“The examination results confirmed my greatest fear,” says Huram (not his name), “I scored a D + (plus).” This decimal performance took Huram a back to re-examine how the streak of poor performance started biting him.
“From a personal and sincere self evaluation,” he says, “I decided to repeat.” This show him join Form Three on a decided choice of perseverance and hard work, discipline and unwavering focus.
He was determined to invest every beat of the two years fully in study, yes salvage his childhood dream of becoming a medical doctor. Indeed time proved his decision amazing – he scored an A- (minus). These show him secure a place at the University of Nairobi to pursue the coveted medical program. That was once more than a decade a go.
Huram is not alone; last year (2008) examination result testifies that: 7,067 candidates scored an E grade, 42,084 D- (minus), 53,608 D (plain) and 48,953 D+ (plus), yes even some subjects registered an improved performance within the brackets of a staggering performance, math from 15 percent to 21 percent.
“These candidates might be walking through a tunnel of life with a blurred sight into the future to have a glimpse of light at the end of it,” says Huram, “but such performance should give them a chance to evaluate immeasurable opportunities at their disposal to redeem the vast future a head of them.”
Huram, a doctor, now serving in one of the district hospitals says that performance hangs in a matrix of factors and thus a mosaic of out come, results.
“Let the K.C.S.E examination “failures” learn that every mistake, every fault, every difficulty, conquered, becomes a steppingstone to better and higher things. It is through such experiences that all who ever made life worth the living have achieved success,” he says.
“Such students should not be hold up by their poor performance,” says one researcher cum educational scientist “let them pick the pieces and renew their goals using the gone years in school experiences blending with their innate talents.”
The researcher says that failure is confirmed when one settle in it without doing anything to change such station of life. “There is always a new beginning for any student notwithstanding the K.C.S.E grade scored,” he says, “an exam is a thermostat that calls one to adjust his or her self to exploit endowed potential – to size success in an identified field.”
“National exams have their rightful place in any given educational system,” the don explains but he says that students who have gained book knowledge without gaining knowledge of practical work cannot lay claim to a symmetrical education. Pointing that energy that should be devoted to various business lines should not be neglected.
“Education should not consist in using the brain alone,” he says, “it should be broad and comprehensive.”
He resonates with a professor who's a technical-educationalist at Georgia University faculty of education and engineering who says that students should go forth from our schools with educated efficiency that is not limited within the horizon of ones K.C.S.E grades.
“Students with educated efficiency are able to match into the world with acquired knowledge that is needful to success in life,” says technologist adding that diligent study is essential, so also diligent hard work.
He challenges students who are counting themselves as failure to view education as a vast sea whose dimensions are inestimable, thus those who subscribe to it return home with a gem to make his/her life worthy and meaningful.
The technical – educationalist welcomes the government’s incentives to plant well equipped village polytechnics across the country that will open window of opportunities to the masses of school leavers who can not secure a place in the existing institutions of learning.
He is of the inspiration that the industrial instruction to be given should be as bloated as the needs of the society: business studies, carpentry, and all that is comprehended in farming. “They should be prepared in blacksmithing, painting, shoemaking, and for cooking, baking, washing, mending, computing and Information Technology, and printing,” he says emphasizing that every power within our command is to be brought into this training work, that students may go forth well equipped for the duties of practical life.
“With practical training, students will be prepared to fill useful positions in many places,” he says, “adding value to home made products, setting up cottage industries, embracing entrepreneurship, creativity and innovativeness and lifting Jua Kali a notch higher.”
He concurs with a veteran philosophy of education lecture who says that the mind educated to enjoy useful labor becomes enlarged; through training and discipline it is fitted for usefulness, for it has acquired knowledge essential to make its possessor a blessing to others.
She encourages a culture of omnivorous reading to be nurtured by all. “Reading should be our culture whether one has attained an A or an E grade,” he says echoing Aldous Huxley: Every man who knows how to read has in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways he exists, to make his life full, significant, and interesting.
Moreover he says that an education that can only serve a few is wanting. “The purpose of education is to ignite the whole person, human capitalism. Yes, education is not limited to classroom set up alone – all senses of a human being should be employed to gain and advance the frontiers of knowledge and means of living,” the don says.
She dives further to the teacher student relationship which he says plays a crucial role in one’s learning and performance. “Let not teachers have favorite among the students, or give to the bright, quick students the most attention,” he says, “those who are apparently the most unpromising most need the tact and kindly words that will bind their hearts to the hearts of the teacher.”
She says that first impression should not be trusted. “Students who at first seem to be dull and slow may in the end make greater progress than those who are naturally quicker. If they are thorough and systematic in their work they will gain much that other will fail to gain. Those who form habits of patient, persevering industry will accomplish more than those of quick, vivacious, brilliant mind, who, though grasping the point quickly, lose it just readily. The patient ones, though slower to learn, will stand a head of those who learn so quickly that they do not need to study.”
Dr. Chris Hart, a scientist cum psychologist amicably put it in a talk show that success in life is not pivoted in one’s intelligence, rather, realized by individuals who are magnetized by a chosen and affirmed destiny fortified in the premise of undying passion, hard work and a arrow like focus.
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