My boss walked into the office the other day with, what I thought, was the most ludicrous resolution the other day. Following what can only be descried as a dismal storylining session she decided that the best thing for us to do would be to go search for stories seeing as our creativity wasn’t quite getting the job done. She didn’t say that in those exact words of course the words that were used were far too crass to be used here. So, with the resolve of an army commandant, she decided that the whole team would be subject to the task of watching a little green man water the plants everyday. At least that’s what I heard but the translation that was made was that we were to read the newspaper every day.
Here is my issue though I am a man of the modern era. I get all my news via twitter and facebook I don’t see the need to buy, let alone read, an actual newspaper everyday. Last I checked there were trees dying to make those papers – Not that I’d think twice about buying a book by the way. Anyway I know who gives me free internet to post stuff like this online and hence I followed her instructions to the letter. Trolling through the online paper the other day (I still don’t see why I need to spend 50 bob on a paper when I can read it online) I found an interesting article on how we have plans to scrap 8-4-4 and replace it with a rather American version of learning. Now I am completely against this
*sigh*
Americanisation of Kenya. I mean, who do they think they are?! They come here with their fat people, KFC, DTV, HIV and other deadly acronyms and expect us to follow their very lead? That being said I am actually for this change. Or at least I was until I got to thinking about it.
Under the proposed changes the schooling system will include talent schools and the like. Now this is a good idea in concept but let us think about it. The artists in Kenya are rebels. The musicians, painters, writers, actors, spoken word artists and the like are all breaking away from societal norms to follow their passion. That in itself takes a great deal of balls and hence the numbers of people in these fields are quite small. Yet even with these small numbers the field themselves are incapable of providing for their people. What them makes us think that having an actual talent school that will be churning thousands of professional artists a year will be sustainable. I mean what will said artists eat? Where will they work? And more importantly will it mean that we will finally have a school whose uniform is a pair of skinny jeans?
The fact is although the number of people interested in the arts is growing the industry is not growing at a matching rate and that is a fact that we cannot dare ignore. Or maybe we can, after all we ARE Kenyan are we not? Another interesting thing is that the proposed system will cost Kenyans a whopping 360 Billion Shillings, otherwise known as 10 US Dollars. This amount of money is before the taxes, scandals, corruption and shopping money for whatever minister’s poodle. Where will this money come from? The taxpayer of course which means that by the time this changes are coming into play you will have so much deduced from your already too thin salary that our ATM’s will be forced to have a coin option.
Following all the changes in the country with the roads, constitution, counties, sentimentality of our president and now education it seems that our country is trying to cram a millennia of changes into the 2 minutes we have between now and 2030. We are changing everything except what really matters, the infrastructure itself. At this rate will have better roads to beg on, more boundaries to pester with, more degrees to be unemployed with and a president who bursts into tears every time someone calls out his name.
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