I could not believe my ears as I listened to Prof. Michael Kirubi commenting on NTV last night on the Kenyan government's decision that 66% of the students admitted to national secondary schools come from public primary schools. According to Prof. Kirubi, the move violates the rights of the students from private primary schools who "worked hard" and passed their exams, and will bring down the standards of education in the country. As if that was not bad enough, he went on to say that when the United States started affirmative action in the 60's, it worked for the first few years (that was probably when he was studying at Ohio University), but it has since lowered the standards of education there.
I was shocked that a professor of education whose opportunity to study at Ohio University was the fruit of struggle by black people for equality, and whose specialty area is higher education administration, would say something that would endear him to the American right wing.
Having studied in the US, Prof Kirubi may have heard of Lani Guinier, professor of law at Harvard University. I knew of Prof Guinier some years ago when she gave at Penn State one of the most memorable lectures I have heard. Prof. Guinier used the analogy of the miner's canary to argue that the plight of minorities serves as a signal of social issues that require to be addressed before the entire society is put in jeopardy.
The most striking points for me were as follows. One was that the social inequality had made SAT scores less an indicator of intelligence and more an indicator of a student's parents' income. Secondly, studies had shown that performance towards the end of students' undergraduate studies did not necessarily correspond with the students' entry scores as freshmen. Many of the people who might have entered a university with the lowest scores end up graduating at the top tier of their class. Third, graduates from poorer backgrounds who may have entered college due to affirmative action were more likely to contribute to their communities - and to the public good - than graduates from the wealthier bracket of society. Lastly, all students are beneficiaries of the diversity brought about by affirmative action, as diversity broadens the mind, not in terms of the patronizing cultural "tolerance," but in terms of intellect and knowledge. Learning only with people from similar backgrounds is little short of intellectual incest.
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This is not the first time that the "quota system," now referred to as "affirmative action," has been explicitly employed in the admission of candidates to secondary schools in Kenya. During the Nyayo era, affirmative action was based on the regions from where students' came, which, though well intentioned, heightened ethnic consciousness because students with surnames that obviously indicated ethnic origins from another province would be disadvantaged, despite having lived in that province. Moreover, candidates from urban areas, where score average was high, cheated the system by studying in good urban schools but registering for exams in a different region where average was lower. They would thus appear at the top of the class and be admitted to national schools.
This new quota system comes in the Kibaki era where free primary and subsidized secondary education is probably the project closest to Kibaki's heart. The policy, however, has been fraught with problems, the most acute being that public primary schools have been stretched to the limit by classes literary busting at the seams, and they can barely cope with the few teachers and few resources at their disposal. Under these conditions, the best performing students in the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) examinations hail mostly from private primary schools with the best facilities and with well paid teachers. That has meant that over the years, 90% of the candidates admitted to the prestigious public national secondary schools are from private schools.
To me, and I am sure to many other Kenyans, the disparity is unfair. Just like in the United States, KCPE results have become more an indicator of parents' income and, as fate would have it, of the parents' region of residence and maybe even the student's ethnic group. But for Prof. Kirubi, these human and moral issues seem to be of little consequence, for in his opinion, what is paramount is the fact that the "bright" children from private schools who "worked hard" are being discriminated against for excelling in the exams. His parting shot was that those families should sue the government for violating their rights enshrined in the new constitution.
The line about the law suits was rather interesting, given that in the news clip shown before Prof Kirubi ranted about the quota system, the Minister of Education had argued that their move was in line with the new constitution's affirmation that the social disparity violates the rights the poor communities and poorly developed regions. This was the argument to which I most expected the eminent professor to respond. However, his interpretation implies that the constitution should favor the rich - after all, they will be able to afford the lawyers to sue the government.
But let's go to the blind spot of Kirubi's argument. First of all, working hard cannot be criteria for admission because, who didn't work hard? Examination results are not an indicator of hard work of the individual students and teachers. If anything, students in public schools work even harder, not only in terms of academics, but also in terms of the social obstacles of poor resources, poverty and hunger. By the same token, students from private schools can be said to be beneficiaries of a kind of affirmative action by virtue that they are cushioned by their parents' income or better infrastructure from the impact of the social issues that may otherwise impede their study .
Now to two other points Prof Guinier raised. I studied in national secondary schools during the Nyayo era. At the time, I shared the same sentiments as Prof. Kirubi about the quota system. The irony was that I had not studied in Nairobi and did not score the top results. Just like now, most of the students with the highest entry points were from Nairobi and the lowest were from the northern half of Kenya. But believe me, our performance in O level did not match our entry points. Many of the students admitted supposedly on the sole basis of quota system finished at the top of the class, and have since become doctors, lawyers, engineers and other high ranking professionals and leaders.
Yes, some of the students were disadvantaged, and now that I look back, I regret having derided them. I also realize that it is unfortunate that the teachers did not tell us off to protect them from our bigotry and did not give them special attention. Nevertheless, the diversity in the school enriched our lives, in terms of our cultural consciousness and intellectual knowledge, which is more than examinations can ever quantify. And I can almost swear that what the graduates from disadvantaged regions have done for our society is probably more than some of us will do in our cushioned urban life.
Kirubi's sentiments are surprising when the memory of the post-election violence - fueled by resentment of the disparity in development that mainly favors Nairobi and Central province - is still fresh. Disparity became our national problem and sent us at each others throats, and so the issue of equality becomes the professor's problem if he would like to maintain his good job in peace. If a sense of morality, justice and human dignity does not appeal to the professor, maybe the instinct of self-preservation will.
That said, the Ministry of Education's move, while well intentioned, is simply a plaster bandage to cover a gaping wound. The problem is, and will continue to be, the shortage of secondary schools and the disparity in the resources at the primary school level. It would have been preferable to have affirmative action in terms of resource allocation to public primary schools in different regions. Secondly, it is still possible to cheat the system just as was done in the Nyayo era, by students from private schools simply registering for exams in public schools.
At the risk of sounding like I am canvassing a job, I would say that the Ministry should have held discussions with the professionals in the field, with researchers and with policy makers, and should have commissioned research and read public opinion before making such a drastic decision. The abruptness of the way the decision was announced, at the opening of the admission process, sounds to me like the Ministry made a hasty move for solely political reasons without giving sound reflection based on solid data. But now that the decision has been made, I think we should give the Ministry a chance and see how things pan out.
In the meantime, NTV should do better in its selection of academic commentators by inviting a commentator who could have provided a more sober view of the issue. Prof Kirubi sounded like he has a personal issue with the new admission policy, such as the likelihood that he knows or has children from relatively well off backgrounds who "worked hard" and passed in their examinations. But the professor should not forget that there are millions of other Kenyan parents with children who also worked hard but who did not have the advantage of institutional resources that a blessed few had.
Kenya's national schools should reflect that nation in in its entirety. And if they don't, we need to find out why and do something about it, because injustice on any corner of our great land is injustice everywhere.
