Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha seemed to have been under renewed pressure to abolish boarding secondary schools when he came out this week to declare that at the moment, this is an issue that shouldn’t bother anyone. Sentiments against boarding children seem to erupt every year when the implications of the rising costs to parents arise. However, it is rare that the parents themselves are asked what they think; the answers could be surprising.
Closing down boarding facilities also routinely comes up as a solution whenever secondary students run amok and burn down their schools. The proponents of this theory argue that this mass hysteria would not be so prevalent. What such “experts” fail to do is to provide empirical evidence that when children are set free to do as they wish, they turn out to be better citizens, or that restricting them to an environment where they can be closely supervised harms their development as productive adults.
On the contrary, it is possible that allowing youths too much freedom can damage their psychological development, turning them into social misfits who find it difficult to relate with one another, or to work as members of a team in later life. Discipline instilled early in an institution of learning can, and does, help in situations that call for individual problem-solving skills in later life, which rarely ever happens in a home environment where most of the sticky issues are taken care of by others.
Many parents know there is really no harm in making young people undergo a few hardships in early life, the best way to prepare them for the exigencies of life when on their own. But of course, boarding life can be severely spartan. Cold showers in the morning, inadequate rations, diets that often offend the palate and mandatory study hours all conspire to make it less than ideal. But back in the day, we didn’t mind all these.
Everyone has fond memories of his or her childhood, as well as others that were less pleasant. In the early years, most schoolboys were infested with vermin regardless of the socio-economic status of their families. In retrospect, one can understand why this was so, for many of us firmly believed that washing our clothes and bodies on any other days but weekends was a totally unnecessary indulgence. Strangely, very few youths ever caught diseases of any kind except the occasional abdominal pains brought about by eating almost anything. Today, in matters of personal hygiene, things are quite different.
Also, during the primary school years, schoolchildren knew how to trek. In some cases they ran barefoot to school, back home for lunch, and then back to school.
Escape squalid conditions
The only time they would have loitered was in the evenings, but then they couldn’t do that either, considering the chores awaiting them at home. There were cows to feed milk, gardens to weed, and then home-work.
Is it any wonder those who qualified for secondary education believed they were about to enter paradise?
It is entirely possible that those who tried hard to excel in exams did so merely to escape the drudgery at home. Today, our children have been so coddled they want to stay home, watch TV, post stuff with smart-phones, apply make-up, pare their nails and go on sleepovers with their pals on weekends, fully aware that at home the house-helps will clean their clothes while their parents provide splendid meals which they do not have to prepare or cook.
Of course, most of this is gross generalisation. Very few families have the means to spoil their children, and indeed, in these dire economic times, it would be wrong to suggest that the boarding secondary school is in danger of becoming an anachronism. Thousands, maybe millions, of children would give all they own to gain admission in such an institution where they will escape their squalid conditions and join communities of learners. It is, therefore, surprising, that even some educationists want to do away with boarding secondary schools.
It is true the number of boarding schools is constant while that of day schools is rising. According to Prof Magoha, there are 4,000 boarding secondary schools, which is a mere fraction of the number of day schools, many of which were started by parents in the 1980s to accommodate the huge number of pupils who could not board. Known as Harambee schools, they definitely filled a huge gap. Unfortunately, to this day, they rarely produce university material for obvious reasons – the government cannot do more than pay teachers seconded there, and parents have to provide everything else.
Instead of agitating for the disbandment of boarding schools, which have worked very well as centres of academic excellence, maybe the parties concerned should seek ways to bridge the gap between such institutions and the less-endowed ones that cannot shine due to lack of the necessary infrastructure and other essential facilities. This country cannot continue forever with two education systems, one for children of the rich and another for children of the poor.
