HOMICIDE, PRESTIGE OR GOODWILL?

By STELLA Gachohi

Writer/Reporter: Laikipia University

Everyone is moving towards being an educand. Trying to achieve ladders of knowledge. Well, education is no doubt the liberator of humanity, read the impoverished in the society. And as Nelson Mandela said about it 'Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.
Its then a noble cause that we all try to reach the realms of pedagogy, but the current trend is worrying.

Alex has just graduated from a local university. He being the only son of his mother having attended a higher institution of learning is an envy to many. Being industrious in his school days topped his engineering class and no doubt thinks he will secure a job immediately. But I recently met Alex trying to heal his different stages of depression. He explained to me how he walked from company to another seeking a livelihood but to his shock; a 10years experience was a basic requirement. He is only 22 years, just graduated, how on earth would he have this. Lets think about it; Alex was the best basketball player in his school days, he also was a sculptor; shaped all forms of designs and figures. But society wanted intellectuals. None of his other abilities was revered. And this is the education of the day; pursued towards affluency and highest achievements and not accomplishment.

Towards a prestigious subsistence, parents are seeking for parallel based programs, offered in our local universities, to those their children that performed dismally. Worse still, making them take courses that require higher intellectual ability such as medicine and engineering.

What benefit do you accrue to a student who scored poorly in sciences and mathematics when you force them to take obvious and oblivious(to students) challenging courses? Isn't that daylight homicide? Would it not have been better if you aborted the child?
Its a higher time we took education for its purpose; to disseminate knowledge to the world and of course appropriate knowledge. Lets not forget talents and passions at bay.

And as I will quote Margaret Mead that children must be taught how to think, not what to think.