Why Our Education System Is Not Necessarily The Problem
Well… The fundamental truth about all nations is that they have ambitions. It is never written anywhere but its in the “psyche” of the nation. They can be big ambitions or small ambitions, and the education systems in countries mutate to match the ambitions. We (Kenyans and our leaders) are lazy. We dont want to be a great nation,we just want to get by and as a result, our system matches that. Rwanda was like us, but they stared into the abyss an didn’t like what they saw. Their “psyche” has changed and they want to make something of themselves and slowly but surely, their education system is changing to reflect that. You can’t have a great education system unless the people want to be great. – Extracted from a chat with John Maina Mwangi
John was responding to my mourning that Carnegie Mellon, one of the leading education institutions in the world had chosen to have a campus in Kigali, and not in Nairobi, and that we are currently exporting our students to Uganda, instead of importing (education tourism has higher per-capita returns compared to “wildlife tourism”).
He’s right: an education system does not make the people, the people make an education system. Thinking about what he said, one thing that stood out out is that as a nation (Kenya), we don’t have an objective or a target, or even a common “psyche” towards which all our activities are directed.
Sure we have Vision 2030, I am a fan of Vision 2030 projects, and I have learnt to throw in statements like “aligning my objectives to Vision 2030” whenever I’m speaking to government types, it is the latest fad. The saddest thing is that it feels alot like a copy paste of the Singapore economic recovery plan of 1960-1990 under Lee Kuan Yew, but with no clear strategy to fight our biggest issues; corruption and poor governance. In my opinion, Vision 2030 seems to be a government project; a bunch of technocrats sat down and decided what they would want Kenya to look like, and are trying to loop Kenyans in after the fact. For example, every tech opinion leader has a low opinion of the Konza City plan. We cannot be aiming for middle income status, yet invest billions in BPO, which is the forte of low income countries, and secondly, cities don’t attract businesses, businesses attract cities.
The second issue I have with Vision 2030 that’s linked with our education system and John’s analysis above is that it says nothing about our personality as a country. Finland, a country hailed as having one of the best education systems in the world, strives for equality as a nation, and for that reason their education system has evolved around this ideal.
Since the 1980s, the main driver of Finnish education policy has been the idea that every child should have exactly the same opportunity to learn, regardless of family background, income, or geographic location. Education has been seen first and foremost not as a way to produce star performers, but as an instrument to even out social inequality. (Source)
I wouldn’t recommend Kenya copies the Finnish education system just because it works for them, the starting point is to decide that we want to be great, and what greatness means to us as a people.
