After two years of ignoring and avoiding our questions about Kenya's new education system, the bureaucrats behind the new system invaded glitzy media to defend their controversial education system. Their about turn, which looks like it followed advice from a PR consultant, seems to have been sparked by two things.

One, is the goof by freshly appointed Education CS George Magoha, speaking with threatening language to teachers opposing the new system, even with promises to crush the system's opponents. Wilfred Sossion, the secretary-general of the teachers' union KNUT, responded in a hard-hitting statement that included arguments about the colonialism and inequality entrenched by the competency based curriculum. Much as Kenyans seem to equate superman tactics of Matiang'i's stint in education with efficiency, even politicians seemed to agree that Magoha's language had gone too far. 

The regime of Muigai wa Johnstone, popularly known as Uhuru Kenyatta, has withdrawn from performing the functions of government. It is now a bank. Rather than provide social services, it is extracting money from us citizens, and passing it on to private sector to provide education. The government's only role to collect and distribute taxes.

That is the essence of Sessional Paper no. 1 of 2019. In the unnecessarily lengthy policy document, the Ministry of Educationproposes to hand over the work of education to private sector, and then become a bloated organ for supervising and regulating educational institutions. This institutional laziness explains why an education student was recently overheard saying that they have no intention to teach when they are through with their studies. The student intends to work in educational "policy," without ever doing the work of teaching. ​​

The arrest and release of Boniface Mwangi last week brought about a conversation among Kenyans that is uncomfortable, painful, but absolutely necessary. While Boniface saw in the arrest an opportunity to discuss revolution, for many Kenyans, the whole incident revived old pain, that had been opened again just a week or two before with the arrest of Beatrice Waithera, or Betty wa Shiro, for being a prominent voice in the anti-corruption demonstration that ended in the usual Kenyan way. With the police firing tear gas.