Thread by @wmnjoya

CBC is an administrators' curriculum. It was never about the children. It was about controlling teachers and reducing their collective voice, especially as a union.

Muigai started that war against teachers in 2010, when he was Finance and acting education minister.
#RejectCBC

In 2010, the British, through @DFID_UK were looking for a business model for education. Just like with Cambridge Analytica, Kenya was the testing ground.

They conducted a very unethical experiment with schools in Kakamega county.

https://twitter.com/wmnjoya/status/1185504758389456896?s=20

As the thread explains, the experiment was to pay teachers 5k, then compare the exam results of the kids they teach with the exam results of TSC unionized teachers. The game plan was to say that paying teachers human wages with benefits has no impact on education.

KNUT rightly smelled a rat and demanded that those teachers on slave wages should instead be absorbed as fulltime teachers.

That was probably when Muigai and Lydia Nzomo decided to finish the teachers for good.

Until she joined KICD (then KIE), Nzomo was a HR bureaucrat at TSC. Recall that TSC is just for managing employment matters. Issues of curriculum are supposed to be handled at KICD.

So when Nzomo moves to KICD, she is clearly out of her element.

Nzomo is unable to think like a teacher or curriculum developer; she thinks instead like a HR manager to whip teachers.

These obsession with power didnt work very well for KICD because curriculum development requires research, thinking and engagement with teachers in classrooms.

By 2013, Nzomo had been reported to the Ombudsman for abuse of office.

ombudsman.go.ke/index.php/reso…

Nzomo clearly missed her job at TSC, and in 2013, she landed a nomination to be the chair of TSC, which compensated for her failure to get the job as CEO before moving to KICD.

At the time, the press reported that it wasn't clear how she got nominated.
standardmedia.co.ke/kenya/article/…

Once she got appointed the chair, Nzomo could now appoint the kind of TSC director she wanted and continue making life difficult for teachers.
capitalfm.co.ke/news/2015/06/n…

Remember that there is a British angle to this story. The UK government hates teachers, hates unions, and was committed to help GoK crush KNUT.

Enter TPAD.

TPAD was a project sponsored by the British Council.

https://twitter.com/wmnjoya/status/1075305990814339072?s=20

Besides crushing the teachers' union, the other interest of the UK in our education system was supporting Bridge Academies. Anyone who follows the neoliberal UK gov knows that the politicians are so corrupt and use public funds to support business. globaljustice.org.uk/news/2016/apr/…

Nzomo also had fantasies of turning KICD into a book publishing monopoly. The move was resisted by book publishers, but if you recall, Amina Mohammed changed her mind about CBC when publishers applied pressure on her.

CBC is business.
kas.de/documents/2520…

So basically, Lydia Nzomo, Nancy Macharia and the UK gov share a deep dislike for teachers' unions, which stand as the last cushion preventing total autocracy.

Those who follow Anglo-American capitalism would know why.

It is common knowledge in public education circles that the English-speaking billionaires are determined to kill teachers' unions, especially after Reagan and Thatcher killed industries to dismantle workers unions.

@JessedHagopian said the same thing about the US teachers.

But unlike in the US, the Kenyan unions for teachers are not pushing back. KUPPET and KNUT are led by serving parliamentarians who have no loyalty to the teaching profession. Macharia and Nzomo also hit KNUT by hitting the teachers' pockets. businessdailyafrica.com/bd/economy/tea…

Just in case you parents think the war on teachers' unions has nothing to do with you, let me explain why the obsession with crushing teachers has everything to do with you.

You see this complaint?

https://twitter.com/amerix/status/1366634554837118976?s=20

The political and managerial class know that banning teachers unions will cause a riot, if not a revolution. So what do they do?

They say that teachers need to be held accountable or be fired.

How do you keep teachers accountable? Kid printing red feraris and other nangsenz.

So, what am I saying?

CBC is politics. It's a war by Anglo-American corporations and GoK collaborators on working adults, and your kids are collateral damage. You print these thingmajigs thinking that it's about your kids learning, when it's actually about teacher evaluations.

What do we need to do?

1. Support teachers and their unions. Demand that GoK and TSC pay the dues to the union.

2. Demand that Misori and Sossion choose this day whom they will serve. Either they resign from parliament or from their unions. They cannot serve two masters.

3. Now that Lydia Nzomo is retired, support the delinking of TSC from KICD. TSC has no business policing teachers about curriculum implementation. Teachers cannot do what they think is in the best interests of the child if TSC is breathing down their necks with threats.

4. Call for a commission of inquiry into how CBC was written, decided and implemented.

5. Call for experts and teachers to decide the best way forward, including a moratorium on CBC.

In the US, teachers and parents have joined in revolting against similar reforms.

6. Call for decolonization and transperency in the setting of education policy. It is not enough to demand Dedan Kimathi or Mekatilili's name in the curriculum. We have to demand democracy in the decision making process about curriculum.

7. Kenyans, we need an expanded education system. The reliance on schools for skill development and social mobility is suffocating our knowledge. We need arts outside the schools, libraries, the end of censorship and the opening up of the economy.

https://twitter.com/wmnjoya/status/1358906240391380998?s=20

There are two fundamental professions: healthcare and education. We know what GoK is doing to deprofessionalize medical work (importing Cuban doctors and exporting local medics to get remittances).

CBC is the equivalent in education.

If we don't fight for medical and education professions, we should expect other professions to be crushed as well. We have to see the teachers' plight as our own plight as workers.

If for nothing else, the teachers are teaching our kids. #solidarity ✊🏾
END