Ignorant parents messing up schools
By Dr Vincent Ongore
Parents, I implore you to be fair to fellow parents and their children. If your child has received an admission letter to a school that you don't favour, and you have the ability to secure for them what you consider to be a superior school, please do so peacefully and let those who want those other schools be. It's pointless to use social media platforms to castigate schools that have produced generations upon generations of Kenyans.
As a former high school teacher, I want to inform parents that school performances are cyclical, and are dependent on many factors that include administration, support structures, quality of students and extraneous variables.
For example, if there's a wave of the burning of schools, you can still find a great school falling into such a temptation, thus undermining its future performance and national ranking. A good school could fall. Likewise, an average school that gets the above factors right could soar.
Last year, I had a child who was called to St Mary's School, Yala, but madly wanted to join Maranda. Although I am a proud alumnus of Maranda, I insisted on taking the young man to St Mary's School, Yala. Shortly after his admission to St Mary's, Maranda was up in flames. He told me that my stubbornness was a blessing in disguise. It's very likely that the unfortunate incident will compromise Maranda's performance in KCSE, going forward. St Mary's School, Yala is an outstanding school with great history and tradition.
Unfortunately, a lot of parents are more interested in the results that they see in the press without considering what kind of human beings are produced from those high performing schools.
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File image of students at the Kapsabet Boys High School. |Photo| Courtesy|[/caption]
Lately, social media have been awash with parents casting aspersions on schools without caring that there are other parents' children who are already in those schools and others who are about to join them. Children are very vulnerable and need continuous motivation and mentorship. The generation of children who are joining Form 1 now constantly interact with social media and come across careless posts by ignorant parents.
Ignorant parents are killing a whole generation of future leaders through their careless posts and public statements. We're creating a resentful generation from the word go. When you paint sorry pictures of the schools they are about to join, you obviously create in them a sense of resentment.
Not all students can go to Nairobi School, Lenana, Maranda, Alliance, Maseno School, Kapsabet, Limuru Girls, Precious Blood Riruta, Kieni Girls, Bishop Gatimu, Pagani, Moi Girls Eldoret, Kenya High, Asumbi, Starehe, Kanga, Yala, and other top schools. These schools don't have adequate capacity to accommodate all of the students who choose them. There are schools out there that are equally good, if not better, in some cases.
Let our children embrace the spirit of hard work wherever they are or go. This world is looking for motivated professionals with a passion for what they do and not excellent grades that cannot be translated to actual goods and services to improve society. Motivated and passionate thinkers and workers are the transformers. The rest are mere parasites and pests, feeding on the sweat of others, and creating unnecessary socio-economic burdens on hardworking individuals.
The world has no room for high scoring robots. My own case might suffice. At Maranda, my main subjects of choice were Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Agriculture. I was in the very carefully selected small group of students that studied what was then referred to as 'Pure Sciences'. In our days, that was a very big deal.
It shouldn't surprise you that from the same class of students with more or less the same capabilities, emerged professionals as diverse as architects, engineers, medical doctors, nurses, economists, accountants, and business/finance scholars, among others. Circumstances, preferences or destinies led the students to different paths.
Therefore, it takes more than a school to be an effective professional. After my undergraduate studies, I taught in high school for about one year before joining the tax department to do what a typical Kenyan would call a dream career. I would get stuck there for three decades against my wish.
Today, I teach in the school of Economics and Business, and not Physics, Mathematics, Chemistry, Biology, Medicine, Engineering, Veterinary or Agricultural Sciences. And I enjoy it beyond measure, teaching, doing research and mentoring future scholars and global leaders and thinkers. I do so both in Kenya and elsewhere out there. Can you believe that?
Life is a journey. We know not how it will end. Let parents not pretend to be the final deciding factor in the future of their children. The destiny of our children is not in our hands. It lies elsewhere. Parents are mere vessels. Please give your children a chance to be themselves. This is one area in which my beliefs converge with those of the Cabinet Secretary for Education, Professor George Albert Omore Magoha, IOM. We rarely agree on many other issues.
The parents' fixation with marks and specific professions is one of the key contributing factors to Kenya's deteriorating education and professional standards. We need to reclaim our education standards, values and mission.
Education is certainly not merely about exams and grades. It's not a conveyor belt for marks and grades. It's a process for the holistic development of a human being in the real world.
I remember some students in our time who could barely crack physics, mathematics or chemistry. They scraped through, but rather than proceed to high school (A-Level) and suffer, opted to join middle-level colleges and technical institutes. Of course, there were very brilliant students who, due to personal preferences and circumstances, opted for tertiary institutions instead of A-Level.
These colleges were modelled on technical institutes in Europe that followed Competency-Based Education and Training (CBET) curricula. Their pedagogical approaches allowed for the systematic development of competencies. Some students started at the certificate level while others were admitted directly into Diploma programs. A number of them went on to Higher National Diploma, BSc/BTech, MSc/MTech, PhD/DTech. A number of them are leading engineers in their respective disciplines. I currently work with some of them. Ooh, my God, they are so competent and practically oriented, one wonders why our careers masters never told us about the programs.
That's why I keep insisting that ignorance is a disease just like HIV, Cancer, Diabetes or gonorrhoea, the only difference being that ignorance stays with a patient unnoticed for a very long time. The surest, time tested cure for ignorance is knowledge.
My fellow parents, please, let's allow our children the freedom to be children. I know that a number of you who consider themselves successful would like to see your children go to schools that they couldn't join, and later pursue careers that they always wanted to pursue but couldn't.
If you're successful, having studied at God Bimbe Mixed Community School, why do you want to discourage your son from joining Nkubu High School, for instance, which is a top school situated in South Imenti, just because you don't know it? And if you don't know it, why cast aspersions on its suitability? Have you ever considered the impact of these careless social media posts on the prospects of those schools and the students who study there?
If you can afford it, and you consider it right, please take your children to study on the Moon or Mars, but leave the rest of us in peace. Don't doubt our choices. We know a thing or two about education and schooling. Let's stop this carelessness. Give us a break!
Thank you.
The author is a senior lecturer at the Technical University of Kenya.
File image of students at the Kapsabet Boys High School. |Photo| Courtesy|[/caption]
Lately, social media have been awash with parents casting aspersions on schools without caring that there are other parents' children who are already in those schools and others who are about to join them. Children are very vulnerable and need continuous motivation and mentorship. The generation of children who are joining Form 1 now constantly interact with social media and come across careless posts by ignorant parents.
Ignorant parents are killing a whole generation of future leaders through their careless posts and public statements. We're creating a resentful generation from the word go. When you paint sorry pictures of the schools they are about to join, you obviously create in them a sense of resentment.
Not all students can go to Nairobi School, Lenana, Maranda, Alliance, Maseno School, Kapsabet, Limuru Girls, Precious Blood Riruta, Kieni Girls, Bishop Gatimu, Pagani, Moi Girls Eldoret, Kenya High, Asumbi, Starehe, Kanga, Yala, and other top schools. These schools don't have adequate capacity to accommodate all of the students who choose them. There are schools out there that are equally good, if not better, in some cases.
Let our children embrace the spirit of hard work wherever they are or go. This world is looking for motivated professionals with a passion for what they do and not excellent grades that cannot be translated to actual goods and services to improve society. Motivated and passionate thinkers and workers are the transformers. The rest are mere parasites and pests, feeding on the sweat of others, and creating unnecessary socio-economic burdens on hardworking individuals.
The world has no room for high scoring robots. My own case might suffice. At Maranda, my main subjects of choice were Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Agriculture. I was in the very carefully selected small group of students that studied what was then referred to as 'Pure Sciences'. In our days, that was a very big deal.
It shouldn't surprise you that from the same class of students with more or less the same capabilities, emerged professionals as diverse as architects, engineers, medical doctors, nurses, economists, accountants, and business/finance scholars, among others. Circumstances, preferences or destinies led the students to different paths.
Therefore, it takes more than a school to be an effective professional. After my undergraduate studies, I taught in high school for about one year before joining the tax department to do what a typical Kenyan would call a dream career. I would get stuck there for three decades against my wish.
Today, I teach in the school of Economics and Business, and not Physics, Mathematics, Chemistry, Biology, Medicine, Engineering, Veterinary or Agricultural Sciences. And I enjoy it beyond measure, teaching, doing research and mentoring future scholars and global leaders and thinkers. I do so both in Kenya and elsewhere out there. Can you believe that?
Life is a journey. We know not how it will end. Let parents not pretend to be the final deciding factor in the future of their children. The destiny of our children is not in our hands. It lies elsewhere. Parents are mere vessels. Please give your children a chance to be themselves. This is one area in which my beliefs converge with those of the Cabinet Secretary for Education, Professor George Albert Omore Magoha, IOM. We rarely agree on many other issues.
The parents' fixation with marks and specific professions is one of the key contributing factors to Kenya's deteriorating education and professional standards. We need to reclaim our education standards, values and mission.
Education is certainly not merely about exams and grades. It's not a conveyor belt for marks and grades. It's a process for the holistic development of a human being in the real world.
I remember some students in our time who could barely crack physics, mathematics or chemistry. They scraped through, but rather than proceed to high school (A-Level) and suffer, opted to join middle-level colleges and technical institutes. Of course, there were very brilliant students who, due to personal preferences and circumstances, opted for tertiary institutions instead of A-Level.
These colleges were modelled on technical institutes in Europe that followed Competency-Based Education and Training (CBET) curricula. Their pedagogical approaches allowed for the systematic development of competencies. Some students started at the certificate level while others were admitted directly into Diploma programs. A number of them went on to Higher National Diploma, BSc/BTech, MSc/MTech, PhD/DTech. A number of them are leading engineers in their respective disciplines. I currently work with some of them. Ooh, my God, they are so competent and practically oriented, one wonders why our careers masters never told us about the programs.
That's why I keep insisting that ignorance is a disease just like HIV, Cancer, Diabetes or gonorrhoea, the only difference being that ignorance stays with a patient unnoticed for a very long time. The surest, time tested cure for ignorance is knowledge.
My fellow parents, please, let's allow our children the freedom to be children. I know that a number of you who consider themselves successful would like to see your children go to schools that they couldn't join, and later pursue careers that they always wanted to pursue but couldn't.
If you're successful, having studied at God Bimbe Mixed Community School, why do you want to discourage your son from joining Nkubu High School, for instance, which is a top school situated in South Imenti, just because you don't know it? And if you don't know it, why cast aspersions on its suitability? Have you ever considered the impact of these careless social media posts on the prospects of those schools and the students who study there?
If you can afford it, and you consider it right, please take your children to study on the Moon or Mars, but leave the rest of us in peace. Don't doubt our choices. We know a thing or two about education and schooling. Let's stop this carelessness. Give us a break!
Thank you.
The author is a senior lecturer at the Technical University of Kenya. What's Your Reaction?
