13/05/2022
Matters of Education and Our Education System .
Media houses are looking for folks with B+ and above for interviews .
Those who will tell us what we have always heard - like , every A student at KCSE in Kenya becoming a neurosurgeon .
Yet , below B+ , we have over 600,000 human beings with diverse talents , experiences , skills and outlook towards life .
Nobody is keen to put faces to or have the opinion of any of the 38,194 B- students . Like what impacted their performance ?
What are the sample ambitions of the 85,458 average students at C , 109,454 at C- respectively ?
Nobody wants to hear or amplify the dreams of the D student ; 117,898 at D+ , 121,942 at D and the 137,361 students at D-
As usual we condemn those who scored Es as "failures" from whom nothing is expected . 28,046 walking , breathing , thinking human beings, whose fate was determined by a closed book exam held over a period of 1 week .
We have made it so hard for our children to even own their own results .
In some households , we even tell our children that grade B is not "good enough ," yet that was a child's best effort in that exam , keeping in mind that university entry is pegged at C+.
Yet these 600,000 from KCSE class of 2020 are the ones who begin life with zero entitlement .
The uncelebrated . The unrecognized . Those who begin this rat race we call adult life with a coat of "failure."
Many will be consigned to Technical Institutions . Some will end formal education here . Having lived with the tag of "failure" from teachers , parents and peers , quite a number will give up along the way . A few will get suicidal .
Some will resit O level in a bid for a better mean grade .
A good number will pick up from perceived failure and work their way up the ladder to their PhDs .
Many will find their luck elsewhere , where success is not not measured by a 2 hour memory exam .
Throughout their schooling life and sometimes at home , many of these children, now adults , are accustomed to being "not good enough." Constantly segregated from "bright" kids then condemned together into streams solely intended for "weak" "poor" or "foolish" students .
Or schools in schools we have deliberately dedicated to "average to poor" students .
We refer to those schools , in the old days , "Harambee" and now , "extra-county."
This is the group that will begin life with nothing but a "bad" grades and sheer determination . The bottom of the qualification pyramid people who will work extra hard , to survive the job market filtering machine .
Those who have no latitude to say, "I am a graduate , I cannot sell "mitumba."
Men and women who will learn entrepreneurship by starting real ventures and real overcoming business challenges , and not from theorized business education on power-point slides .
Those who will know all what they know early through practical and often painful lessons that life brings .
The kind of people who will do everything they can , whenever they can , to push forward , including taking whatever job to make ends meet .
Brave men and women who are not afraid to start with anything or from where the labor market filtration machine - otherwise known as "national exams" left them .
The folks who will come to the scramble of life with no entitlement . No apparent choices . Just huge dreams and little immediate expectations , coupled with unending determination .
Shortly , you will see them mature in business , in politics , academia , the arts , and in places of influence and wonder how they short-circuited the system to emerge winners .
Due to early practical learning , unwavering industry , absent "career entitlement ," many of our C , D and E students will create employment for fellow A and B students .
Professionals like doctors , lawyers , architects , quantity surveyors , will be servicing or earning fees while attending to the interests and desires of the average student's family and or business .
The 600,000 of 2020. Keep an eye .
but epic
