Let’s nip the toxic anti-education narrative in the bud lest we perish

It is only in Kenya that an actuarial science graduate with a first-class honours degree can have it so rough, so humiliating and so damned disgraced as to live in a slum.

The story of Kelvin Ochieng’ is a shame and a great embarrassment to a government that purports to put its youth first.

DISHEARTEN

If anyone reading this column can help Ochieng’ leave this country for a master’s degree in some Ivy league university in the US, please do. While he is pursuing his course in Harvard or Brown University, I hope that Ochieng’, with his brilliance, is tapped by a Silicon Valley behemoth who will pay him an eye-watering salary and use his brain for the benefit of the US economy. This is because in this country, we do not only undermine brilliance, but we also have a government that eats its young.

While Ochieng’s story was trending, the good old dangerous narrative that is usually told to graduates not to expect too much after school cropped up. It is a tired and threadbare cliché woven and peddled by the usual suspects who are often the ne’er-do-wells in society, the ones who barely passed their exams and now have dedicated every waking moment to discourage, dishearten and dampen the spirits of young Kenyans who have worked so hard in school.

I was particularly amused by a Facebook post by a certain ‘CEO’ who began the ‘Letter to Kenyan Graduates’ with the damning, bold and capitalised sentence, ‘THERE ARE NO JOBS’. This was followed by a long and boring tirade of how young Kenyans should dissociate themselves with ‘entitlement’ to jobs and how they should accept even the menial jobs because apparently, he knows a guy who knows a guy that started out as a messenger and ended up as a MD.

First of all, a CEO with dubious credentials, including a suspicious ‘honorary doctorate’ from a non-existent institution, who brandishes the title ‘Dr’ and hangs his degrees on his padded government office wall has no business advising a first-class honours graduate.

Number two – and the point of this rant – is that I am tired of people telling young Kenyans that there are no jobs and therefore they should not bother too much with pursuing a good education. It is a flawed argument; it promotes and supports a culture of ignorance and mediocrity over and above undermining the transformative power of education. So a government official of a high social standing – a CEO – should be the last person adding salt to this injurious situation of joblessness in the country.

DANGEROUS

I am not surprised that the anti-education narrative is being peddled by a government official seeing as it is this cavalier disregard for education that has led to having a class three dropout appointed Cabinet Secretary.

There is nobody who respects people who have achieved a lot in life without an education like I do. I mean, I profoundly admire people who have managed this life without papers, qualifications or a skill set and survived only through their shrewdness.

However, such people are the exception, not the norm. This is why such toxic anti-education narratives are so dangerous to a society teeming with young people who form nearly three quarters of the population.

When the media tells the story of a young, jobless graduate and people of influence take this story and twist it to push a certain lie – that education is not worth the effort – it sends a very dangerous message to thousands of students pursing a degree. Such stories become a perfect breeding ground for that deadly ‘why bother’ attitude among the youth.

The truth is, and this is a fact, that education is good. A good or quality education is better. Quality education coupled with shrewdness and a business instinct is the best. While the CEO with a fishy doctorate is entitled to his own opinion, I am afraid he is not entitled to his own facts. And you cannot argue with facts.

INFLUENCE

Instead of demeaning education and discouraging graduates from focusing on their areas of interest, we need to ask ourselves, those of us in positions of influence, how are we contributing towards ending the state of unemployment?

Rather than imploring actuarial science graduates to take up menial jobs – after years of blood, sweat and tears – ask yourself what you have done to ensure the next generation of graduates do not suffer the same fate.

Nobody goes to school, puts in hours of study and applies themselves to a singular focus with the aim of becoming a messenger or a cleaner. Not that these are not respectable jobs. But we must tell the facts as they are; the problem is not a bunch of entitled graduates but a society that has no regard to education – and that’s a dangerous place to be in.

Ms Chege is the director, Innovation Centre, Aga Khan University Graduate School of Media and Communications; [email protected]