#LandIsNotProperty Mwalimu Wandia Profile picture
Dec 5, 2020 7 tweets 2 min read Read on X
I was very surprised to learn from @MikeMwendaK's book that A levels were a form of limiting education, both in the UK and East Africa.

In the UK, A levels were introduced after WWII to further limit the number of people in high schools seeking HE.
g.co/kgs/ymLSsy
At independence, the so called nationalist parties like KANU supported colonial ideas of education because they also saw shooling as an elitistist project to limit the number of students attending university. So KANU accepted the introduction of the higher school certificate.
A level added another examination barrier to entrance to university, despite the fact that few Africans had access to education. But as Kithinji explains, the problem at independence was that African elites shared the same ideas as their colonial foreparents.
I was also surprised to read that our unis were started by the British AFTER the independence of Tanzania and Uganda. IOW, the British were still dictating our education so that "a small class of educated Africans would be intellectually and ideologically inclined to the West."
This history strengthens my suspicion at the height of the CBC debate, that CBC was introduced by the old school Kenyan elitists who wanted to return education from the American-oriented liberal arts to the British elitist A level system. wandianjoya.com/blog/2-6-3-3-c…
The British Council funded CBC. Many of the arguments for CBC, especially about technical subjects, were racist arguments made by settlers as early as the 1920s. The argument about "progress" and technology were strongly Victorian.
And CBC restored high school to 6 years, but people didn't notice because because their minds were so stuck on 8.4.4, they didn't hear me tell KICD that everything they were saying is the system which us older people went through.

Nothing about CBC is new. Nothing.

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More from @wmnjoya

Apr 24
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.
Read 5 tweets
Apr 13
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.
Read 6 tweets
Apr 6
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.
Read 9 tweets
Jan 6
By the way, we haven't talked about how CBC is giving your government data on your children. For years. I tried to flag those "assessments" as a form of spying, but you people said you preferred that to exams.

What are the implications for your children? 🧵
It makes me angry to explain because it's so obvious but our ears were blocked.

Let me tell you what continuous assessment and parental involvement are.

You take photos of your kids and send to the teacher. The teacher uploads those assignments EVERY TERM to the MoE server.
You celebrated when MOE said that your kids will be assessed by continuous assessments. But these marks are not left with the school. They go to GoK.

Then you ululated when they said now, 70% of marks for the end of cycle certificate will come from those assessments. I was like
Read 9 tweets
Jan 1
I know we hated literature in school (it's badly taught and very badly examined, anyway) but to understand the psyops happening here, we need to understand the difference between the symbolic and the literal, and why they matter. 🧵
I know we know this, but let's go over it again.

Symbolic language is language that is able to capture what is said beyond the literal words. So, for example, if we say Zakayo must go, that's a shortened form of talking about our political problems and bad leadership.
Without that short form, every time you speak, you would start from scratch...Governance, elections, corruption etc before arrivimg at Must Go.

2nd benefit of the symbolic form is solidarity. Whether I'm talking about education, you about abductions, we land at the same point.
Read 14 tweets
Aug 21, 2024
Like I said yesterday, I have outgrown caring what government does and what bills it writes. GoK is a parasite. Nothing it does is meant to help Kenyans. Everything is for containing Kenyans. The Creative Economy support bill is no different.
First thing to understand: GoK operates on "doctrine of discovery." You know the way wazungu told us they were the first to see Lake Victoria? That's how GoK operates, even with the arts. It fights the arts, then Kenyans struggle with the arts anyway, then GoK declares
it's establishing an infrastructure for the industry. But the industry was already there, despite being fought by GoK.

It's the same thing they did with Jua Kali. They told people "rudi mashambani," then ILO came and told them "look at fundis doing something new. How cute."
Read 14 tweets

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