The word "competency" on CBC is an empty signifier. It doesn't answer the question "competency at what?" So we all come to CBC thinking that it means competency at whatever we like. That's dangerous because it means we're all expecting different things from the same concept.
I talked about that problem of hearing different things like the proverbial six blind men around an elephant. Everybody who defends CBC defends it based on what they individually think Kenyans need, rather than on what the curriculum actually means.
The founders of "competency education" two centuries ago were industrialists who were clear what they wanted: workers with skills in the area of employment and nothing else. No critical thinking, no social knowledge. That's why American educators rejected it. 3 times.
But in Kenya, everything Kenyans hate about the school system is supposedly addressed through competency. So when I say "that is not what competency educational does," they think I'm saying that kids don't need what they think kids need.
In fact, many Kenyans heard competency to mean the nice things Sir Ken Robinson said about education. I suspect that even @KICDKenya was duped to believe that competency was that. No matter how much evidence I presented, Kenyans couldn't hear it.
And that's actually how bullshit and public relations work. People manipulate language to tell you what you want to hear while actually presenting something else that you would most likely refuse if it was presented to you in plain words.
Ultimately, the belief that government is saying what you want it to say is the fundamental problem. People believe the government is fundamentally driven by goodwill, especially when it comes to education. Until that changes, people will contine to accept snake oil as education.
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