Get technical skills to move Kenya ahead in all aspects

By Henry Munene

Hmunene@standardmedia.co.ke

Ever since the Kibaki government freed universities from the stranglehold of the State, we have witnessed an exponential growth of higher learning institutions across the country. So much that, today, even Kenyans from the remotest parts of the country can access university education without having to travel across many ridges. At this impressive rate, I will not be surprised if I live to witness the birth of Runyenjes University, with a Nairobi campus to boot!

And while this expansion must be lauded, caution has to be taken lest we have a free-for-all situation where all you need is a building, a few lecturers and a couple of computers to set up one. Of course I am aware that the Commission for Higher Education and other such bodies work full-time to ensure that institutions of higher learning reach a threshold that guarantees high quality education. But still, I have my two cents worth of beef with this expansionism.

First, our zeal to create universities initially seemed to have been inspired by a feeling that, with a bachelor’s degree becoming a sort of basic education, we acted like we did not need technical institutions that teach things like carpentry, masonry, welding and metal fabrication, tailoring and other such hands-on trades. In our fascination with expanding universities, we even converted some technical institutions and polytechnics that taught things like practical engineering into ivory towers where polemics and rhetoric reign supreme.

Fine, universities should basically be bastions of ideas and fountains of knowledge where high-calibre thinking should inspire research, which should in turn help society break new grounds in industrial progress and social reawakening.

But still, even as we think and peel layers of discourses at senior common rooms and tutorial sessions, we need that guy who must get under your jalopy to find out why the oil is leaking. We need more guys to help build houses in Rongai at a time when quacks have left many city buildings tumbling down like dominos even before the cement has dried up.   

It is for this reason that I like the idea of bring back Technical Industrial, Vocational and Entrepreneurship Training (Tivet) institutions. I am also for the idea of sports academies and other institutions inspired by the common-sense realisation that we cannot all be mathematicians and philosophers.

How about coming up with an education system that is responsive enough to identify and reinforce our children’s abilities rather than trying to convert everyone into a mobile encyclopaedia of biology.

Again, we have become a tweeting society. We are on social media at work, in the bed, matatus, everywhere! We simply have more time for the virtual world than real social interaction. It is worrying, especially after re-reading Daniel Goleman’s book, Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships. In the book, Goleman shows that as people continue spending less time talking and connecting with one another, our brain cells are increasingly losing the ability to genuinely empathise and relate socially. Now, if that is not scary, I don’t know what is. And as we continue peering into computers and mobile phones with little interpersonal interaction, I think we create more workplaces where people do physical work, because such a working environment is good for social bonding.

My fascination with Tivet also has something to do with the high unemployment rate in the country. Instead of unemployed youths plotting to steal their friend’s motorcycle at night, why can’t we teach them how to repair these Chinese things that are everywhere in the country for a living?

You see, these technical institutions can help ease the pain we are living through right now and boost our economy.

The writer is Revise Editor for ‘The Counties’