I spent this morning in a meeting with EMACK, or Education For Marginalized Children in Kenya. There were a few facts and ideas that I thought worth posting and drawing from. First of all, EMACK services the most marginalized area of Kenya: Coast Provinces (along the Indian Ocean) and the North East Provincesn (along the porous Somalian border.) So, they have some hard work cut of for them.
Because they train teachers, I was curious to know what type of pedagogy is pushed. My experience in Uganda shows that teachers simply get students to memorize material. This means students fail to develop the critical thinking abilities that get them through the real world. It looks like Kenya faces similar difficulties, since Alex Alubisia explicitly mentioned that they are trying to train teachers in not “chalk and talk” but in engaging students in their lessons. However, he mentioned that teachers applying this training is still limited. Well, he was right that this is a universal problem. Perhaps it boils down to teachers basic intuition towards teaching based on their own background and university training.
Of course, like in all areas of development, there’s a strong focus on gender. Girls are generally more marginalized than boys, particularly in Islamic cultural regions where the boy’s education often comes first. Other problems exist as well: Alex pointed out that teachers abuse or take advantage of girls (sexually and/or mentally). Breaking their confidence leads to poor grades and high drop out rates. To remedy some of these difficulties, EMACK started a Girl’s Forum which brings girls together to talk about everything from menstruation to better grades. It looks like, on request from the boys, that there will be a similar group for the other gender. I can see this being successful: being strong among a group gives individuals the choice of speaking out, with support.
They also have a somewhat unique program in the North: mobile schools. I will be visiting these, I believe, within the next few weeks. Basically, a pastoral community is equipped with camels, teaching materials and a teacher. The teacher follows the pastoral groups as they move finding water and food for their animals. An interesting effort to get kids in school.
Another thing I have been concerned about is the fact that education here doesn’t often lead to a good job – or a job at all. In Canada, if you put your mind to it, it’s possible to get an entry-level professional job after your undergraduate degree. In Kenya getting this job demands bribes and family connections.
In turn, families are not keen on sending their children to school when they see unemployed graduates. They mentioned some career counseling as a foil to this problem, but I think it really comes down to a catch-22 cycle that will be hard to break. It’s necessary to de-bloat (definitely not a word) the civil service and invest in community development, consequently creating jobs, before parents will see a point in children going to school. However, this won’t happen until Kenya has a strong(er) civil society which is built on educated young adults.