Review Overview
The Kenyan economy is moving, at least for the top 2%. Our bankers are counting money at high speeds; they can perform basic computer functions, and close the bank doors at the end of the banking day. Kenyan lawyers are signing agreements each day on behalf of their clients, pharmacists sell panadol and chloroquin as usual and our doctors know when the injection is to be given.
Given this observed functionality, the institutions and individuals who support the education of the so called professionals are convinced, at least to some degree that their products are authentic. I am sure that at some point, some of these leaders in these institutions, especially the ones with genuine knowledge of real functionality were aware of the mediocrity they were releasing to the Kenyan society faster than the country would accommodate. But when you tell yourself a lie several times, it ends up swallowing up the truth. At this juncture in Kenyan history, they are convinced that what they are producing is excellent.
The reality of the matter is different from what we want to believe as Kenyans. Our education is system might be flawed, but that is not the problem. The problem is that the education that our children are receiving does not qualify to be referred to as education in the true sense of the word. Up to 97% of the graduates from our universities are functionally illiterate. I should point out at the outset that the ability to utter a few English words does not an educated man make. Similarly, performing basic functions that pertain to your profession does not amount to being educated.
The Evidence
Up to 100% of all students graduating from Kenyan Universities and colleges do not understand citation. They cannot come up with an averagely well researched scholarly or academic paper that utilizes one of the approved citation styles such as APA or MLA. In fact, some of them have not even heard these styles at all. Those who do cannot name beyond APA and MLA, the two most common citation styles. Therefore, the moment any of these graduates joins an international effort run by Americans or Britons where citation is key to success in research, they are either re-schooled or barred from positions that might require them to apply these vital research skills. In the United States, picking material belonging to someone and using it in a paper without citation or with improper citation is an offense that can earn the offender prosecution for infringement on intellectual property rights. The issue is so serious to the point that politicians who are suspected to have used quotations from others without giving them credit are ridiculed and accused of blatant plagiarism. The seriousness of citation is such that it begins when one is in high school and its instruction intensifies in college.
In Kenya, high school time is spent drilling students to pass KCSE after which college time is spent giving notes and exams after which functionally illiterate graduates are released to the job market.
The problem does not end at citation. The so-called professionals can only manage to perform the basic functions that anyone who has read the course textbook can perform. And even so, these are sometimes performed with extreme difficult and dire risks to the recipient. Remember the doctor who injected a child with the needle facing the finger-end of the hand resulting in the decomposition and eventual amputation of the child? Remember the nurse who raped a patient with 80% body burns at Kenyatta Hospital? Talk of professional incompetence and lack of professional ethics respectively.
Above all, Professor Ali Marui, one of the eminent scholars from Africa noted how Africans have borrowed Western appetites but not their mode of production. The Kenyan education system produces consumers whose ability to come up with anything new is completely curtailed. This takes us back to the ability to perform jut basic functions. Teacher trainees in teachers training colleges, universities, and other institutions are being taught the same centuries-old techniques that have been overcome by technology-resulting in the saddening outcomes that Uwezo Foundation pointed out recently-that 7 out of 10 boys graduating from primary school cannot write or read simple English words or perform very basic arithmetic. This is confirmed by the tens of thousands of such children who score below 100 marks out of the possible 500 in five subjects. One might argue that it is the children who are to blame but others will rightly point the proverbial accusing finger at the teachers. Due to lack of professional ethics, these are the teachers who spend their time molesting these kids sexually while spending a good amount of their time running personal businesses instead of helping the children excel.
At the end of it all, what we have is a consumer society. While other societies with even less numbers of institutions of higher learning are innovating and inventing, we are importing even the smallest item that is produced using the most basic technology. Those produced locally are products of imported technology whereby local graduates take several years mastering the processes and faithfully following them. They have no ability to make any modifications as the processes might require from time to time thus calling for outside help when such moments arise. Think of some machines getting serviced abroad or outside engineers flying in to tackle malfunctions. Often times, the guys flying in to deal with these malfunctions lack the high-flying degrees graduates have. They are products of technical schools that emphasize genuine scholarship, research, and application. In such technical schools, they do not sell stupidity. In Kenyan institutions, we do, expensively.
A Personal Tale
I joined the University of Nairobi’s Chiromo Campus and studied under a young lecturer whose excitement in teaching developmental psychology was immensurable. I would tell this by the wide smile on his face every time he came to class. The smile would widen even more if the brown girl he had selected as his class rep attended class that day. Her presence reduced the smile a little bit. However, his business with the girl was not mine. I will not make it a subject of discussion here although it also adds to the reality of “sex for marks” stories that are part of the Kenyan higher education system. I wrote three papers for this lecturer’s course and scored 19 out of a possible 20 in each of the papers. After finishing getting into the United States education system, I was able to learn the meaninglessness of the high scores I had received in my papers in this course at the University of Nairobi. With my then limited internet knowledge, I had lifted most of the material from websites and just written them without any processing. Worse still, I never gave credit to any of the scholars and thinkers behind the ideas. Classmates such as the hard working Omondi, the beautiful Mutanu, and the dedicated Gitonga considered me a natural given my high scores even when I attended one in ten classes.
It was after enrolling for the SAT and scoring highly that I was admitted to Principia College, one of the best private colleges in the US that I was introduced to the art of true scholarship. This exposure opened my eyes prompting personal reflection that generated myriad questions. Ponder some of these with me: A good percentage of the professors teaching Kenyan students are products of British and American universities. Why do they teach mediocre ideas to Kenyan university students? Is this the reason most if not all of them take their sons and daughters abroad for studies so that they are not fed the mediocrity flowing in Kenyan lecture rooms?
At the Principia College, I benefited from the services of the Writing Center. Apparently, each American school has a writing center with trained individuals whose work is to ensure that students know how to conduct thorough research and document their sources using any of the seven or eight styles. This is where I got to learn RefWorks, Noodle Bib, and other citation generating software that Kenyan students have never heard of. I bet if you ask your workmate what Noodle Bib is he or she will not tell you until some Googling is done. My pursuit of Harvard program and my subsequent entry to the New Mexico Highlands University were all marked by emphasis on research, documentation, and critical thinking.
It was while in the United States that I got to learn that most of the students who go there for their masters degrees have to go through a process of learning how to conduct basic research and document their sources. This is supposed to be a task that a high school graduate can accomplish with little effort. I met Nwosu, a taxi driver at the St. Lambert International Airport in St. Louis, and with his heavy Nigerian accent, he told me how Nigerians had to go to school again upon their arrival in the United States if they wanted to secure sensible American jobs. With his masters in Agricultural Engineering from Lagos, no one would employ him since he proved to be utterly unknowledgeable when taken to American Agricultural Engineering laboratories. He dropped at school and gave me Dr. Kariuki’s number. I later called Dr. Kariuki who showed me his Medical Degree from the University of Nairobi’s medical school. With a sad face, he dismissed Kenyan professors who are only good at asking for high pay but cannot push the government into acquiring the technology that is now ruling the medical field. Dr. Kariuki who had three taxi cabs that fed him, his son, and his Jamaican wife had been invited to 36 interviews and failed every one of them since he would not perform basic robotic surgery that each of his prospective employers wanted. “While in Kenya professors are busy showing us how to use scalpels and surgical blades, these guys are using robots,” Kariuki stated with evident annoyance.
A further discussion with Kariuki revealed that most Kenyan doctors who claim to be working as doctors abroad actually work as nurses. It is only the few who are patient enough to go back to school in the US or the UK who manage to secure licenses and practice. A recent case of poor preparation of doctors was witnessed in the UK when Dr. Abiodun Bale who was trained in Nigeria attacked a female patient who disagreed with his wrong diagnosis for her facial condition. Dr. Bale was later found guilty and his academic preparation called into question. Such cases are the rule rather than the exception when it comes to doctors trained in most African countries. With our petty dictators and despots stealing our resources and educating their children abroad, we are left with mediocrity in every field. Dr. Bale and Dr. Kariuki are not to blame. They are victims of a society that has not learned the basic tenets of survival- a society that is yet to learn the value of collective upward mobility.
The Man in Big Goggles
While holidaying in Minneapolis, I drove to a gas station where I was greeted warmly by a man in dark glasses. Let’s call them goggles for now. I was in a hurry to go back to my hotel room when he asked my name. I happily told him after which he told me how he had suspected I had to be Kenyan. He quickly identified himself as a Kenyan from Kegati, Kisii. He gave me a can of Mountain Dew and ushered me to the office behind the gas station where he told me more than I was willing to know. His job was to continually stare at the security computer so as to spot suspicious individuals and alert the authorities. He showed me his certificates that had not gotten him anywhere and explained how he had recently enrolled in a local community college that had allowed him to secure a part time job as a nurse in local nursing home. You might doubt this but Sammy Obare had a Biosystems Engineering degree from the University of Nairobi. His memorable job interview that shuttered his hopes of ever securing a job with his Kenyan degree was with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This agency, America’s equivalent of NEMA, had excitedly invited Obare for a job interview hoping he would help run its newly acquired carbon calculating software. They were heartbroken when Obare would not even define a carbon footprint. He was subsequently asked to leave the interview room to allow the interviewers deliberate. In the waiting room, Obare was advised by a fast-talking blonde girl to go home and wait for the agency to contact him. Obare received a regret letter three days after the interview. He used his earnings from the gas station attendant’s job to sustain himself and his people back home who told neighbors how their beloved son was an environmental consultant in the US.
Obare’s case is not unique. The numbers of Kenyans with Kenyan degrees working in nursing homes and gas stations are high. Other serve as janitors, lawn mowers, and security guards, the same jobs they cannot perform back home or even admit they are doing abroad. Mostly because of money! This is what our corrupt leadership has reduced our citizens to. They give us mediocre education, and instead of giving us jobs that match our papers, we have to go washing other people’s underwear or mowing their lawns.
The One Eyed Man
There is no doubt that Kenyan education is better than that of South Sudan, the Central African Republic, Rwanda, Equatorial Guinea, and Somalia, a country that has never seen a government for as long as I have been alive. Lest I forget, it is also better than that of the Democratic Republic of Congo, another country that has experienced perpetual warfare for as far back as my memory can stretch. Maybe this is the reason for complacency! Is the one-eyed man not king among the blind?
The Mushrooming
The number of universities has gone up and so as has the number of graduates. The few universities with a good reputation offer their degrees at high fees. This is despite the evidence suggesting that these institutions are selling nothing other than mediocrity wrapped in high-flying scholarly terms. The common thing in all these institutions is that their programs are highly questionable. This is why action is important and immediate action is extremely important.
Bright Spots
There are some fields that have produced exemplary talent, and this might be the reason some Kenyans might be tempted to credit the Kenyan education system unfairly. For example journalism has produced some outstanding and talented people. Julie Gichuru is an example of the journalists who can function even on demanding cable stations such as MSNBC or CNN. But the reality is that such people are few and far apart. As most can agree with me, a good number of the journalists are just good at running their mouths without the sense of service to community that involves asking hard questions and refuting lies. Like most Kenyans, I get to watch international news and I get excited when an American or British or even South African politician is told to his face that what he or she is saying is a lie. In this case, the journalist making the declaration, so long as it is backed by facts, helps citizens push the lying fellow into speaking the truth or pushing him or her to defend himself using whatever facts she or he may have. Most local journalists think that it is all about asking a question, getting an answer, and then moving to the next question.
An institutional bright spot is Kenyatta University. With several partnerships with numerous institutions in the United States and the United Kingdom, Kenyatta University is allowing interactions among students of these institutions this giving local students the chance to study and learn from these international standards especially in research and scholarship. In this respect, the University of Nairobi continues to sell nothing more than just a name, an old name that is not being revitalized by new ideas. The reality is that without injecting new ideas into a system, a name can only be marketed for so long.
The Value
John F. Kennedy, one of the most admired American presidents once stated thus: “Our progress as a nation cannot be any swifter than our progress in education. The human mind is our fundamental resource.” This statement rings true for all times and places. But the extent to which it is taken seriously in the Kenyan context is questionable.
Without deep education where teachers are taught professional ethics, performance will continue being poor. In cases where it will be high, morals will be lacking. I recently encountered a high school teacher who has been engaging in sexual relations with his niece. After confronting him, he claimed that the girl who was 19 at the time the incestuous affair began was an adult. Upon further inquiry, I discovered that the girl was an orphan whose single mother had died when she was twelve years. Clearly, the uncle should have been aware that such a girl lacked the mental clarity to give informed consent for engaging in incest inasmuch as she was above 18. Is it not possible that the girl acquiesced to his sexual advances since she felt that he would abandon her as a good listener if she turned him down? The teacher, who by the way is still teaching other people’s children, felt blameless. The traffic policemen who take bribes of between Kenya Shillings 50 and 200 to allow unroad worthy vehicles on the road lack the moral judgment to understand that they are selling away people’s lives at such a small value. The members of parliament who divert funds meant for orphans to private projects lack the moral clarity to understand that that is not cute even in the animal kingdom. Serious education dispensations emphasize morality. In Principia College, graduation is not possible until one completes several hours of course in moral reasoning. This course is not meant to manufacturer saints but lessen cases of such as that of the 39 year old teacher engaging in incest with his orphaned 19 year old niece and going ahead to point to consent as the defense or that of the traffic police taking fifty shillings as a bribe only for the vehicle he has allowed to operate to claim lives.
The Way Forward
The issue is not small. Education is too important to be allowed to become mediocre. Sadly, this is what is happening. There is no shortage of people who understand that something is terribly wrong and something needs to be done by someone somewhere. The secretary of education should lead the way in calling for thoroughness in our education. In other places, it is the president or prime minister who leads the way. For example President Obama is always talking of excellence in math and Science. This is because of his understanding that success of his country depends on success in these areas in particular and education in general. A dedicated team of scholars with knowledge of what to look for should help ensure that the institutions of higher learning do not produce graduates who can barely function in a global market.
Onchari Oyieyo is a product of the University of Nairobi, Principia College, Harvard Law School, and New Mexico Highlands University. He has deep experience in Politics, Education, International Law, and Media. He can be reached at oncharioyieyo87@gmail.com