The system was also not dynamic in that it sought to solve the problem of the day but did not envision future trends in the world and intentionally incorporate them in the curriculum that was proposed and implemented with so much disruption .
To cite an example is the total lack of an ICT infrastructure to align the students with a world that was becoming progressively digital and the much hyped a laptop per child political posturing ended as a pipe dream and remains so today .
The biggest failure of the system is the lack of any discernible career guidance as the system is designed to periodically eliminate chunks of students after so many years and society has adapted to this necessary evil by being negatively creative .
Since passing exams is such a premium , exam cheating sprouted as a viable business supported by parents and teachers . No parent wants their children to fail and no teacher wants a bad reputation of a failing class and school .
The media has aided this malaise by having a media circus every time exam results are released and edifying the ‘ winning ’ students and schools thereby creating a huge demand for those schools that produced exemplary results year on year .
Those schools that had achieved excellence due to picking students on merit soon found that they were swamped with demands to admit the children of the high and mighty in society even when their children had not passed , hence compromising future results .
A headmaster soon realizes that his reputation is tied to how his school performs as per the media and they introduced inhumane and ridiculous school hours for study whereby students are mentally exhausted by being in school .
Ochieng does not discount the same headmasters using underhand methods to get better results as it not only boosts the number of students wishing to join his institution but also the amount of undeserving parents willing to influence the admittance of their children .
In an education system that is perennially underfunded it makes good business sense to for an enterprising teacher to have a side hustle as a private tutor and a headmaster to supplement his income as the head of a successful school .
What dismays Ochieng is that it has taken
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Ochieng is worried that at the current trajectory a Kenyan may need a PhD to secure a front office desk job since there are so many qualified Kenyans even though we are aware that most of those qualifications are issued by the River Road University .
over thirty five years of constant complaints and reviews for the government to eventually wake up to the fact that they are running a failed system which education experts , parents and students have been saying for decades .
So at last the government has accepted that the failure of the 8-4-4 system was because it was a teacher based system which encouraged rote learning and hence the constant complaint from employers that they were getting highly qualified employees who could not think for themselves .
Now the new noble objective for the government is to correct this situation and switch to a competency based curriculum ( CBC ) which is more student oriented with more focus on the ability of the student to self-learn and develop relevant skills requisite for any engagement .
The premise of this shift is excellent and one cannot logically argue against a system that is going to deemphasize the teacher ’ s role of chalk and talk and shift it to the student whose learning capacity and abilities need to be identified and encouraged .
But therein lies the problem in that you have shifted the emphasis from one trained teacher to forty random students who have different abilities and capacities . And as usual Kenya will implement it without piloting the curriculum and it will depend on a political whim .
It is unbelievable that Kenya is about to repeat the same mistakes it had nearly forty years ago meaning that that uncomfortable and disastrous experiment taught us nothing . Fortunately , the parallel system is providing us with a workforce and creating a huge reserve of disgruntled graduates .
The whole narrative of the ‘ Hustler Nation ’ that was used so effectively in the last elections was given birth by a failed education system . A system that gave an illusion of an educated nation if you were to use the explosion of tertiary institutions as a measure of progress .
It is extremely disconcerting that the average Kenyan is fixated on going to school and getting qualifications and yet these qualifications are not translating into innovation and productive endeavors for the country . The more Kenyans fail to secure employment the more they return to school .
Ochieng is worried that at the current trajectory a Kenyan may need a PhD to secure a front office desk job since there are so many qualified Kenyans even though we are aware that most of those qualifications are issued by the River Road University .
It is a fact that the best way to destroy a country is to interfere with its education system and if you wish to get an explanation why the Asian tigers who we never tire of citing that Kenya was in a very similar situation at independence is to look at what happens in school . What are the children learning ?
As the last word and to respectfully paraphrase the late Prof . Magoha , the best way to produce academic dwarfs is to be overly attentive to obtaining ‘ A ’ s in an exam instead of learning how to learn . Qualifications at best open doors , they do not do the work .
How does Kenya propose to progress if it is led by politicians with fake papers , engineers with fake papers , doctors with fake papers , lawyers with fake papers , architects with fake papers to name just a few unless we as a country collectively acknowledge that we are really running a fake country !
In such a country integrity and honesty are dangerous qualities to have and people who have these undesirable qualities are not only punished but are persecuted and sidelined and named the enemies of progress as they stand for the truth .
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