Boarding schools were started by British protestant missionaries.
The story of parental responsibility came from American evangelical missionaries.
To say that parents take kids to boarding schools to avoid responsibility is historical confusion.
I explained here that British missionaries started boarding schools to create an African elite by drawing them away from their communities.
The boarding schools persisted after 1963 because African elites wanted to maintain that system of privilege. threadreaderapp.com/thread/1003241…
So when Kenyan parents take kids to boarding school, it's because they think, as the BRITISH missionaries did, that being at home interferes with learning.
Also, space and resources for local facilities like schools, libraries and recreation spaces for kids have been grabbed.
When there are no local schools for kids to walk to, then you put kids in a bus at 5am, or send them to boarding school.
This is a not a problem of parental responsibility at the home but parental responsibility in the political arena. We vote as tribal bots and not as parents.
Now, this story of parents not taking responsibility began as a political and moral propaganda from the US through the evangelical church.
Politically, the narrative was a backlash against the gains black Americans had made with the civil rights movement.
To prevent white kids from going to de-segregated schools with black kids, and to weaken black communities, the US government wanted to defund black communities but explain that their poverty was the fault of black communities themselves.
That is when the narrative of parental responsibility, absent black fathers and dysfunctional black families came up. Those narratives run till today.
But that's America. How did these racist narratives become popular in Kenya?
The evangelical-charasmatic churches of the 90s. In Nairobi, they preached these narratives to my generation because we were starting families and World Bank has forced GoK to defund social services.
So because my generation could not take their kids to the public schools we had gone to, the evangelical narrative was very convenient. We were told "anyway, it's you, not GoK, who is responsible for raising your kids. Don't ask about schools, ask about homeschooling."
And this narrative of parental responsibility came as a complete package. It covered sex, marriage, education. It was basically a Christian theology of neoliberalism and privatization.
So here is the toxic mess you Kenyans are not getting when you repeat what you hear in the church and the media.
Boarding schools are for the super rich. "Parental responsibility" is a narrative to blame you Kenyans when you can't access schools which the rich kids go to.
And just in case you think that what happens at Peponi or Durham doesn't affect you, remember that the kids who graduate from those schools will be employed in government to make decisions, in the name of being more "qualified" than your kids.
If you don't live in a house as big as Joan's in Runda, don't think that "parental responsibility" story is about others who are not as moral as you. You are a fool. The elites are insulting you and you're here laughing with them at yourselves.
"Parental responsibility" is you being called washenzi whose kids don't deserve schools and other social amenities. But instead of demanding those services, you say "washenzi ni wengine, si mimi." And your taxes give their kids jobs and give the elites tax breaks.
Where Gen Z's are today was where my generation was 30 years ago. In our 20s, stuck in IMF SAPs, an AIDS pandemic, and a clueless political class gatekeeping a new generation out of adulthood.
We need a discussion about reconstructing Kenya to avoid these 30 year cycles.
The first thing we need to understand, which my generation didn't, was the role of the West. The @IMFNews and @WorldBank are main actors in these 30 year cycles. They are scared of a new generation of Africans rising and are manipulating our economies to block them from doing it.
@IMFNews @WorldBank It is not a coincidence that the hammers which the foreigners are dealing to African economies also coincide with the same thing in Nigeria and AES, and with the dumbing down of our school system. Gen Z's are in an anti-imperial struggle.
Grade 9 parents have been given this whatever called RIASEC which they are supposed to use in choosing career pathways and schools for their children.
I know we want to concentrate on our kids, but we're Africans. Nothing we are told to do is innocent.
So we have to understand where it's coming from, and why GoK bureaucrats, in their wisdom, decided that Kenyan parents should be subjected to it.
RIASEC is what people call psychometrics, where tests are used to measure people's intelligence or personalities.
Psychometrics are the offspring of scientific racism. Their roots are in 19th century attempts of Euro-American scientists to use tests prove that Africans were intellectually inferior.
And of course, they coincide with the end of slavery, when Africans start seeking education.
I cannot warn enough that the damage CBE/CBC will do to our children's psyche is going to be phenomenal. Parents, you have to wake up and listen. You have to stop looking at the what (content) of education, and think of the how your kids are developing. This isn't a joke.
The relationship between children and parents should be sacred. No teacher should be telling you what to do on weekends, less still, they shouldn't be telling you to take PHOTOGRAPHS of that activity. In this day and age? THINK! Do you want photos of your children in a data base?
As a parent, your job is to develop intimacy, trust and identity in your child. At home, your child should be learning to help around without the threat of a stick or a lower grade. This cannot happen if teecha is always telling you what to do over the weekend.
The only thing keeping the GoK in power is ignorance of Kenyans. And I don't mean the ignorance Jomo was talking about. Jomo was using the racist idea that Africans are ignorant because they don't know Western civilization.
I'm talking about ignorance as a war on consciousness.
Even the most vocal of voices, who were supposedly Gen Z, do not have political consciousness. They think that the right bureaucrats in the government will make Kenya work. Almost all the doctors who led #lipakamatender less than 10 years ago are now trying to make SHA work.
It's a complete failure of political philosophy that makes Kenyans think that GoK's problem is merit of the personnel. The majority of educated Kenyans think that way. And after school, they stop reading, so they sincerely think they are the messiahs whose skills will save Kenya.
We have no opposition because Kenya's democracy is elitist. Kenya's "democracy" is code for elites controlling the masses. Elections are for recalibrating the elite. They block us from fighting on issues. They fight each other and force us to watch and take (ethnic) sides.
The recalibration of the elite through elections is for giving ordinary Kenyans that they have the power to choose their leaders. But once the vote is cast, the recalibration begins. Lawyers in European wigs make fancy arguments in court, media looks active reporting numbers,
pastors pray for peace, private sector lectures us on going back to work, embassies endorse the vote, and Kenyans start following the appointments and sending congratulations. For the next 4 1/2 years, the elite keep circulating positions, making more appointments.
I'm convinced that Kenya is sustained by Western money. We can't have an extremely insipid, corrupt elite, an anti-intellectual academy, a non productive economy, and the economy hasn't crashed. There is an outside factor sustaining this Kenyan economy, but not on our behalf.
Our lives are becoming more incoherent and more chaotic, but the institutions are still standing instead of collapsing. Then the Kenyan journalists and international media sustain the image of a coherent intelligentsia who can explain Kenya with the right theories and data.
Kenya's chaos must be being contained with foreign money. That's why no matter what we shout about the mess, GoK ignores us.
Kenya is one big collective cognitive dissonance. The world can see it, but we, who suffer it, can't.