[kictanet] Education and Our Future

Sat Oct 6 08:28:29 EAT 2012

Daktari

Your postings are very poignant in the sense that as we move towards a knowledge economy we seem to have forfeited the most important and basic foundation that will lead us there - our education system. There is a lot right and wrong about the current system.

Free Primary education for all is and will continue to be a brilliant idea. However, when we then starve our school system of funding what then are the majority of Kenyans to do?

I remember my mother's stories about my grandfather's household in a far flung place called Vanga, in Kwale District way back in the late fifties and early sixties. He was a Primary School Headmaster. The household lacked for nothing in terms of groceries and other foods. Not because he was a rich man but because the villagers would ensure he and his family lacked for nothing so that he can focus on running the primary school for the betterment of their kids!! 

How do we today treat our teachers? The teaching profession has now become sort of a place of 'last resort' what then do we expect when teachers strike? How do we expect a teacher who earns 10k to focus on teaching our children?

Let's for a moment look at the  current higher education system. There are many universities mushrooming all over the place. Is that necessarily a good thing? There is a mid tier gap that continues to grow as we transform all our tertiary institutions from the polytechnics to the village colleges into universities!! We then proceed to produce half backed graduates who are neither ready for the job market or to create jobs as entrepreneurs. 

The moment that a business man decides that a university is a new revenue stream for his business empire is the moment we loose the essence of nationhood and future generations. Why are great universities great? Because in my opinion they are the greatest Multi-Stakeholder Organizations every created - Blending the profit motive with doing good seamlessly and eternally. A few names come to mind. Stanford (without which Silicon Valley and great companies like Cisco, Yahoo & Google may not have had the chance to exist), IMD and Harvard. These great institutions of higher learning exist not to earn a profit but to further mankind's pursuit of excellence. If they make money in the process (and they do) it's a by product of what they do not their 'Reason for Being'.

Access to ICT. A few weeks ago I wrote on this list about a school I visited behind Runda, in the informal sector next to Mji wa Huruma, the old people's home. There's couple friend of mine who decided to start a high school for the very underprivileged community. They have done the best they could and I was impressed. What depressed me was the fact that most of those students had never had access to the information superhighway. How then do we prepare our young people for a world that now literally lives online? Are we as leaders being fair to ourselves and our country and future generations? When a country like ours that is on the map worldwide for our developments in the mobile and ICT Sectors can still have pockets in our school system that have been totally forgotten? Here in Nairobi no less!! What happens in the counties is something that we may not even be ready to face...

I fear sometimes that we sit in our cushy chairs in Nairobi, conduct online discourse and forget the work that still needs to be done to get our beloved country to the lofty heights of Vision 2030.

Ali Hussein

+254 773/713 601113

Sent from my iPad

On Oct 5, 2012, at 11:24 PM, bitange at jambo.co.ke wrote:

> Esther,
> Career choice is much more complex than we all think. When I was in grades school, I wanted to be a teacher. Reason. Teachers were the only people who wore shoes in our village. When I broke my arm and taken to hospital, I saw a doctor for the first time and I loved what they did. They were more cleaner in their white overcoats. And so I wanted to be a doctor.
> 
> Later in life I came to Nairobi and visited an uncle who was a chief accountant. I wanted to an accountant too because my uncle seemed to be doing nothing but sitting and ordering people around.
> 
> I went to US for college. Here I was made to study courses that had nothing to do with my dreams. Courses like critical thinking, philosophy, psychology, sociology, history of art, music  etc.  These were required before you chose your career of choice. I fell in love with history of art studying architectural designs from such eras as Gothic, Baroque etc. I never pursued either history of Art or architecture because my friends stopped me.  Asking me questions like where will you work? 
> 
> I should have done what I wanted. To date I get mesmerised when I see any beautiful architectural designs. I had discovered my talent but listened to short sighted friends. They perhaps did not know just like I was confused. I would have been the best architect.
> 
> The import of my story is that our institutions rush our students far too fast to decide their lifelong careers.  Today we have engineers and doctors working as bank clerks. This has led to hyper inflation of educational qualification. Where work that requires high school level it is done by graduates. Where we needed graduates we have doctoral candidates. Where will this inflation stop?
> 
> Let us reform our educational system.
> 
> 
> Ndemo.
> 
> 
> 
> Sent from my BlackBerry®
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: "Esther Muchiri" <emuchiri at andestbites.com>
> Sender: "kictanet" <kictanet-bounces+bitange=jambo.co.ke at lists.kictanet.or.ke>Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2012 21:42:42 
> To: <bitange at jambo.co.ke>
> Cc: 'KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions'<kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke>
> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Education and Our Future
> 
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> The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.
> 
> KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.