Recent reports in the national papers, declared to the shock of many commentators of a liberal disposition that a good number of Kenyans believe that the banning of caning of students in schools has led to deterioration in discipline standards.
But is it so shocking that parents and teachers in Kenya, and the wider society should hold such strident views? Hardly. Ours is a society that frowns on the use of non-violent or non-threatening means of expressing disagreement as weak, a society where speaking out on issues of dissatisfaction is treated as treasonous and confronted with physical force at all levels, whether in government, in our churches, in parliament, in our local councils, in our households and in our educational institutions. Ours is a society where the authorities are experts at playing deaf even when fires are burning, what language do people employ to be heard to get noticed? Violence. And our children are definitely all ears for this lesson.
It is a reflection of our Kenyan society that students can’t voice discontent, real or imagined, without resorting to violence. When they look around, they see a society that functions much in this fashion. Malcontents roam the streets throwing stones, beating up figures of authority, shouting down merchants of peaceful protests, burning up shops, evicting neighbours, dodging teargas, killing and maiming. So why are we surprised when school teenagers, volatile already due to the upheaval in their adapting bodies, ape the model of their society?
What is most surprising is actually our hypocrisy and failure to see our participation in this culture. If you asked the same teachers who beat their students to within inches of their lives, or wife-beating husbands who regularly dispatch their wives to hospital, whether it ought to be permissible for the police to beat up protestors with canes, you will get answers that evince an appreciation of human rights and the importance of the law. Yet, when it comes to our children we believe that the cane is the antidote to bad behaviour, even a fortification against a preternatural utundu that has to be kept in check. Our youth, our children are not stupid, they see and learn.
The calls for the rolling back of legislation on the use of corporal punishment in schools is part of a wider debate on our national attitude towards conflict resolution, an attitude which also finds expression in our schools through the institutions of bullying and riots. While at this debate, we may care to remember that your average commuter has to fight his matatu conductor to get back what change is due to him, the housewife has to yell at the butcher to get her portion of meat up to the one kilogram mark she is paying for, they both have to wrestle with passengers to get into buses and are compelled into fights with their next door neighbours to turn down the volume of his ghastly radio at two hours past midnight. We must not neglect mention of the house wife that gets beaten up for noticing that her hungry children have a father who is constantly reeking of alcohol, or the church pastor on whom many hands are laid as he struggles to explain the congregation’s accounts, or the clan members in fisticuffs over where to bury the now much beloved brother who fell in Nairobi, it’s kicks, punches, jabs, blows everywhere.Your browser may not support display of this image.
I was shocked a month ago to watch a group of high school age kids, all in uniform stalk a prefect from the Wallmatt supermarket on Haile Sellasie/Parliament Road area and knock him unconscious with one well aimed blow using a metal pipe to the back of his head. One of the urchins was caught by the public after a short chase, but that was no aid to their victim who lay unconscious on the pavement near Parliament, blood oozing out of his nose, In that moment you had to think of this poor child’s parents thinking their child safe while he lay there half-dead. What daredevils still bring children into this Kenya? Walking away, I passed on to Tom Mboya Road. Deeply disturbed and immersed in thought, I accidentally stepped on a hawkers tomatoes there. Up in a flash, she pushed me shouting obscenities out loud. In a flash, a gang of young men surrounded me threatening to beat me up, to as is often the case with Kenyan violence, teach me a lesson. I said a polite sorry and offered to pay for the upended vegetables, but the woman would hear none of it and went on shouting as though calling more punishment on the impudent stranger, and the young men responding in kind, her energy inducing hot currents in them.
As much a product of this society as the next man, I reflexively reached deep within me, into that part that goes mad. I exploded and gesturing and shouting in Gikuyu for them to dare touch me again, quickly took on fearsome Mohamed Ali poses that insisted on a fight. Just as quickly, tempers were calmed, ‘Its alright, son of our house,’ there is no need for you to pay, it’s okay
That is how it works here, every such incident only confirming the already prevalent attitude. Show your fangs, show your claws. Don’t and you will get eaten alive in this jungle.
Before we prescribe solutions to the indiscipline of our youth, we may want to consider our societal psyche and how this is reflected in the attitudes of our youth towards authority and power structures. Watch news for the whole week of this week, count the number of minutes Kenyan politicians, never in their element governing, spend on vitriol, threats of violence, name-calling and confrontational attitudes. No wonder then that teachers and students understand power and discipline the way they do.
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