Accommodate those who fail KCPE, KCSE

The annual exam results and graduation rituals are here. Again, it is a carnival. The best candidates are feted with the predictable platitudes. The top students are hailed as the future of the country.

Analyses after analyses follow; gendered, rural-urban, private-public schools, upcountry vs urban etcetera. TV screens parade the best. There are the high-pitched ululations from family members while jubilant teachers from winning schools dance along. Self-important politicians also emerge to share the glory.

And soon, parents hunt for the best secondary school for their children. The next cycle of the cut-throat competition begins. The script will be repeated next year. And the next. The current episode of this tragi-comedy has a small variation: there are few exams cancelled, at least in the KCPE exam. In previous years, the number of results cancelled were threatening to outnumber the genuine ones.

But Dr Matiang’i should go beyond bringing sanity in the administration of examinations. This annual exam result jamboree is the high point of the sad ritual. Every year, there is a hidden under-script: The grim reality of thousands of youngsters whom the system brutally vomits for the dogs of unemployment and hopelessness to devour.

We have moulded our school system in such a way that those who miss out (read do not attain 400 and above in KCPE and B+ in KCSE) will have to wear the dark badge of failure; just because the system is designed to cast aside those who do not do well academically.

We have built a conspiracy against ‘the failures’ in our schools. We inherited a colonial system that puts a premium on academic grades, the level of which is measured by ever-shifting standards where only a few pass. Those who fail are damned. It is the Hobbesian wilderness; everyone for himself, God for us all, and the devil takes the majority hindmost. The majority of Kenyan kids will not make it up the academic ladder.

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That is the truth. What are the results of this culture? A restless generation with an entrenched mentality that life begins and ends with exams. Sometimes ago, some youngsters committed suicide after failing to attain the grades fervently drilled in their minds by their teachers and parents.

The average Kenyan youth is economically and politically alienated; few jobs, no rights to property, no access to credit, or insurance etcetera. Successive governments in Kenya have happily used the state security machinery to harass the youth. Not so long ago, it was virtually a crime to be a young, unemployed Kenyan. In some regions like Central, youths had to bribe the police just to be there.

To be fair, the senior Kenyatta's government came up with some viable strategies to defuse the youth time bomb. One of them is the National Youth Service.

Ideally, NYS should be among the best youth-based safety nets in Sub-Saharan Africa. Too bad the institution has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. The other is village polytechnics. They were meant to net those who do not qualify to join secondary schools and offer them vocational training.

But these institutes are, to say it mildly, dead! At a higher level, technical schools have been phased out and national polytechnics are now universities. Sadly, technical education in Kenya still carries the negative tag of parochial schools for those who fail academically.

In colonial time, this was for the Africans. This hangover is still with us, hence the clamour for non-technical degrees. Enrolment in technical-oriented courses like agriculture, engineering etcetera, has been declining. This education machine churns out groundless citizens, unsatisfied with whatever they are doing: mechanics doing the job ‘because there’s nothing else to do’, masons going through the motions like zombies.

Always hoping for some office employment, especially in the sleaze superhighway that is the Civil Service. What becomes of the thousands who cannot join secondary schools or college because of poor grades or are too poor to afford?

This is what might be happening. And it is not an illusion. These youths make a fertile hunting ground for extremists, religious or otherwise. They can be veritable killing machines. We will never know the number of Kenyan youths working as mercenaries around the world. There were rumours in the late 1990s of many Nairobi street children and unemployed youth recruited to be dogs of war in Eastern DRC.

Do not be surprised that there could be some Abdul Kamaus, or Hassan Otienos fighting for pay in Somalia or God knows where else. The urchin who plucks off that side mirror from your car would sign in with terror groups without a second thought.

Short of revolutionary policy on youth and its radical implementation, we are sitting on a time bomb. In progressive societies, the potential of the youth is recognised early. In France for example, there are agricultural primary schools. Technical skill is highly valued in the job markets and a higher degree could mean unemployment.

In all, a schooling system without praxis- initiating practical social change-is unsustainable. We need a system that enables young minds to be architects of their own future.