Thread by @wmnjoya

Many Kenyans don't understand these simple principles about education:

1. Education is a human enterprise that is bigger than a school. Education is simply the process by which a society collectively creates and shares knowledge through creativity, work and sharing

2. This means there are multiple sources of education like culture, media, religion, sports, work, discussions...anywhere where people are meeting and doing something together, there is education

3. The problem of education in Kenya is that the hegemon institutions -. GoK, church, media and pirate sector - have crushed alternative spaces for education OUTSIDE the school to maintain control over what Kenyans think and know.

4. These four institutions, together with the middle class, control what we know and create because that's how they maintain power. The power of these institutions depends on our ignorance, rather than on our knowledge. And middle class earns a living by being paid gatekeepers.

5. How is education controlled? GoK passes laws to say that you cant perform a certain task unless you have a certain certificate. This creates a cut throat competition to acquire certificates, rather than knowledge, since your knowledge doesn't matter without a certificate.

6. After that, businesses called schools are built around offering the certificate. They use the language of offering skills and knowledge, but ultimately, you pay them for a certificate. Some certificate holders leave with skill to do the work, but a significant number do not.

7. So no amount of playing around with the curriculum of the school system will improve education as long as education is defined so narrowly. We need to expand ways of learning skills and guaranteeing that people who have gone through a process have those skills.

8. But go back to tweet 2. How are those spaces - sports, culture, publishing, green spaces to meet, faring?

Sports is underfunded and young people exploited. Culture is heavily censored by Ezekiel Mutua, propaganda from media and pirate sector, the church condemnation.

8b. Land for us to meet is grabbed. Cultural festivals and research have no funding and are undermined from within. In Nairobi, dominant cultural spaces belong to embassies. School curriculum is so tightly controlled from Jogoo House. In unis, updating curriculum takes 5 years.

9. So when I criticize media, church, business and goverment propaganda against education, I am not defending schools as the ultimate source of knowledge. I am criticizing the CONTROL and narrow definition of education by the hegemon.

9. When media says that education is useless, they are not saying what you hear, which is that school does not guarantee financial success. What the media is REALLY saying is that we must have an exclusive education, and many Kenyans going to school destroys the boys club.

10. So no need to flaunt "success" despite failure in school. What I am saying is that the school system needs to be decentered, and we need funding for other sites of knowledge production like culture, museums, sports, public libraries, apprenticeships, work accomplishment etc.

11. Our greats in sports should be national leaders, their names should be on stadia. Great medical pioneers like Kalebi should have been establishing medical institutions and informing policy. Working with these greats alone should be the equivalent of a certificate.

12. But it is not in the interests of our decadent political class, civil servants and middle class to have an open education. What job would Mutua do if we expanded culture and education? He thrives and is paid to dharau us. Muigai would not be anxious if Kenyans were ignorant.

13. The key to understanding this is understanding the importance of WORK, and how our work, whether we went to school or not, feeds people who do no work and spend time making us feel small.and compete for few certificates.

That's what #MaishaKazini is about.

14. #MaishaKazini explores the history of our colonial school system and how WORK is demeaned by the government and political class. The conversations are my favorite segment because you get to hear great insights from different people about WORK.
YouTube.com/c/maishakazini

15. There's no need to whine about schools or boast about financial success if we are not going to fight for the dignity of work as a creative site of knowledge.