A good education system must also promote national values

The ongoing debate on the need to change our education structure must also take into account the nature of curriculum to be offered.

Among the many objectives of education is to foster national integration by exposing students to national values. Education must help learners appreciate other cultures, religions, race and regions.

When a people go through an education system and they emerge out of it as faithful followers of a race, tribe or religion, then such an education isn’t worth its name. The current curriculum has failed to address national cohesion.

While the youth face generally similar challenges in Kenya, there has been clear lack of a focused national approach – attributable to the current education system – to help the youth surmount the challenges they face.

An educated youth cannot allow him/herself to be used by politicians to advance their selfish agenda. An educated but unemployed youth should understand that by destroying property, killing others or even displacing them breeds more poverty and misery and makes unemployment worse.

Education must nurture the mind to be inquisitive.

An educated population must critically question actions and ideas of others with the sole aim of promoting what benefits the nation and not individuals.

Acquisition of positive skills, knowledge and attitudes is what has been defined as education by some professionals. If at the end of the day all we produce from our education system is either a victor or failure based on the grades our students achieve, then we are yet to fully reap the benefits of education.

Those who left school having scored low grades suffer from social labeling as failures; their confidence has taken a beating and they go about everything they do with a mindset of a failure.

This is social injustice and it has cost this country talent that remain untapped. Creativity, which is supposed to produce more jobs, has been inhibited by dichotomy of our students as failures or victors.

Schools must seek to identify talents among our youth and nurture them through appropriate training.

This way, unemployment will be countered. As we seek to reform our education system, let us think of a curriculum that will imbue youth with confidence, patriotism and remove social barriers to equality.

Patrick Mutua, Kibwezi