Thread by @wmnjoya

A few weeks ago, I did this experiment to see if Kenyans would react the way I suspected that they would.

Unfortunately, they did not disappoint.

My criteria for assessment of counties was actually silly. I looked for two fascinating governors, then put in the last one for the sake of it. I wanted to see if people would accept to work within the idea of ranking.

And they did.

Very few saw that I was driving at something beyond the rankings. Most people fell in line. They discussed the criteria of rankings, one or two asked my qualifications to rank , but most basically accepted my rankings and just disputed the positions.

I wanted to show the power of rankings and numbers on conversation and the way we think, and on what we consider valuable.

Rankings are how the West has kept us in their grip. They announce rankings, we Africans fall for them, then it becomes our goal to improve our ranking.

This desire to fall in a line, to fit within a hierarchy, drives exams, elections, competitions, everything, and is what destroys our education, politics and other social services. We are unable to think of a different way to value human endeavors.

That's how CBC was sold to us. OECD invented some frivolous rankings. Governments and politicians started to panic that their education systems were not ranked first. When they asked how to improve their rankings, OECD gave them the magic solution: competency based curriculum.

Kenya then joined the rat race in implementing CBC, even when other countries had figured out in 2016 that the race for competency was a hoax and had started pulling back.

And that's just one example.

We're so used to thinking in terms of who's first, and we accept that the first in any ranking deserves praise and all the social advantages possible. We never ask who's ranking, what's the context, is this ranking worthwhile and the implications beyond the ranking itself.

This is just one of the serious narrative problems in Kenyan public life. Due to our system which denies opportunities to the majority and allows excess social advantages to those at the top, we're so fixated on ranking that we ignore context, thinking or any other ideas.