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The regime of Muigai wa Johnstone, popularly known as Uhuru Kenyatta, has withdrawn from performing the functions of government.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. ​​

This week, the Nation Media Group held another installment of its Leadership Dialogues, this time focused on the new system of education being launched next year. In the opening minutes of the event clearly designed to build up legitimacy for the new system, anchor Smriti Vidyarthi referenced  the common narrative of Kenya’s dysfunctional education system in her first question to KICD CEO Dr Julius Jwan. 

“The competency-based system aims to address the weaknesses of the 8-4-4 system.” She stated. And then she asked: “Dr. Jwan, what is the CBC aim to achieve?”

Dr. Jwan replied: “Maybe I would just try to modify that [question] a bit. In working on a curriculum reform, you don’t necessarily start from the weaknesses. It just happens that a time comes when the society has moved on, and the education system has to move on.”

In the folklore of several Kenyan communities, the story is told of a hyena that sensed the sweet smell of meat, and decided to follow the smell to reach the meat. The smell led him to a fork in the road, and the hyena could not tell whether he should follow the road going to the left or the road going to the right. So that he wouldn't lose the meat, the hyena decided that two legs would take one road, and the other two legs would take the other road. In a short time, the hyena split and died because of his greed.

A similar fate seems to be eminent for William Ruto's political ambitions. He seems to have decided that to become president, he needs to play by the rules of daddy's (and mummy's) boys, (Raila, Muigai, Gideon). However, he also wants to appeal to Kenyans by portraying himself as one of us, thereby adopting the tag "hustler."  However, trying to do both at the same time leads to the contradiction we see in Ruto's relationship with the Kenyan university.

The naming of culprits behind the recent spectacular corruption scandals like the second edition of the NYS heist, and the scandal du jour, the importation of toxic sugar, is deeply frustrating. Kenyans are being treated to spectacles of fighting against corruption, but in reality, nothing is really changing. All we Kenyans are doing is participating in a blood sport, reminiscent of the Roman Empire, where people have a space to vent their anger and violence, but return to the same oppressive state of affairs.

​The blood sports, whose visibility has been maintained in Western civilization today through Hollywood films and video games on gladiators, were a cathartic spectacle that sustained the Roman empire. Because Rome inevitably used brutal war to capture every area that it added to the empire, violence necessarily became the lifeblood of Rome.  But also, as various ethnicities, nationalities and classes were brought together, blood sports in the stadiums became one way to keep the empire united through gross displays of valor and power. Gladiators, slaves, prisoners, Christians and wild exotic animals were subjected to torture and excruciating death for the entertainment of the crowds. Scholars say that the games provided an outlet for citizens to express increasingly violent aggression while the state contained the violence within the walls of the colosseum.

​These are the remarks I made at the Leading Dadas conference, held by Akili Dada on October 3, 2017. The ideas contained in the address are entirely my own.

​Thank you very much for honouring me with this invitation.

As a teacher, I know that students usually expect two things from talks like this; a) a definition of leadership and b) notes on how to be a leader. I would then add some bullet points to the slides and put some nice pictures.

​Unfortunately for my students, and maybe even for you, I’m not that kind of teacher. I’m going to make my remarks difficult, not easy, and it’s up to you to simplify them into take-away bullet points.

In their book “The Big Conservation lie,” Mbaria and Ogada chronicle how KWS’s historical disregard for science and scientists has made the organization fail to protect the sovereignty of this nation, which includes our biodiversity and wildlife. 

One major element of this failure is the fact that KWS directors have rarely been scientists. Based on the managerialist myth that all organizations are run well if run as businesses, KWS has appointed a succession of directors who put more emphasis on business-style management than on actual environmental science or the sovereignty our nation. And by the Kenyan nation, I mean every living thing here, not just human beings.