing is that all of us are focusing on the symptoms of the problem rather than the root causes.

YOUTH DEFIANCE

Punishing the students, threatening them that they will do exams under trees is futile.

The youth defiance started slowly in the early nineties when one school lost over sixty children in an arson attack.

We have had many other school arson attacks and as usual in our simplistic approach to issues, we keep on saying exams is the main reason. Now we hear boarding schools, substance abuse and exams are the problems.

I can assert that our children are totally innocent and what we are seeing is an apex of a rotten society due to poor parenting, societal rot, hypocrisy in religion, collapse of key institutions and values.

There are three pillars of moulding children namely parenting, the local environment and the institutions (schools, places of worship and other guiding lines). Today parenting has literally collapsed.

We got cheated and adopted the Western way of life and forgot our children. In Africa, parenting is the responsibility of an entire village and not parents.

Young male have decided not to marry and instead opted to cheat young ladies impregnate them and abandon them as single parents.

EMPOWERED WOMEN

Many innocent ladies today are struggling to bring up families single handed. Empowered women have decided marriage is no longer necessary and opted by choice to become single mothers due to male brutality.

We have a dual challenge, ladies who have been abandon to raise family single handed and men who have been abandon by their wives hence bringing children as single fathers.

Marriages are collapsing everywhere since many young couples find marriage to be more of a burden than a sacred responsibility.

Many children even from well-off families are now being brought up by disgruntled, frustrated and under paid house helps.

We have no time for our children, since we believe success is making money, accumulating wealth and pursue our careers to achieve top positions.

We believe as long as you have given enough money to the house help, your parental obligation is done. Most parents don’t know their children.

Our children are just connected to us on shelter, feeding and monetary gains, other than that there is no connection at all.

SOCIETAL MALADIES

Outside marriages, our children come across all sort of societal maladies.

They see policemen taking bribes openly in our road blocks; they see how motorists break traffic rules irrespective of their social status.

They hear how top government officers are implicated in theft of government resources.

They even hear that some theft is done openly by carrying sacks of cash. Our children are exposed to images that most of the senior citizens saw when they were grown-ups. Today, a six year old kid may be exposed to more pornography than a person who is fifty years.

The social impunity doesn’t spare a child. They see how our politicians and leaders make it in life due to crooked ways of social mobility.

ELECTED POSITION

For us to secure an elected position, you need resources to bribe the citizens. Our children as much as we underrate them are very much aware that some of our top leaders are ex criminals, school dropouts with dubious academic credentials.

Students see their senior’s tarmacking as jobless graduates while those from elite families secure employment through nepotism and connections.

Overall the youth in Kenya see no hope for his future hence they believe using uncouth means to articulate their grievances is the only hope.

Education is no longer seen as a means to prosperity.

REACTIVE APPROACHES

Let us address the youth problem with long-term solutions not reactive approaches. Blame game will not help.

This is not a challenge to Ministry of Education neither is it a challenge to government but the entire society. There is no instant solution to the current defiance displayed by our children. If not, expect the worst.

Mr Mbarak is the chairman, Association of Corporate and Industrial Security Management Professionals (ACISMP). [email protected].