Thread by @wmnjoya

These people in education policy have had me digging into their academic work because I don't understand how their statements and decisions come from PhD holders. I first looked for Matiang'i. I couldn't get why he was attacking the arts when his PhD is in literature.

Thread

As you can tell from this thread, I didn't get very far when I tried looking for his dissertation in May.

https://twitter.com/wmnjoya/status/995334335111802880

Next person I went to was Julius Jwan of KICD. There are a few odd things to note. He doesn't give many interviews, and when he does, he cannot speak about the technical aspects of the curriculum. So I checked his degree and publication.

Dr. Jwan's degree is in Educational Management, and if that isn't far enough for curriculum, his research is on the role of students in the democratization of schools. That's a valid area, but it has little to do with designing curricula and teaching content.

When I was looking for more on Dr. Jwan, I bumped into Dr. Lydia Nzomo's name. She was Dr. Jwan's predecessor at KICD and started off the process for the new education system. Before she joined TSC after leaving KICD, she was already championing TPAD for teachers.

If both TPAD and CBC are being promoted by Dr. Nzomo, I had to look up her qualifications. I downloaded her dissertation on the relationship with principals' emotional intelligence and students' learning achievements.

Now I get to the PhD itself.

I'll request forgiveness if the details are too technical and boring.

Dr. Nzomo's basic argument in her thesis is that if school principals have "emotional intelligence," students' performance in exams and extra curricular activities will improve. I have a few issues with this.

1. Nzomo borrows the idea from business. She says that principals are the CEOs of schools, and if EI works for business leaders, it will work for schools. She makes no justification for why a school leadership should be seen as business leadership.

2. Nzomo doesn't offer a critical opinion of EI, yet some business writers have even dismissed it as another leadership fad. One criticism is that EI is based on the Western separation between reason and emotion, so now wazungus are trying to show that emotion can be intelligent.

3. This is the part that shocks me: she sees no place for teachers, either in the performance of students or being led by the principal. So she makes worrying claims about the principal being the primary role model of the students.

A Kenyan teacher can see where I'm heading...

4. She measures the EI of principals, deputies and department heads by giving them a simplistic test. The test has questions like "I recognize the situations that arouse strong emotions in me" and the respondent ticks never, rarely, sometimes, often or consistently.

She compares the answers to the school KCSE results and concludes that sentimental principals (ok, principals with high EI) produce betters school results.

Why does this matter?

Nzomo's dissertation explains a lot:
1. Disregard for teachers' that she would transfer them in bulk, without regard for their families
2. Preference to distrust for teachers and imposed TPAD, rather than empower them to teach better
3. Use of business tools to run education

The point of this thread is that having a PhD isn't enough any more. People need to be interrogated on what they studied and relate it to the task at hand. Did the MPs ask this? Someone needs to look through the records (Hansard, I think). But are MPs able to ask these questions?

And the final point is that we may have people with titles in charge of our education, but they may not be equipped to handle the docket. I don't know what we need to do to rectify this. Yes, I don't have a solution.

Over to you Kenyans.