Really, Why Are Our High School Students On A Rampage?

The recent string of unrests in public secondary schools in Kenya that have resulted in the loss of school property through arson and breakages and also caused injury to persons have exposed critical unattended, underlying issues in our education system.

An oft-referred investigation apparently commissioned by the Ministry of Education concludes that the unrest is principally as a result of panic amongst a section of form four students in various schools who are unprepared to sit their final exams later in the year. 

Apparently the tough measures to curb cheating in examinations dubbed the Matiangi rules have left this lot with little else than try to sink the ship together with all aboard it, so to speak.

The findings are quite laughable as they are saddening considering that most of us who graduated a while ago from high school and might have participated in one form of agitation or another against the school administration know that a lot is being left unsaid.

In as much as I abhor wanton destruction of property, I am not ignorant to the fact that authority can sometimes be misused especially if placed in the hands of narcissistic and low-esteemed individuals; and this is irrespective of rank held.

The drafters of the Constitution of Kenya, 2010 made no pretense of it when they affirmed under Article 37 that people have a right to vent. I suspect that some of these drafters actively engaged in riots while in school, but I digress.

It appears that the said investigators in to the causes of these arsons came up with their findings through no real investigation whatsoever, but rather hurriedly compiled a bunch of previous media reports and hearsay and fronted them as findings (sic) before rushing back to their comfort zones of  signing leave forms and licking envelopes.

The said report is yet to receive any noteworthy critical scrutiny aside from a few analysts who have done no more than regurgitate the simplistic findings which have left the public even more bewildered since it gives no recommendations. It’s like, “Here is the report you asked for last night, signed and sealed. We are a bit busy with other things.’’ Tragic!

It is a humongous  slap on the public’s face bearing in mind that more than 30 schools, and counting, have already been affected.

Some reports you wish remained undisclosed and instead the government ought to have prioritised the release of The Ndung’u Land Report or several other high profile reports by Commissions of Inquiry whose findings remain under lock and key to date.

This is because it reveals nothing that we have never heard of before, other than maybe attempting to cast the former CS for Education, Professor. John Matiang’i in a favourable light – don’t ask me why.

Prima facie, the report appears lazily and hurriedly done with a pre-conceived conclusion meant to elicit a particular public reaction. 

I shudder at the thought of a foreigner who is unfamiliar with our resilient character as a people (I’m a patriot I won’t go in to the details) coming across the findings which are, in fact, inconclusive.

Now that we know that the secondary school children are afraid of sitting for the exams since all cheating avenues have been blocked, do the investigators suggest that we whip these candidates in to submission, or call for a national day to exorcise this cheating demon, or what!

Case study: The recent secondary schools students’ rampage

The social scientists in the Education Ministry, if there are any, ought to have done better than to tell us that our kids are afraid of sitting for their exams because they now cannot cheat as they had anticipated.

Considering that the last lot in the 8-4-4 system will sit for their KCSE in the year 2026, what plans are there to ensure that we learn from the horrible experiences this year in order to pre-empt their future recurrence? 

Do we procure more fire extinguishers for our schools because, let's face it, this year’s candidates will not be the last ones to fear sitting their exams?

A beyond cursory look in to the school arsons will reveal some critical social factors that have been swept under the rag for the longest time now.

For instance, most likely these children’s parents and older siblings are products of the same 8-4-4 system that they themselves are pursuing and, therefore have grown up seeing its impact socially and economically as can be manifest from the former's living standards.

Some have grown up witnessing the struggles of the jobless and underemployed graduates wasting away in sub-optimal engagements; and even before they complete their KCSE, a warped view that a degree qualification no longer inspires any confidence is already formed.

Their role models, unlike your younger years, are not university graduates with mainstream careers like doctors and teachers, but are fellow eccentric youth with peculiar idiosyncrasies for professions such as dancers, DJs, VJs, instrumentalists, spoken-word poets, photographers, socialites and the like, often termed as celebs.

They are the kids that have grown in the era of the internet with their parents documenting their daily milestones on Facebook and Instagram through impromptu selfies and forced poses to garner the most likes possible.

They are afflicted with digital age conditions such as digital dementia, agoraphobia, FOMO and textraphenia (yes, you can Google) which you were able to escape, ironically because you spent most of the time outdoors contrary to your parents’ wishes.

Having said that, we must be a very bold lot if we imagine that what barely worked for us some twenty odd years ago will seamlessly work for this cadre of high school students today and also in the next eight years before the 8-4-4 system is completely phased out.

Cabinet Secretary, Amina Mohammed by virtue of being the head of of the Education docket in Kenya is in effect the orchestrator of this fiasco of fitting square holes with round pegs.

Her recent directive to victimise such marauding students when they leave school by profiling them while accessing higher education or seeking employment opportunities is an intelligent bluff that should not outlive such students’ remaining few weeks in high school.

This is where our good sociologists need to step in and conduct research and social experiments to reveal the effects of this learning mismatch on our children’s true dreams and aspirations and course correct before it's too late.

Generations

In advanced societies like in the West and some parts of Asia, the scope of social scientists' work covers the scientific study of human society and social relationships (Collins).

In a nut shell, these are the people who have exported terms like millennials and Generation Z to describe their own generational definitions based on major cultural, political, and economic influences in their countries.

Because our local social scientists, if there are any, find such stratification of our rich demographics too laborious a task, or completely unnecessary altogether, we shall continue to imitate the western model - or shall we?

Instead of copying everything western including their categorisation of generations viz, Baby boomers, Gen X, Gen Y and Gen Z (Millennials) and what have you, nothing stops our sociologists from constructing a customised nomenclature here in Kenya.

We could also become exporters of culture and terminology!

For instance:

The purists (Born 1880 – 1940): This generation consists of non-conformists, born before the 1940s who bore the brunt of the freedom struggle. They remained untainted and true to their roots and culture, literally making it impossible for the colonialists to lord over us indefinitely, especially after he had unashamedly tried to disinherit us of our ancestral lands;

The battle (bullet) remnants (Born 1941 – 1978) The term was popularised by the award winning author Ngugi Wa Thiong’o in his novel Matigari ma Njirungi to describe those who had been born during and shortly after the independence struggle (after the sound of gunshots had died down). It is this generation which faced the worst in terms of upbringing, with their fathers having been detained and who were missing in action and later on left for the cities after independence to try and eke out a living for their families in the new Kenya. Sociologists could tell us how they fared decades down the road and the causal effect of their parenting style.

The Nyayo generation (Born 1979  – 1989) This generation basically enjoyed the free milk (maziwa ya nyayo) provided at all public schools, by the then President Toroitich arap Moi’s government. They could be characterised as a fairly optimistic generation though quite cautious due to the intolerant political and economic environment they grew up in during the single party rule.

The 2^nd liberation generation (Born 1990 – 2005) This generation grew up witnessing the clamour for multi-party democracy, a liberalised economy, the advent of prolonged labour unrests including (regrettably) the frequent teachers’ strikes, and saw the advent of the internet age and are the subject of our case study.

Actually, those already under formal employment find the workplace a bit constraining hence their unpredictable behaviour. With a short attention span, they are prone to job hopping and thus miss out on the crucial benefits that seeing through a full season provides.

It is noteworthy that this generation is tribeless as most cannot construct a single sentence in their mother tongues as a result of being products of intermarriages or growing up in cities where the two national languages of Swahili and English are mostly spoken.

Closer home, and literally so, how many house helps have you had in the last one year, for instance? Most likely more than you are comfortable to speak out. But to your consolation, if you are still going to hire this generation, expect a frequent turnover. Unlike those of yester-years who were largely unschooled and would come to your home in order to escape harsh living conditions back in the villages, or on flight after committing a crime (not strange), today’s house-help is at least a high school graduate, just like you, owns a smart phone, just like you, demands a work-life balance, just like you, and has goals and is most probably buying time in a family that will feed her well and expose her to the kind of household she dreams of.

And finally,

The Slay Generation (Born 2006 – Date) : This generation has been born during the era of social media, with all its pros and cons which if utilised unwisely might give rise to superficial adults with a skewed view of the real world. I know you are still stuck at slay so I’ll end my imagination there as far as localising our generations goes.

In conclusion

With a similar categorisation as proposed above, our social scientists could be of great help particularly to the Ministry of Education so as to isolate what was applicable in a certain generation but is now obsolete or defunct.

Our children need to travel light if they are to compete with the other children across the globe as is demanded by these times we are in.

We would have learned nothing if they burn their schools again come second term, next year.

Finally, as Africans, our view of burning takes another dimension once it comes to schools since burning is in itself an act of covenant disassociating yourself from something completely.

Maybe our children are trying to communicate desperately that the 8-4-4 system has overstayed its purpose and the new curriculum ought to have been rolled out about a decade ago.

They see your future as their past, you know.