civic education and the death of reform

I have written before that any education is liberating, even when it is designed to disempower the beneficiaries. Something wears onto the educated that is a by product of the process of education and that radically transforms those that get the education. Indoctrination is perhaps the kind of education that creates the worst kind of rebellion. Civic education suffers the same fate. Father Dolan in his may 11th Article “ Civic Education an Obstacle to Real Change” is irked by the fact that Civic Education has become a “cash cow” and that it is no longer able to liberate the people. I agree with him totally when he argues that Kenyans do not need information, they need hope and education for liberation in the Paulo Friere participatory educational theatre model called “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” in his famous book by the same title. Something has happened to our national psyche as a people. We feign ignorance of such things as that the Constituency Development Fund is a total failure because it has become a campaign tool wielded by people whose work is legislation and oversight –not implementation of development projects. We have insisted on MPs ‘bringing” development to the areas they represent. We have created demi-gods out of the most hapless of characters – people who were elected because of their money or because they were pointed out to constituents by the kingmakers (called ethnic party big-wigs). We have faltered as a nation and lost the way. Yet the energy with which the government and civil society partnership programme – KNICE – is being implemented, we as a nation are keen on receiving information, we want to be told over and over again what the constitution says, what our rights are, what people we should elect, how we shall elect them, how much money we shall get to the counties, how we shall participate in the governance of our country etcetera. Getting information is good, it is empowering, but it is not liberating. The power of liberation is not external, it is internal. People have to make choices, and there are only two: to continue asking for information, or to use the little information that we have to carry out such acts as may move us to the next level. This next level is the one in which we take control of the destiny of our village road, our schools, our water sources, our food crops and our livestock. These individual actions have the greatest impact when done collectively. The decision to act is a decision against status quo, it is a decision to challenge those that seem and act as invincible. I had the fortune of sharing dinner with a District Commissioner last week, and invariably our discussion went to the aspect of devolution. The DC asked me what all this noise about governors in the county was all about and went further to give me civic education. He described a governor under the new constitution as a totemic idol, somebody who will be elected to be a ceremonial functionary. I am strong, so i did not choke on the morsel i had in my mouth. In other words, he confirmed my fears that the Central Government today would do everything in its power to ensure that the National Government that gets into place after the elections totally emasculates the County Governments. This explained to me the arrogance with which President Kibaki and his henchpeople went on to appoint County Commissioners and County Education Officers. I want to be told who is giving the President and the Prime Minister civic education on the constitution. I, on behalf of Kenyans, need an answer to this question because if there is such a person, they should be fired. Fired and thrown to jail. Not for giving the wrong information to the President and Prime Minister (because there is no way of establishing this) but for continuing to give them information when they are acting against the spirit of what they promulgated. The kind of education that the President and the PM get is stifling them, tying them to high handed practices of their predecessors in the Executive, making them look unwilling to change: this is bad education, it is education that is killing reforms. What information do we give Kenyans on Police reforms when a raft of laws have been enacted but have not been operationalised. What information do we give Kenyans when land laws have been enacted but not operationalised. What information do we give to Kenyans when Chapter six of the Constitution of Kenya is so clear yet it has blatantly been ignored by everyone of our leaders. What information do we give to our people when the Commission for Revenue allocation (CRA) is replicating the formula of sharing resources that was first proposed by the Session paper no 10 of 1965. Kenyans do not need information or education against such a rigid background where the people who have a duty to implement the new constitution are themselves either unaware of the task they have or have no sense of duty or are beneficiaries of endemic corruption and inefficiency and are forever going back to the comfort zones of the impunious constitution we had before. We need to sort the national mess first before we integrate people in governance and service delivery.