4.1.2. Education as key to transform Kenyans from Negative ethnicity
Introduction
The post-election violence in
Kenya made the Kenyans to think deeply and critically by seriously examining
the role of education in transforming society to a better-quality
interrelationship of multi-ethnic community. For a long time, Kenya’s position as
haven for peace in the region is under deep question more so the events of post-election violence badly dented the image and the pride that
Kenya had as a peaceful haven in the
great lake region.
Kahiga in his take on reconciliation through
justice and Peace builds up his take on education as an element of emancipation
and empowerment, from grassroots to the top echelons indicate that quality
relational transformation is the true goal for education, to completely eradicate
the stereotype and ignorance of unknown fears of war. Our vision, philosophy,
education has crumbled to ground zero and it has to start afresh again in an
endless dialectical process of reaching at the illusive harmonious unity of our
multi-ethnic nation[1].
This research has discovered that negative ethnicity is an attitude that
becomes very sophisticated with educated.
The more one is educated with little
moral values attached in that education raises complex issues in relationship,
for education without God produces clever devils. The best way to curb this
menace is to have a complete overhaul in the rural education system to awaken
the young generation to embrace variety of many cultural education of various
ethnic groups and upholding educational heritage instilled in them, during
their pedagogical integral processes. The tree is only strength if only it is
young, beyond that it will break. The generation of our fathers lived in
different upbringing but now there should be a great shift in the education
system in the country.
B.F skinner insists that an environment plays a
great role towards one’s behavioural attitudes, everything starts and ends with
attitude[2]. This is true in that if education is not
clearly emphasized in rural areas hence the politicians take advantage of the people’s
ignorance and manipulate those with little education for their political gains.
This can be clearly seen in the way Kibera slums turned into a mother of all
battles between ethnic groups (militias) all defending their ethnic political
kingpins. Kibera is a typical scenario where ignorance scored highly, and the
consequences were dire in 2007/2008. People moved in mobs and mob justice was the
order of the day, they torched houses, shops, uprooted railway lines and other unquantified
properties that went up into ashes.
The
generation that is now raised in Kibera is a generation that has not known
peace, reconciliation and justice. To talk about peace in Kibera slums is a new
teaching that needs good pedagogy and curriculum
formulation in the educational system to curb the negative attitude mushrooming among the poor
families. We all come from diverse mindsets, thinking
patterns do differ and cultural stereotypes that have been part of ideological brainwashing
and cultural indoctrination. The allegory of the cave is a good illustration
that we are dealing with as we confront the scenario in Kibera slums. The
people in Kibera slums want good health facilities, security, good schools but
the political web is so shocking that development and improvement of people’s
life is lip service rather than actual development on the ground.
The people of Kibera and many surrounding slums
around Nairobi city need a liberation, empowerment and building themselves a sense
of self-awareness of their surroundings, inner self self-examination that
builds itself into transformed settlement where there is a decent humane
settlement than a den of inhumanity and cycle of poverty. This can only be
achieved if the government of the day has to rethink about slum gradation and
educational blue print. Kibera is state of human sin and it cannot be praised
but people who live there to be helped to rediscover the sense of human
dignity.
Education helps people towards true growth and
freedom. This comes with true Christian authentic living, and having a community
that does not only live isolated but as part and parcel of the bigger whole.
This calls for breaking down of unnecessary barriers of economic status,
educational elitists that discriminates those not blessed in life. This calls
for healing, building of bridges, and building communities that are faith based
and morally grounded, and strong in zeal to overcome poverty, disease and ignorance.
Educational empowerment is a great tool for the
people who live in to be part of the global village more so with the highly
needed labour force in the technological fronts of development. The people in Kibera and Kenyans as a whole
are to play a big role in helping to transform themselves into a world of peace
and fellowship, making Christ present and active wherever they live and work.
The value of human person is towards making
all things new with new paradigm shift in life and proper strategies in the
passing signs of the times.
People who live in Kibera have
a big desire for the future, but they feel locked into a den of poverty. The
old ones feel wasted away due to the challenges, but they have a deep yearning
for their children and the only hope they have or look forward to is that of educating
their children to leave in a better environment in future. Kahiga stresses that
education as a means of transformation kills that desire of negative ethnicity
but if misused can turn man into a beast and destroyer of his own humanity.
The power of the mind to penetrate into the
depth of the secrets of reality is awesome and intimidating. Once possessed,
knowledge becomes such powerful tool which can be used to build, manipulate or
destroy. Knowledge hence becomes a source of power to subdue, control, oppress,
liberate or obliterate. Knowledge without a universal value system that
determines its usage and context in qualitative transformation of society can
be lethal.[3]
Palmer builds spirituality around
education when he says that knowledge that leads to arrogance can penetrate in
subduing the world and manipulating reality, it becomes self-destructive to
human beings and the environment. For it takes short time to destroy, thereby
reducing long term investments of human resources and development into ruins.[4]Palmer builds on a good
foundation of education and knowledge that leads, not wounds the world, that
kind of knowledge that is not manipulative. This knowledge builds itself on two
primary sources of knowledge, curiosity and control. The first one corresponds
to pure, speculative knowledge as an end in itself. The other corresponds to
applied natural or social sciences where knowledge is used as means to
practical ends.[5]Today we need people who can make use of their
knowledge to control their environment and people around them in a more
dignified and humane way. The curiosity to explore the self into holistic
person having a sense of personal
vocational and care of the environment he or she lives in.
Though curiosity killed a
monkey, but once it is left in the hands of the politicians who simply become
tribal gods then it becomes a good recipe for disaster. Curiosity if not
controlled can lead to disaster and untold consequences as witnessed in the post-election
violence of 2007/2008. Any slight provocation due to curiosity can flame up the
whole slum. Dewey looked at a human being in a process of
relating with his environment, his daily struggles to survive in existential context.[6] The mind can be very creative
and adjust itself in given environmental
context, but that mind needs to be informed, and creative in thinking fast with a big picture in mind. Once a problem
crops up the mind should be able to be informed straight away to whether one is
part of the problem or part of the solution.
Dewey states that thinking is an act of trying
to achieve an adjustment from a confused state of affairs to a better situation
in the context of qualitative life experiences.[7] In our Kenyan environment
where many find themselves in different
diversities categorized in lines of tribe, clan, religion, political parties
and coalitions, social status or class, hence raising eyebrows of the poor to be curious of how
that wealth is acquired and if not shared they steal it, or cause chaotic moves
to destroy it so that the rich can also feel the pain they are undergoing.
There should be a mind set and great paradigm
shift in the way of our thinking, a complete metanoia, which Rothenberg categorizes it as cultural mindset that
is constructed towards dehumanizing the ‘other’ and becoming the basis of
stereotyping that is abusive of the ‘other’.[8]
We need to see each other
as brothers and sisters without seeing our neighbour in terms of Jews and
gentiles, Kikuyu, Luo, Kalenjin or Kamba but as brothers and sisters though from different
mothers. One may be tall, short, black, thin, plumb, all these are accidentals,
what is important is that the blood I spill is the same red blood, what differs
is the blood group, but we still share in the same dignity and likeness of God.
To reaching to this point of self-acceptance,
awareness, responsibility is complete conversion that builds up into
transformation from within the person. We need to appreciate our unity in
diversity. Each personal contribution is important; for no one is too rich not to
receive or no one is too poor not to give. Each person has a contribution to
make towards building a peaceful, reconciled, and just community, Church and
nation. For a long time, most of the cultures have been propagating this culture
of big man syndrome, in that whatever the elders say is taken as the final
hence no questioning, whether they are right or not the last word is that of
the elders and this has ruined many Kenyan lives.
Friere says that this kind of African world
view is arrogated immense power of control can only the attributed to elders,
ancestors and gods. The elders are perceived as ‘all knowing.’ What our leaders
say is what is ‘true’; the masses are only to listen to them.[9]This has had a terrible
political bad manner in most African countries, that the voters never read the manifesto,
because many have a poor culture of reading and since they believe in their
politicians, they know that whichever party their preferred candidate belongs
is no big deal, they all fall to those empty promises, year in year out, worse
in times of political campaigns.
Our leaders are highly idolized to the level of
the mythical Greek gods that were mighty and powerful, they go through life as
fighters of the oppressed and freedom fighters, second generation of liberators
but turn into wolves in a sheepish skin
once they are in power and politicize everything to the existent that instead
of developing their manifesto, they simply become obstacles and impediments to
the same manifesto. This is where Kibera Slums finds itself cobwebbed in pangs
of poverty, disease and ignorance.
Many politicians want to be
crowned as tribal elders or gods with supreme divine powers, for manipulative
intentions. This kind of authority is highly corrosive even if it leads to
death of human beings. This becomes a sort of martyrdom of tribe and they are
awarded with cultural medals of bravery post-humus and they remain perpetually
in memory of the living as heroes. The deaths that occur during tribal clashes
and election campaigns are horrible and scarring that it leaves many questions
with few answers. The soldiers change uniforms with goons to terrorize
civilians in the same slum, each matatu stage is managed by goons with immense
power of a militia group, with crude weapons and illegal firearms.
The Machiavellian type of politics, the
attainment of real political power by a variety of elders (gods), justifies the means of the many deaths and massive
destruction of property in the post-election violence in Kenya.[10] This always occurs every
five years and the cycle seem not stop but fueled, because election time is a
moment of harvesting and activating the goons and militia groups. Friere says
that there is need for a paradigm shift from the mindset of an educational
theory that enslaves to that which liberates, thus the problem-solving theory
of knowledge.[11]
The current situation in Kenya is a golden
opportunity to conquer bad idiosyncratic habits through focused intelligence of
engagement in purifying of thought and universalizing them. The new
constitutional dispensation should give Kenyans a new clean bill of health both
in the mindset and structural overhaul in the education system and good
political will that most often lacks in our politicians because they lack
political principles they stand on.
Negative
ethnicity has unfortunately infiltrated the very high learning institutions in
Kenya. This is a very dangerous, terribly destructive in the minds of the young
men and women being trained academically in various disciplines for universal
service in the global village. As they say revolutions always start from
universities. Public universities in Kenya are every year subjected to continuous
strikes, leaving a question what type of education are they getting for the
world markets.
Dewey insists that education is all about
fostering, nurturing and cultivating process, which build and shapes
individuals into responsible, critical, accountable and quality individuals in
society.[12]
Unfortunately most of the elite of the society forgot about the right thing to
be done and compromise their human worthiness to financial gains and throw
wisdom through the window, through making ends meet, and little time in
research projects and personal academic improvement as professors.
Conclusión
Therefore, selfless love can
be harsh and dreadful. Knowledge that springs from selfless love may require us
to change our mindset, sacrifice our egos, social status, and go the extra
mile, to accept to lose in order to recreate, renew, and make lasting bonds for
the sake of what we know. We are all wounded in one way or the other, but we
have to become wounded healers. The culture of impunity should be something of
the past.
Our knowledge should help us
build the broken bridges so that it's safer to walk on them together side by
side. In other words, we all need to work hard in order to achieve justice, peaceful
and reconciled communities as Kenyans who need to make use of our acquired
knowledge not to destruct the self but building the self into a created image
of God leaving our environment better than we found them.
[1] Kahiga,
Joseph K, Education for Transformation: A Focus on the Post election Violence
in Kenya, in AFER, Reconciliation through Justice and Peace, December,
Vol.51-No.4 March 2010, Vol 52, No.1, AMECEA Gaba Publications, Eldoret,
484-492
[4] Palmer,
P.J, To Know As We are Known, Education
As a Spiritual Journey, New York, Harper Collins, 1993, 2
[6] Dewey,
J, Democracy and Education, An
Introduction to the Philosophy of Education, New York, The free Press,
1966, 11
[8] Rothenburg,
P.S, Beyond Borders, Thinking About
Global Issues, New York, Worth Publishers, 2006, 252
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