[kictanet] Education and Our Future

Sat Oct 6 16:45:55 EAT 2012

Hussein,
Thanks for the comment.  Your granfather was a passionate teacher hence
the community felt indebted and subsidized the Government.  Today in Kenya
we do not have commited teachers.  They have no passion in their work. 
They are commercial education workers.  They are the foundation of the
problem.

For years I have tried to help uplift education in the village I was born
in.  Here I try to subsidize a number of projects including paying
incentives to teachers.  Unfortunately, it has never worked.  Most
teachers come from the village.  They go to school after taking care of
their farms and other household chores.  During the harvet period they do
not attend to students at all.  Some hire unemployed locals to sit in for
them when they travel or there is heavy work at home.  They are the matatu
owners, tukutuku owners and more recently motor bike transport owners. 
They are effectively business men and women.  Trouble is that you cannot
seek their removal because they are all related to one another. From the
head teacher to the chairman of the parent teachers association and even
the District Education Officers.

Whereas we can blame the Government for the system, we must blame the
teachers and parents too for neglecting students.  Most parents have
abdicated their responsibilities and want to blame somebody on their
failures.  How do you explain a situation where a school has never taken a
student to University of the past 10 years?  Should we not have a
performance contract in whatever system?

A Havard Business Review paper says that only 20% of any community have a
learning disposition.  This does not mean the remaining 80% is useless but
one we can equip with skills rather than forced academic exercise. In
Germany the ratio of academics to technicians fall within the estimates of
these research.  There is also a movement called the 21st Century Learning
Disposition.  Here you begin to understand that even leadership starts
with the learning systems.  For example, if truely we want to deal with
corruption, we must start with the way we learn and incorporate such
topics as leadership and responsibility, critical thinking and so on.  It
is important to know that we are not alone in trying to establish the
correct balance in education but we should not be the last in joining such
a movement.

We therefore need to have ALL teachers transfered just like any civil
servant.  Rejuvinate our mid-level colleges and change the current system
of education.  These cannot be done if this debate remains a virtual
exercise and by hoping that somebody somewhere will bring change.  We all
bear the responsibility of seeing change.

Ndemo.

> 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 BlackBerryÂ®
>>
>> -----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.
>