The width between rails of the standard Britain and its colonies railroad line is four feet eight and one half inches. This might seem like an odd bit of trivia, but this precise measurement and perfect fittings pique curiosity.
According to Boyd Clarke and Ron Crossland in The Leader’s Voice, the railroad system were first build by the British, who already and been doing so in their home country and Europe for many years. They brought their knowledge and skills of a successful enterprise to the “ New World ” using the same tools and measures that had worked for them in the “Old Country.” But again, how did they come up with such an odd number?
It seems that when Britain was ruled by Imperial Rome in about A.D. 100 the primary means of transportation was by chariot. So many chariots had traversed the countryside that they had made deep groves in the carefully build Roman roads. In later centuries as the Britain were building wagons, they were forced to match the span between the wheels of wagons and horse-drawn carriages to the width between the grooves left by the Roman Chariots or else the wheels would break. The standard width between chariot wheel and then, later, wagon wheels was four feet and one half inches. The British Railway Constructors reasoned that it that were the standard width measurement between wagon wheels, why not do the same with rail trucks?
But why did the Romans choose that width in the first place? Because after much trial and error, they found that four feet eight and one half inches best fit the width of the two horses working side by side to pull a chariot. Using that width made sense to them, and it worked well.
In many ways modern education is built around the same premise; if it worked well before, then, why not do it the same way now?
Current educational calendars, for example, are built around agrarian cycles. Although agriculture is not the method by which the majority of families earn their living today, schools still begin after the summer harvest and ends about planting time. That schedule has remained the same for decades. So, too, many of the basic academic courses offered in today’s classrooms, such as English literature, Chemistry, Biology, History and so forth, have remained unchanged. We have tweaked the delivery methods of these subjects, but the basic concepts of education have changed little over time.
It’s from this concept that Kenyan education finds its self offside from the realities in the dynamic job market. Institution of learning seem to crawling from the past traditional set of education, as the job market swings in response with the demand of ides, innovations, technology, goods and services needed in the market now, not then.
“When the curriculum is left to reside in the past double cost ensures,” Say Karen Maina a Masters student in one of the U.S.A. Universities, adding, “one acquires knowledge that is absolute with what is required in the market – thus he or she has to be retrained in the job to fit into its demand.”
Karen is of the idea that institution of learning should be aggressive to model their curriculum with what’s relevant, applicable and contextually appropriate and needed in the job market.
She extrols that this is the secret weapon that the Asian Tigers used and developed countries are using by integrated higher education curriculum with the industry and market needs.
Enock Sang a secondary school Mathematics and Physics teachers who schooled in Malaysia, gives an example of an “ignorant” debate that arose with the use of calculators in secondary school: “Some educationalist up to date believe that one is only a good mathematician if he/she can only master the concepts manually – but go the technological power houses - countries they have integrated technology as a tool for learning, as it’s applicable in the industry,” he says.
The argument is not doing away with the curriculum of past years, rather a challenge to add innovation and technological values to such a curriculum to meet the present and predictable future demands. Since technology has pushed the world into a global village those educational systems that are not matching with the steam of the day will continue to lag behind and the stiff job market competition will lender its graduates disadvantaged.
It’s from this back drop that president Barrack Obama decreed in his inauguration speech: “We will restore science to its rightful place and wield technology’s wonders….We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories . And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demand of a new age.”
This is not the American challenge alone, but Kenyan too, to transform its educational system to match the global trends: Its students and graduates honed with intellectual capital and appropriate technology to conquer existential poverty, diseases, wanting leadership and hunger.
For long majority of Kenyan have lived with the nation that education’s crown is the attainment of papers to enable one acquire adjacent job, huge salaries and palatial home. The bag of gold is the tangling carrot for them to endure the bitter roots of education while forfeiting to mine it is clay of wisdom.
So, masses of Kenyan are running to “Universities, with declining quality and low level intellectual inspiration, are hardly encouraging,” writes Macharia Munene, in his article Education Sector Needs Overhaul, adding: “As Universities concentrate on commercial undertaking in pursuit of big money, some behave like conveyor belts for “degrees”. Allergy to “intellectual stimulation, exploration of ideas, and search for new knowledge has crept into them.”
But the challenge goes deeper, raising more questions than answers in regard to Kenyan education – why aren’t the graduates making breakthroughs that can solve perennial and penitent problem facing the country. Yes, 46 years down the line with all the pool of educated Kenyan, basic problems have not yet been scratched as we are in the look out of the Kenya we want.
For Philip Emeangwali who has been dubbed as a father of the Internet, reasons that African education has maintained its traditional form to extend that technology is widening the gap between the rich and the poor countries. “African’s inability to realize its potential and embrace technology has left it at the mercy of the west,” he said in the African Diaspora Conference in Tueson , Arizona .
Kenyan education has afforded to give many answers to the challenges of Kenya as a nation since independence, but it’s wise for it to raise intelligent questions, basic and complex. Not only how it will meet its mission here but in the global arena; indeed it has come far, yet it has miles and miles to travel to catch up with the rest of the world.
As the Kenya-Uganda railway retains the British precise measurement of yore, it’s regrettable that our educational system too, that was build in the “best fit” of the agrarian cycles still persist with minor improvements. Major ones are needed: Blending dynamic market demand in every nerve of learning.
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