Jeanette

So, reading the autobiographies of the first generation of Kenyan professionals, I realize that many of them went to Makerere and other universities abroad after 4 years of secondary school. The British added two years A level in 1958, because they wanted to start university education for Africans so that we could shut up about it, while they also introduce an additional obstacle to ensure that few Africans qualify. The British did this concession game all the time. They pretended to give us independence but controlled us through loans and the British high commission. In fact, at the beginning of the Mau Mau resistance, one of the major bones of contention was the Beecher report of 1948. Again, it was a concession game. Before 1948, the British had been blocking secondary school education for Africans, until Africans were like "we'll do it ourselves since we fund the schools anyway." So the British conceded to increase financial support for secondary school education, but you know what else they did behind the scenes? They said the money for secondary schools would go to importing inspectors from Britain to ensure that schools kept "standards," and that the schools which didn't receive government money would be shut down. Kinda what TVET people did to KIM the other day. They also said they would increase secondary school places, but at the same they introduced end of primary school exams that were so difficult. So while secondary school children increased in raw numbers, what the numbers hid was the increase in children being locked out through exam failure and schools being shut down in the name of "poor standards." But unlike us who couldn't see the mischief, the Mau Mau saw it for what it was. Dedan Kimathi even said that Africans are tired of education being rationed to them like medicine. After independence, the A level obstacle was removed by 8.4.4. But in what I think was a deliberate psyop, Kenyans were subjected to a major anti 8.4.4 campaign that made them refuse to listen to the warning that KICD was reintroducing high school barriers called junior secondary in CBC. Now what I predicted has happened. Stats say that over 2m children have dropped out of the system after junior secondary, and unlike 8.4.4 where one could join university years after finishing secondary, now those adults will be told to return to senior secondary if they want to qualify for university. So basically, CBC has taken us back to the British sabotage of education just before independence. I am confident that in the decades to come, the psyop that was made to convince Kenyans to accept CBC will be exposed. It cannot be a coincidence that a whole nation was so hostile to any reasoning and that the mainstream media sang the same song with the same usual suspects in the studios. It cannot be a coincidence that Kenyans were force fed colonial arguments justifying why kids should have limited education and Kenyans couldn't see it for what it was. And when you read how clearly the Africans of the 1950s could see the mischief, it's really shocking that Kenyans today cannot. Anyway, as we all agreed, #CBCisheretostay