Our children should not be ensnared in a perfection trap

Life is not perfect, so why should grades be? This should be the motto in all Kenyan schools. To tell this story properly, one needs to know the meaning of the word mathogothanio. It’s a Kikuyu word that can be loosely translated to chaos. 

My daughter learnt to say mathogothanio long before she could construct full, intelligible sentences. She was three at the time and in baby class. The word represented what she feared the most: failure. Like most children her age, she couldn’t colour within prescribed lines. 

But the Kenyan education system is obsessed with making clones of learners. Those who don't fit within the mould are, well... mathogothanio. Her tutor, a victim of a system that also measures a teacher’s worth by the number of perfect scores they produce, had managed to introduce her to shame. 

My daughter’s fear of failure made her hold up each picture she had coloured to ask me if she had coloured mathogothanio. My reassurances that her colouring was perfect, beautiful and special were met with scepticism. She had been an expert mathogothanio colourer for too long to be fooled by my excessive praise. Besides, a teacher's praise or rebuke at this stage of a child's growth is more precious than a parent's. 

I would be crushed seeing her crestfallen whenever she did not get a star in her book like her classmates. She continued her mathogothanio colouring, with her teacher insisting, "She's just not grasping the concept of colouring within the lines." 

Mass failure headline

Few parents can resist the urge to see their children thrive. You could say that I was possessed by the mathogothanio spirit. Parents are regularly forced to make the horrible choice between having a happy, well-rounded child and a wounded, academically compliant one. 

The shock of mass failure headline in the Daily Nation on Wednesday was about mathogothanio. The Nation reported that a majority of Standard Eight candidates scored below the 50 per cent pass mark in last year’s school-based tests. 

The education system deceives children into believing that their worth can be measured by how perfect their scores are. Let’s forget for a moment that the Ministry of Education played musical chairs with the school opening date, leaving stakeholders anxious and confused.

Let’s talk about how children carry the stain of shame from kindergarten into high school, because of a mathogothanio education system that promotes perfect grades. That’s why anyone who scored  ‘D’ or ‘E’ in school but still made it in life (direct translation: nice job or thriving business, nice car) is still a newsworthy story to date. We ask ourselves how “academic dwarfs” commandeered the ‘A’ student’s life. 

May the story of “mass failure” be a powerful reminder that we must teach our children that perfect grades are an inadequate measure of their worth and intelligence. 

Miss Oneya comments on social and gender topics. @FaithOneya; [email protected]