Jack went to sit for his KCPE science exam. When he got home his mother asked him how the exam was. “The questions were very easy mum,” he began, “but the answers were very hard.”

The government has published the Basic Education Bill, 2012 which has met with the usual hue and cry from all corners of the country due to failure to include stakeholders in its drafting. One can shrug one’s shoulders and say that it has nothing to do with one, but I reckon that every single parent, student and potential employer needs to know what the future portends for the next generation of your progeny or employees. First off, let’s call a spade a spade. Our education system has generated a culture of cutthroat advancement embedded in a sieving system that separates wheat (primary school kids who go onto high school) from the chaff (those who do not qualify to enter high school after the KCPE exams). That wheat is further sorted into premium grade white flour (those who go onto university) from the bran (those who do not qualify to enter the universities). We have socialized ourselves into a country that celebrates the children that successfully squeeze through these educational sieves and provide no respite or soft landing for those who may have had personal challenges at one particular time of their lives (the exam period), which challenges set the destiny of what society dictates their future will hold.

The result is generations of children whose life depends on two major milestones in their lives – Standard Eight and Form Four – and may the devil be damned if they fail. These are not educational milestones. These are career-limiting millstones around the necks of our children. They create generations of rote learners who do not question what is taught but absorb whatever they are told is necessary to pass. Their careers are therefore pre-designated even before they attain puberty.

So let’s apply strategic thinking here. We are planning to be a middle-income country by 2030 which is in the next eighteen years. We expect to have macro-economic stability necessary for long-term development. This presupposes that unemployment rates are in the region of ten percent and below which enables more income to be generated, more taxes to be raised, greater public spending on infrastructure and population welfare such as health, security and education…..you get my drift. Assuming we continue jumping down each other’s political throats, there’s very little that our political godfathers will do for us to grow the economy in the next eighteen years. We therefore have to think backwards from 2030 and say, what can we do to get our students to contribute positively towards our macro-economic stability goal? We have to get them to be generators of income through corporate (formal employment), entrepreneurship, sporting and artistic channels. Which entrepreneurship channel provides the most low hanging fruit? Technology. Which sporting channel provides the most low hanging fruit with the least barriers to entry? Middle and long distance running. Right. Now that we have that figured out, how do we embed this strategic goal into the present, so that it generates an outcome in eighteen years? By designing our educational policies to produce that result. Enter stage left: the Basic Education Bill 2012. In its introductory pages, Clause 4 states its guiding principles for the provision of basic education. The most critical one for Vision 2030 is Clause 4 g, which states: “encouraging independent and critical thinking; and cultivating skills, disciplines and capacities for reconstruction and development”. Trust me, after this political lot is through with all of us Kenyans, we will be in dire need of reconstruction and development. But that’s besides the point.

The drafters of the bill have created a vision here. That the future generations need to have independent and critical thinking, which will cultivate capacity for reconstruction and development. That reconstruction and development does not happen within the whitewashed, wall-to-wall carpet of corporate Kenya only. It occurs in the sun baked, cracked earth carpets of Turkana, the rolling hills and cool valleys of Iten and the wide savannah grasslands of the Athi Kapiti plains. This is where our students come from. The vast breadth of this country’s population and the future giants are to be found both inside and outside the cities. We have to give them the support base that enables them to become value creators within the limits of their inherent talent base that lies in each and every one of them. We have to create the educational system that enables continuous assessment rather than two do or die examination zones. We have to create the educational system that gets our students to keep asking “Why” and ‘Why not” and the safe space within which to receive comprehensive and reliable answers. We have to create the educational system that rewards students who are well rounded with lots of extra curricular activities on their academic records: athletics, music, cookery and drama for instance which demonstrates creativity and healthy sportsmanship. We have to create the educational system that allows students to believe that falling by the wayside after failing a do-or-die exam zone is not an option, and that using the basic skills that one has learnt should enable the student to enter into an income generating activity based on non-academic skills identified and actively encouraged during the school years.

It’s not too late to do this. If we got into this frame of mind today, the children in primary school today could benefit from a system that enables them to discover their innate talent in running, creating technology, music or art and be self employed but critical contributors to Kenya achieving its strategic middle income country goals. Creative and independent thinking is the easy question. Delivering such thinkers is the not-so-hard answer.

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Twitter: @carolmusyoka