The second term curse has struck, let’s save our schools

Many among the younger generation would find it difficult to believe that in the past, a school teacher was untouchable.

He or she was a person of great stature, a fount of knowledge and a master of every subject under the sky.

He was also a strict disciplinarian who believed implicitly that sparing the rod was gross ineptitude, and if any of them were little too robust with the cane, it was mostly for a good cause.

In short, nobody would have dared lift a finger against a teacher.

Today, alas, the teacher has lost it all — respect, reverence, and, to a certain extent, relevance.

TEACHERS BEATEN

Early this week a group of students ambushed six teachers and beat them so thoroughly that the teachers had to be hospitalised.

It is not yet clear what exactly triggered the lynching but it turned out to be a case of profiling.

All the poor pedagogues targeted were not born in Marsabit County.

Apparently, outsiders are not welcome in the largest county in Kenya. If this is what I believe it is, the rise in ethnic antagonism is a great threat to the country’s prospects for national cohesion.

First, nobody should be chased away from his or her work-station on account of his or her tribal background.

EXAM CHEATING

Details about the insurrection are rather scarce, but it appears the teachers were beaten because they were against cheating in national exams, which suggests it was a long-held grouse.

They were accused of having been instrumental in the cancellation of examination results for 70 candidates last year.

But that explanation sounds rather lame and is probably meant to cover up a more sinister motive for the violence.

My gut feeling is that this was a xenophobic attack fomented by individuals with a specific aim in mind.

What is curious is that the area’s political leaders have been rather subdued in their response.

Unless I missed something, none, from the governor downwards, has weighed in on the matter.

KNEE-JERK REACTION

As for the Teachers Service Commission, the knee-jerk reaction was utterly predictable — if laudable: The immediate transfer of the teachers involved.

What they will do next is not clear but I can see a probe committee coming up shortly to try and treat the symptoms instead of conducting a holistic investigation into the problems facing schools in the dry lands.

Marsabit is one of the poorest counties in the country. It is sparsely populated and its inhabitants are mostly pastoralists who eke out a precarious nomadic existence with the camel at the centre.

CHALBI

Chalbi Boys High School, which is named after the small desert in the county that is famous for nothing at all, is one of the biggest institutions in Marsabit.

The obvious result is the departure of so many teachers at a go will hurt it where it matters most — a few months before the national exams.

The second danger is the possibility of students in other schools taking up the cudgels against their teachers.

This is a worrying thought considering this is the second term when everything that can possibly go wrong in schools does so with predictable inevitability.

MASS HYSTERIA

This is the season when students run amok, set their schools ablaze, destroy property which their own parents will eventually pay for, and on a few occasions, display all the features of mass hysteria due to heightened stress levels induced by the looming exams.

This should explain why the second term of each year has become so notorious for unrest, but the explanation has never been very convincing.

Already, besides Chalbi, the other schools closed this term include Maranda Boys High School (too many strict rules), Maasai Girls High School (claims of sexual harassment by a male teacher), Kisumu Girls High School (high-handedness by the administration), Ng’iya Girls High School, and of course, the most serious case, Moi Girls High School, Nairobi, which was briefly closed in June after a girl claimed she had been defiled in the dead of night.

Perhaps it is time thorough research was done by education scholars to establish what brings about what I call the Second Term Curse. Certainly, the authorities shouldn’t wait until a teacher is clobbered to death before taking action.

The most immediate thing to do in that direction is to stop coddling students and jail those who commit serious crimes.

Teachers cannot be turned into punching bags.

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