[kictanet] Education and Our Future

[Rose Macharia]

I thought you might be interested in some views concerning educatio
On Oct 6, 2012 4:39 PM, <bitange at jambo.co.ke> wrote:

> 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 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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> https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/info%40alyhussein.com
> >>
> >> 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.
> >
>
>
>
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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.
>
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