Date Posted: 12/6/2017 9:45:25 AM
Posted By: Faimus Membership Level: Gold Total Points: 1012
Everyone who has gone through the Kenyan system of education knows that grades are given a lot of importance. Once in school, our teachers encourage us to work hard in order to get good grades. At home, the situation is the same,our parents are always urging us to get good grades. Failure to get good grades in most cases leads to intimidation through punishment and suspensions. All this is done because education is said to be the key to a good life.Grades provide the criteria of how students are treated. Students who perform well are the teachers' favourite students while those who do not perform as well as considered just part of the larger student population. Top performers are constantly encouraged to do better by their educators. Opportunities such as scholarships are also given to them. Outings and school trips maybe organized for these students in the name of motivating them. The poor performers are given little attention. The pressure of being referred to as being average or below average type of students and ignorance from their teachers, galvanizes these students to engage in examination malpractices such as exam cheating to get good grades just so as to be treated as equals to their colleagues. School heads are the biggest promoters of this campaign that rates students according to their grades and therefore it is not surprising that they are the ones who provide students with the means of cheating especially in national examinations. They are willing to pay millions of shillings to get a copies of the examination prior to the date when the examination is to take place. They do not however do this to try and liberate the self esteem of most of their students that they have already killed but have their selfish desires in mind. Good grades from students in national examinations provides a means for school heads of asking for money from parents in the name of sustaining the good performance. Most of this money ends up in their pockets and bank accounts.During the school holidays , a time when students are supposed to be on break after three months of academic work, the students are enrolled in private tuitions. This is all done in to try and improve their grades. Parents are willing to pay any amount of money as long as the private tutors promise them good performance from their children. In most cases, parents always insist on good grades from their children as a way of achieving their dreams through their children. This also leads to parents choosing the subjects or courses their children should pursue. This continued emphasis on grades keeps children engaged all year round. Academics has therefore killed the social life of students. During the holidays, it is almost impossible to see students playing with friends since they are all busy in private tuitions. Some parents also have restrictions on children that they can only be allowed to engage with certain friends only after achieving a certain grade which is deemed to be good enough. In other cases, children are kept indoors all day since time spend with friends is considered wasted time which may lead to a drop in their already good grades. Time restrictions are also imposed on children. Sleeping hours are minimized to as little as five and that away from books as little as a matter of minutes. This has killed the children's childhood as we used know it.The education system is producing academic robots and crammers. The main aim of education which is impacting skills on students has been replaced with getting good grades. The education system has also dictated the jobs to be done by top achievers and so called low achievers in academics. Medicine and engineering are occupations which are associated with the high achievers while their counterparts, the low achievers, are associated with occupations such as house servants, masons and street vendors just to mention but a few.Graduates and their learned counterparts are always seeking white collar jobs since the notion that they are the ones deserving of such occupations has already been instilled in them. That is why the rate of unemployment in the country is alarming since the number of graduates every year exceeds the number of jobs available. A case which can be attributed to the large of would job creators who have been brainwashed to be job seekers.The so called low achievers have gone ahead to start their own businesses and earn multiple times the amount of money their employed counterparts earn in a month. This is because in schools they were already told that no one would employed them with their poor grades so to say for lack of a better word. They therefore decide to start their own businesses and which in a few years end up being multimillion enterprises. This not to say that poor performers are always successful in the world of business and good performers always end up stuck in poor paying jobs. Success can go both ways. What is surprising however the fact that the graduates still stick to their poor paying jobs just because their occupations give them big names such as managers, accountants and engineers, which are the names that they think should be associated with people of their education level and standards.This goes a long way to show the education system has killed the critical and creative thinking on issues of students. The education system needs to return to its initial objective of impacting skills in young people. The system should be focused on identifying the talents of young people and nurturing them to produce young adults who will play a big role in the development of our economy. The Kenyan economy needs individuals who will create jobs and not job seekers. Kenya is a rich country with a lot of resources that are yet to be utilised. These resources can only be utilised if the country has people who have enough skills. These people will be available if the education system is reform. To achieve vision 2030,the education system needs urgent and important reforms.
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