Karigo Kabui

Meritocracy Earlier this year, we saw the launch of a new roadmap for the implementation of a new curriculum in Kenya which seeks to replace the current 8-4-4 system. The new curriculum is by design, made to focus on skills —instead of knowledge. By its inception this new system is aimed at subplanting the old castelike system, with a vision in which power and privilege are allocated by individual merit, and not by social origins. Paradigm Shift The current curriculum feature eight years of primary school education climaxing at a national summative assessment which determines the secondary school one will be enroll in for the next four years. Another summative assessment graduates students from secondary school to college or university. Where they take programmes of a standard four years. A compulsory at least one nursery school year too precedes primary school education. The new system features two years in kindergarten, and six years in primary school education, and three years spread out three education levels; one secondary, and two tertiary respectively. You wonder where the summative assessments got lost at? They did not! They were replaced with continuous assessment that formed the biggest chunk of qualification credibility for graduation, merit badges, and— I'm really trying not use this term but it's inevitable— student classification. The rest of the qualification will be determined by summative assessments whose terms have been reduced. Apart from the structure, the new 2-6-3-3-3 system is going to, different from its predecessor with exclusive summative national examinations, have a series of tests that will evaluate learners at different levels and environments. Children will be assessed in competencies, and for once, hopefully kill the obsession with grades from parents, students and teachers alike. Max Planck, a German theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate wrote, "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." ~ Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers. That brings me to my point that while I'm super stoked awaiting the rollout of this new curriculum to realise it's vision, where the needs of the learner are put in front of the teacher's, and parent participation is strongly advocated for; I can't help wondering about certain things, —key things. Scarcity Pressure We seem to assume that this new education system and curriculum will result in a classless society. Fundamentally, merit is defined as intelligence quotient + effort. But in itself, meritocracy is still a system of class. Although the concept of meritocracy has existed for centuries, the term was coined by Michael Young in 1958. It defines a society governed by people selected according to merit. And my question is, how will this system ensure that unlike its predecessor, which robbed those who failed, social respect and self-respect —with extremely dire consequences having been reported—, that it will reward them with equal regard after proving having not inherited the talents and capacity for effort? And like its predecessor, –let's not trash it yet, it is what has led us to this point–, that it will offer redemption for those who fail to identify as having merited, before they graduate school. By substituting knowledge with skills, instead of complementing it with them, you kill a very important feature of knowledge. And that's repetition. And that is the stuff habits are made of! The meritocratic ideal, which is actually what we're dropping in this curriculum reform, confuses two concerns as Young understood; efficiency and the question of human worth. The same attributes that we face today in Kenya. We identified candidates to do jobs that require talent, education, effort, training and practice with the right combination of amplitude and willingness, and provide them with incentives to train and practice. This was through classifying schools, and sending the best of the previous level, identified through summative evaluation, to the institution of learning that have the best qualified teachers in performance, and the best equipment and learning support. This came from an acceptance of the fact that there is limited supply of educational and professional opportunities. Thus, ways of allocating them, some principles of selection to match people to positions, along with appropriate incentives to ensure the necessary work gets done. If we take that as the root of the current curriculum and system of education, we can then say, confidently, that it has failed to accomplish it mandate. Because that is the same point from which the new curriculum and system stems from. And if these principles of selection had been reasonably designed, we can say, if we like, that the people who meet the criteria for entering those schools or getting those jobs 'merit' those positions. Knowing The Path and Walking It Institutional desert argues that even at the highest levels of achievement, there is enormous constingency at play. That people deserve these positions because they got them by a proper application of the rules. With all factors kept constant. But in life, factors are never constant. There is varying financial abilities, modes of parenting, availability of resources, and time management. We should seek to have every child access a descent education suitable for their talents, interests and choices. The same is embedded in the vision of the new curriculum and education system, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals #4. The government has a very important and crucial role of ensuring that every child in the republic of Kenya has access to the necessary infrastructure as assumed as standard in every learning and development sphere. My father bought my siblings and I a Scrabble board and tiles when we were little. But no-one else in my primary school had any idea what that was! And unfortunately, there wasn’t room for such experiences. Young wrote, "It is one thing to appoint individual people to jobs on their merit. It is the opposite when those who are judged to have merit of a particular kind, harden into a new social class without room in it for others." And this is how the 8-4-4 system failed. To the point that the government, in 2009, extended the retirement age at a time when unemployment was highest! What this education reform seeks to do is to reduce inherited privileges, either by financial capacity to pay for educational resources, or instillation and teaching of life skills and ensure that all citizens can have the chance to develop their own special skill sets and capacities for leading a life of abundance. This will be accomplished through equipping teachers with the means to teach well, within school environments that have adequate resources for every learner. And here it is, the challenge stands tall and present. Are we ready as a country to walk that path?