(Im)practical Education

It’s an all-too familiar case in Kenya: a promising student passes through free primary education, goes on to secondary (high school) through the support of relatives or donors, receives satisfactory marks that aren’t quite good enough for the university, and eventually finds themselves working as a house servant or estate guard in Nairobi. The bottom line: they could have saved a lot of money by forgoing secondary if this were going to be the end result.

In Kenya, there is an abundance of labor and not enough jobs, leading to massive unemployment and a majority of Nairobi citizens in slums and severe poverty. Where is the hope in education?

I remember writing a paper for IPE (International Political Economy) based on Education as the “Weapon for Mass Development” for the Global South. I argued that education would provide opportunities for people to find the jobs they sought, and create a common language between various industries without borders. If people were going to take advantage of technological and global market advances, they would need to be educated on how to make uses of these emerging opportunities.

Now that I’m here on the ground, away from the theoretical classroom, I see a different picture. As I pass by field after field of corn, I remember studying how the World Bank encouraged a focus on cash crops for export, even as the US continues to subsidize many of these crops, thus reducing world prices as US farmers flood the markets with their product. When I see a USAID box in a school’s kitchen, I know the full meaning of the imprinted tagline, “From the American People”: The US Government bought food from US farmers, shipped the food via US shipping companies, all of which was coordinated by US-based NGOs. There’s a reason the two hands on the logo are both white.

But does the average Kenyan know this or need to know this? If I found myself working in that corn field or that school kitchen, what would this knowledge possibly DO for me?

One’s education is only so good as one can use it to take advantage of a market-niche: First, there needs to be a market, and second, one needs to specially trained to take advantage of that market.

A secondary education is just too general: everyone has one. Yet many people are unable to afford higher education, and even if they do, they often end up leaving the country for higher wages and/or living standards (a.k.a. the arguable Brain Drain). Still the economy remains largely undeveloped, with huge potential for growth… but how?

Perhaps education should be more practical; for instance, vocational training in industries such as carpentry, tailoring or construction. In many of our micro-financing projects, CWS trains single-mothers in simple and specific skills so that they can make a living. In one of our programs that sponsors students, a high school graduate is out looking for work, whereas a trained-mechanic is now taking care of his mother. There is no overnight success, yet the small steps forward are lasting ones.

Development is a process, arguably a good or bad one. Yet like any process, there is a good way and a better way to go about achieving the same results. Here’s one more idea.