AGEYO'S ANGLE: School children made in Kenya

This week the Ministry of Education was forced to review its second term calendar following a wave of fires that swept through several schools in various parts of the country.

The government, in a circular dated November 1, 2021, directed that all schools break for mid-term later this month, marking a departure from the earlier plan of keeping the learners in school until December 23rd, when the term is scheduled to end.

The circular made no mention of the unrest but it left no doubt in any discerning mind that it was responding to the turmoil in schools. Indeed, the Chair of the Kenya Secondary School Heads Association Indimuli Kahi told Citizen TV that he was among the stakeholders who had petitioned the ministry to make provision for that midterm break, to ease the tension in schools.

Now, let me start by making it clear that I have no problem with any break given to students, in fact, as a parent, I am excited about the prospects of seeing my daughter again after a few weeks of being away. But I am concerned about this whole saga because of the implicit message it sends across the board.

You see, when students who are in their teenage come to a point where their reaction to whatever challenges they face in school is to take up a match stick and set ablaze the nearest dormitory, it must alarm us. It must force us to ask fundamental questions about ourselves as a society, about our families, our values.

I have heard many analysts rationalise these acts of arson as an expression of how exhausted our children are. I have heard others blame the accelerated school calendar for the wave of madness. And that may well be, but it cannot be a point of consolation. Because, ladies and gentlemen, let us be real here: we all have problems, their varied nature notwithstanding.

Some people have no idea where the next meal or money for house rent will come from and those are big problems, others have lost a relationship with someone they love – that too is no small matter, others may even be bereaved – that’s a tragedy. There may yet be a few who have difficulty in deciding which property to buy or which holiday destination is appropriate for their next vacation – that too has its place.

All these are challenges that can keep someone awake at night, but do we all go burning our houses or indeed any other property we find around, because we have a problem, because we are frustrated? Come on!

The unrest in schools cannot be explained by the academic calendar, after all, not every school has had a fire and not every student is burning dormitories, yet they have exactly the same school calendar. We have even had other school fires in previous years, way before the Covid disruption.

And so the explanation about the calendar is really a cheap and unacceptable cop out. It is wrong to burn schools for whatever reason and that is what we must face. Yes, I maintain the children should go for midterm break by all means, but it should be purely based on expert assessment on how a school calendar should run, not as some kneejerk reaction because a few badly behaved children are burning their schools.

Because think about it, if we send learners on a break so that they do not burn schools, are we saying they can go and burn something else out there? I agree with CS Prof. George Magoha that the children who burn schools must be held to account and made to pay for the damages, but we must urgently interrogate where the rains started beating us.

What kind of society do these children come from? What kind of villages? What kind of families? That is the elephant in the room, and no amount of scapegoating can erase that fact.

Just today there was a clip doing the rounds on social media of a group of parents who had joined their children at a local secondary school, to demand for the transfer of the principal. Complete with twigs and violent chants the parents joined their children in the school, causing quite a scene.

I know everyone has a right to protest and picket, but if parents can join their children in school chanting and swearing, baying for the blood of a teacher, what would stop such children from taking matters into their hands in dealing with their grievances? So we can analyse all we want, blame Covid and exams till the cows come home but until we face the naked truth of this situation, the fires will continue. And that naked truth is that the children who are burning schools are a reflection of us, we are a society where the line between right and wrong is increasingly thin. And so I hope that when the children get home to their parents and guardians, later this month, the real conversation can finally begin, at home.

That is the only starting point, and that is my angle.