EDUCATION IN CLUTTER

THE CONFUSION IN THE EDUCATION SECTOR

||By Glen Don||

Education is one of the pillars of a nation.

From education engineers, doctors, teachers, journalists, and lawyers among other professionals are born and made.

When you want to ruin a nation, do not go far just destroy the education system and everything will be in shambles. Teachers will teach wrong to students patients will die, and justice will be undermined,..this is an extracted quote from one of the famous leaders.

The Mackay Education Commission of 1982 gave room for an 8-4-4 system of education and within the recommendations, there were specified number of subjects to be done by students and pupils at various levels.

Today, the 8-4-4 system is being shown exit as a new education system is being rolled out, the 2-6-6-3 system known as Competency Based Curriculum (CBC).

As the old system is being shown to exit, new changes seem to affect it.

Honourable Ezekiel Machogu, the Education Cabinet Secretary during the launch of the new Mtihani house in his speech declared a new subject grading model to be used in the forthcoming examinations.

The new mode will see students having 3 compulsory subjects that is; English or Kiswahili, Mathematics and one Science subject, and other humanity and technical-based subjects.

The foundation of the Kenyan education examination is English except for Kiswahili which is independent.

When a student is given an option of selecting either of the languages, then it will be not a disappointment when there is bias in the selection a  of subject, especially in languages. 

In Africa, there is a belief that it has its origin in Africa, Coastline to be precise, when now, alternatives exist in language selection, there will be an imbalance. And our pride in being African is going to be lost.

Kiswahili is a language that is coming up and is giving other international language competitions. How shameful would it be when Kenya, an African country cannot have proficient speakers of Swahili?

The majority of students tend to fear the Swahili language but they were forced to do it, and later they ended up being lovers of the Swahili.

The same case is with English.

English is an international language.

It is one of the most common languages in the world. In as much it is "Queen's" language as one of my friends once said to me, it should not be done away with.

For one reason, Africa was colonised and through colonialism and missionary persons coming, Africans learnt the language and it has become easy to communicate with fellow Africans due to variations in the vernacular.

Embrace diversity should be done, how will we future interact with other international countries if we cannot speak their language, will we have migrated from civilisation to ancient? Or will we have deviated from being knowledge to ignorant people?

Foreseeing that future Kenya's President wouldn't be able to interact with other leaders from outside Africa just because he never chose it.

Not more than half a decade ago, nurses under a certain program by the National Government, they were offered scholarships to go for an internship and perhaps a job by extension. When they were interviewed on language proficiency, almost half failed the English test and were not able to travel despite having been selected. This purely shows how despite English being foreign other 'non' African languages are important and are not worth regarded as low.

Kenya, as a country, has no one common unifying language, which is why we have lived to be taught English as the primary language and Kiswahili comes second, would we have had one common, then I would prefer that language be mandatory in the schools because I see no problem Rwandans speaking Kinyarwanda, I see no problem Iranian's President Ebrahim Raisi speaking Arabic in a foreign country and having an interpreter. I see no problem.

But because Kenya is diverse and we were divided by colonial masters through divide and rule, we have no option but to use other languages, not Kenya.

In as much, as Kenya is trying to emulate other countries and by every effort trying to be at par with other nations, some of the matters are worth taking to weighing scale and observing the pros and cons.

When Hon. Ezekiel Machogu was defending this course, he stated that this would see many students getting entry to the university level, a hundred percent transition.

At the Secondary level, challenges are encountered by students and institutions.

These myriads of challenges will soon be encountered by the University administrations.

Indeed most students verily study to be at higher levels of education and it is not a wish of any student to fail, because achieving high is noble. Some of the challenges are overcrowding of students and fewer teachers per school, inadequate facilities for learning, yet here is where we have the piloting stage of a hundred percent transition, the government previously delayed funds for these schools to run their activities. But here there is a campaign for a hundred percent transition at the University level.

What will happen with the technical institutes that the same Government is advocating for and is even pumping funds to them?

It sounds ironical that the Government is advocating for TVET institutions and on the other hand, there is a call for a hundred percent transition at universities.

The quality of education in Kenya should be magnified and any blots deserve erasal.

The present course being undertaken without proper scrutiny may in the future cause indelible mishaps, and the generations to come may suffer.

FOR THE LOVE OF FUTURE GENERATIONS

THANK YOU FOR READING 👍👍