Kenya's Education System is Wanting

When I was growing up the world (be careful here because my world was very tiny) ganged against my wish to pursue the kind of subjects I really wanted. Teachers always told us about the need and importance of ‘science.’ To them science meant empirical sciences, more specifically Chemistry, Physics and Biology with their cousin Mathematics. They openly discouraged us (especially boys, of course due to deeply embedded gender biases and violence) from taking subjects such as history and social studies labeling them ‘za wasichana’ (subjects for girls). So to be a boy (a man enough you know) you needed to study physics, Chemistry etc. That is how the world started destroying our foundations and unfortunately we had many futures ruined at that very stage as many brilliant youngsters were herded into studying things they may not have wanted; many hated school, others dropped out and others went on to go into wrong careers etc. While growing up, I was always curious about why my dad ‘hated’ President Moi so much. My dad was a teacher (and that was bad news for those of us who know what it meant growing in the village where your dad is also your teacher). That is a story for another day. I am talking of a puzzle because in school we always sang in praise of Moi. Being a dictator that he was, kids had to be indoctrinated to think of Moi as some sort of super human. In fact, in my language Moi could be referred to as ‘Omonyene riroba’ (owner of the soil/land) and therefore we could sing and dance to songs like ‘Tawala Kenya Rais Moi’ (Rule Kenya President Moi) etc and then drink ‘Moi's free milk’ (famous maziwa ya nyayo). Now that Kenya was the world to us, coming to think of a man who had cows that could produce milk to feed all children in the whole country was certainly out of the world. So, Moi was a god to us. But remember there was my puzzle. In school we could sing Moi's praises and dad had no problem with it but at home while listening to the radio, my dad could curse and speak many bad things about Moi. So, I was always curious to understand why was that but you see there was no opportunity and possibility for me to do it until I was all grown. Perhaps, if I knew the truth about Moi early enough, I could have aspired and worked towards becoming a better politician, even a President may be, so as to correct Moi’s wrongs?! But you see I have spent sufficient time losing myself in search or my life’s true calling because of faulty foundation. Be very careful with people like William Ruto, who, even in this era are talking about the need to focus on what they call ‘science’ claiming other subjects e.g. social sciences are less important and should even be abolished. Ruto is a product of a faulty system of education in Kenya. Imagine if our education system actually allowed the children to identify and study what they liked from early age and teachers were there to guide them through towards achieving their (children's) chose goals?