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The shame that is our national examinations

28/10/2014

8 Comments

 
PictureSource: Capital News
Those who know me know that teaching is my life. Teaching occupies a top place in my identity, together with my African, woman and Christian ones. It is through teaching that I express myself as an African who wants Africans worldwide to live as free human beings in a world that questions our humanity.

But every October, I am ashamed to be a teacher. Because of the national exams.

Our Kenya national exams are a high-stakes event that turns parents and teachers from people who should nurture truth, character and knowledge in children, into adults who teach children to cheat through paying for leaked exams. Exams encourage our youth to cheat through looking for leaked exams and carrying notes into the exam room. 

And rather than reduce the stakes, Kenya has increased the legal penalties for cheating, thereby raising the stakes even more. Yet cheating is simply the symptom of a bigger problem, for as Curtis Reed told us during the Soul of Sex workshop: people lie because they think their story isn’t enough. Instead of educating our children to be creative and confident, we are training our children to feel inadequate. Our education system tells our children – and all students – that they have nothing to offer this country, and so they must reproduce what others tell them after every number of years.

It is because I have never, ever subscribed to this philosophy of education that I teach in a university, rather than in a public high school where I’d much rather be. My stint of teaching in a public high school was very short because I could not manage sticking within the confines of the KCSE syllabus. At the school where I taught, I was the only teacher who did not cane students for poor performance in a test (yet one of my subjects ended up scoring highest average in the school at KCSE). I hated seeing students struggle to study out of fear rather than study out of curiosity to know. 

But I haven’t avoided the problems I was running away from. Even now, I have students who are too focused on their grade that they miss the point of their assignments and simply copy and paste what they find on the internet. It is so difficult to get them to be fully engaged in their subjects, and I feel worse if the students are training to be teachers, because they’re going to replicate these problems to the next generation of Kenya’s youth. Few students attend the great events we organize, such as lectures, interviews with guests, jam sessions with musicians, whose primary lesson is that we are teaching about life and people, not for passing exams. And even the administration system is not structured to facilitate what we’re doing, and so we have to additionally explain and complain a lot for the events to be integrated in the structures. The system understands “short courses” where people pay and get certificates; it does not understand learning, and engagement where people may not get certificates, but where lives are changed.

We have to reduce the stakes in exams. Certificates of completion of each cycle of education should not be the only exams that allow for entry into the next cycle of education. Let us have simpler exams equivalent of SATs, where we’re testing just students' reading, writing and analytical skills. Kenyan tertiary programs should then also have their own placement exams. For example, schools of medicine can provide entry level exams for all who want to do medicine, regardless what their score in high school was. The purpose would to determine the entry level of the students in terms of how many remedial classes they would take, rather than determine whether they’re “worthy” of entering that program. That way, people can join the medical – or any other school – any time, regardless of their high school experience.

And finally, we must, must have social services that give every Kenyan a decent standard of living, no matter their job. We must have an organized public transport system. Our health services should be decent and available to every Kenyan. Our schools should have facilities to develop student’s talent, not just memorization. We must, WE MUST, start to charge capital tax on land, because people are growing rich and powerful for sitting on a title deed they acquired because of their political ties, not because they created wealth that benefited fellow citizens through employment and industry. By breaking this feudal economic system, loans can stop being tied to title deeds and youth can use things like patents, talent and business ideas to gain access to credit. We must invent a new Kenya where wananchi won’t feel that if one wants to be able to raise a family, pay medical bills and be a useful human being, one must pass exams at any cost, to get employment at any cost.

8 Comments
Dorcas Mulau
28/10/2014 08:50:56 am

I suppor this 100 persent. Alot of usefull talent and innovation is left out to waste for lack of the so called papers mainly determined by wether one has or have not passed their exams.

Reply
Peter
29/10/2014 01:18:26 am

Well said. There are many who agree with the diagnosis of what is ailing education in Africa (and arguably in other parts of the world). We are getting the behaviors from students, instructors, and administrators that the current systems is set up for. My professor said recently,"If you want to change people's behavior, change the system," There are a number of people coming up with disruptive innovations in secondary as well as in higher education. For example, see Ashesi University http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/path_to_a_new_africa I think we need to see social innovators and social innovators come conceive and test new models of education that give us picture that it can be done.

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atijals
29/10/2014 07:22:07 am

Wandia, I agree with your perspective... things need to change and fast before we run our children and our country.

Reply
Brenda
29/10/2014 08:02:04 am

So true... I shudder to think that my 3yr old and 4yr old who are so curious and willing to devour their story books will lose that innocence and no longer enjoy the adventure and joys of getting lost in a book. What can we, as parents do to change the system? Remind our children about the adventures to be had in reading, exploring the adventures and information in books, not for exams or grades, but for the sheer joy of learning and understanding.

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Pascale
30/10/2014 03:41:27 am

You know I am used to passing exams because that's what I have known all my schooling life. When God blesses me with Children I will not put such pressure on them. Thank you for this insight, it reminds me that an 'A' is just a letter in the alphabet and not a determinant of our future.

Reply
Denis Nyayal
1/8/2016 08:35:09 pm

Companies hiring should stop quoting higher high school grades on job adverts as a prerequisite for shortlisting.This encourage cheating for higher scores.Any kenyan who attain a C+ can join any university in Kenya but on a job advert they say "must be a degree graduate with first class honours and B- in kcse.Where will these Kenyans who worked hard and got a C+ in kcse and finally joined university land to.
It means the companies in Kenya sends a signal to new generation to pass with higher grades in kcse so that they may secure a chance of employment in future years.Since a number of young kenyans cant attain those high grades,they are compelled to cheat inorder to score higher for future employment assuarance.

Reply
Wandia
3/8/2016 11:45:29 pm

That's a great point!

I think we need to further scrutinize job adverts and requirements for discrimination and for the way they are skewing the job market. The other day, an ad asked for a person of Asian origin. Should that be allowed? Or when we advertize for jobs in newspapers - how many people have access to them?

We need to hold companies to account for their responsibility in the sad state of affairs of our education system.

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Junk Removal Staten Island link
19/7/2022 04:11:42 pm

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    Wandia Njoya

    African. Woman. Wife. Teacher.

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