SCHOOL UNREST 2008
Kukubo barasa
23 July 2008
What are the causes?
CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING TENTATIVE SPECULATIONS BASED ON PERSONAL OBSERVATION AND EXPERIENCE.
The candidate populace in the country’s secondary schools, but especially in Nairobi and central Kenya, is most likely a reaction to a lingering Crisis of Confidence in the integrity of the Kenya National Certificate of Education examinations results. They are reacting to the fact that the alleged irregularities in last years examination results were not conclusively explained, rounded off and “closured”. The students may be holding on the faith that good results will be available for dealing this year round. The candidates will, therefore, perceive “mock” examinations as a meddlesome factor if they have the prospect of buying good examination results for themselves.
We have a history of insincere reporting on learning and teaching in our schools. The school report is a dangerously misleading and potentially damaging communication from the school to “whom it may concern” in the matter of suppressing the student in various ways. The practice of telling students to WORK HARD is one of the central issues in the insincere nature of the school report. The school, the teacher and the parent do not make it clear to the children what they mean by “Work Hard” or “Work Harder”. At the same time all parents expect their own children to be in Position 1 or at least within the top 10 positions in their class. They do not explain who should take the rest of the positions, especially the last, or the last ten. The teachers, applying miraculous statistics, also create the impression that all the children should be in the top positions, and none in the bottom positions.
The school kitchens are, in most schools, poor in quality. The facilities are not clean. The quality of the food is vile. In most boys’ schools the food ration is inadequate. The standard of cooking is appalling. The presentation of the food is off-putting. The serving utensils, crockery and cutlery are shamefully tattered. The cleaning of the dining areas is inexpert. The students do not generally enjoy their school meals.
Senior teachers in some schools are brutal to the students. Usually the deputy principals, [sometimes principals,] master on duty, special task masters etc are sometimes overzealous, abusive and violent. They hardly listen to students. They have also learnt to intimidate parents who are curious.
Some school administrations have learned to punish the parents of errant students. By punishing the parents they impose for themselves a higher moral ground in any issues relating to the decisions they may take against the students.
The majority of secondary school teachers in Kenya are not very well trained. In some cases their own trainers are not trained professional teachers. In other cases the trainers may have basic training in Education but have little or no experience in the schools. The teacher training institutions are short on relevant and up-to-date research on matters related to students’ behaviour and students’ dysfunctional behaviour. Some of the institutions do not even have departments of educational psychology. Some teacher trainers promote coercive and non-compassionate practices on Teaching Practice.
In most national and provincial schools [in the richer public schools] a fraction of the parents are using the school setting to show off their naïve materialism. The shows create resentment. The shows also serve to distort the values of the students in the schools.
The public schools as well as many private schools are using poor teaching methods.
Many schools still value the use of the “Prison Method” [introduced in Kenya by British WW1 and WW2 veterans who decided to become teachers in African Government Schools and some missionary schools] in which students are treated with minimum dignity and maximum pain and humiliation. School regimes of this nature value Coercive Methods over Communicative Methods.
There is the delicate balance between the private school and the public school. Parents struggle initially to get their children into the national and provincial schools even when the children do not qualify. When they fail to secure places in the best public schools or when the children cause trouble in the best public schools they move to the private schools.
Some schools have poor top managers and/or poor management teams. The district education offices do not provide much leadership in management training. Many teachers do not relate the management training they undergo in university with the application of such skills in the work place.
School managements and teaching professionals are poor on conflict management and conflict resolution.
The schools in Kenya place too much focus on tests and outcomes of tests, even when the testing processes grossly interfere with the process of learning and the process of learning to learn.
The Teachers Service Commission is creating massive problems in the schools, affecting the outcomes of the students’ work, by manipulating curriculum decisions through selective and unprincipled pairing and labeling of school learning / teaching subjects for the teachers they employ.
The public universities Schools / Faculties of Education have abdicated their statutory responsibilities in the development and management of school curricula. In the process they have lost touch with the ministry of education vital processes in education. Simultaneously the schools / faculties of education have failed to relate their training to the activities of the schools as directed by the ministry of education. In other words, in matters related to curriculum the universities are not in harmony with the Ministry of Education.
Teacher training in the universities is conducted by the untrained. There are some trained teachers involved in the training, but the vast majority of the trainers are outright untrained, or basic trained but without significant experience in the schools.
The country seems to expect PERFORMANCE from the children in the schools instead of LEARNING or even the SKILLS TO LEARN. We end up with league tables in the press on the students’ performance but we never get to know what they have learnt and how well they have learnt it.
Most teachers in the country have inadequate knowledge and skills on CHILDHOOD and on ADOLESCENCE. They are generally incompetent in the management of children and adolescents. They depend largely on common sense, general education and skills acquired from such other places as the church and the home. There is a definite training deficit in this essential area of teacher training.