Whatever way education is defined, the bottom line should be that it enables man to generate ideas, to free himself up, and to make the society better.
Education should liberate and save man from imminent self-destruction. Variations notwithstanding, this definition constitutes the core.
Be that as it may, there is no better place to start the transformation than to put emphasis on the university curriculum.
In modern times, the university is the watershed of ideas that shape the world. If you toured and lingered around Kenyan university lecture halls, you risk assuming that the community is tired of education. Far from it. We are interested.
A few years ago, there was a concerted effort to popularise science courses. A good initiative that targeted transforming the country into a modern scientific society. Yet today, we are stuck in the very position we wanted to move away from.
Competing philosophies have sought to establish dominance in our education system. Today, liberal arts seem small and appear to have been overtaken by science. As a result, our minds rushed to orient themselves to “modernity.” It is true we cannot transform without such radical moves. Yet we cannot have a strong country if there is no quality and relevant education for the young people.
All this can be confusing without looking up and reengineering the way forward. Depending on the country’s commitment to aspirations as a nation and the reality on the ground, we can offer courses that stretch from liberal arts to the sciences.
Now is the time to go back to the basics so that Kenya does not just train learners to seek solutions to known problems, but to step up and educate for more complex problems and come up with solutions.
There is a practical need to convince university professors that a course is attractive not because it is science-oriented. They need, in the regular academic programme reviews together with the regulator, anchor liberal arts in the principles of modernity.
What is important is that we do not tie education purely to jobs but think about the demands of life and social goals because education which is inclined to securing employment alone withers once the goal is attained.
A good education should help the learner to arise above the hurdles that hurt their beautiful dreams found in ‘When I Grow Up’ line.
Liberal arts courses will encourage learners to acquire the right attitude as they pursue careers, they will speak with grace and write with clarity. They will understand the demands of the day as well as cultures other than our own. Liberal arts education will also enhance the learners’ ability to appreciate the cultures, the values and the beliefs as much as where they are sourced; and humanely put these values to use.
The kind of education here described will enable the learner to explore human experience in all its richness and ambiguity.
At present, Kenya suffers from massive malpractices because of the failure to inculcate the basic requirements for the survival of a nation. If not doctors, then it is the engineers. If not teachers, then it is the managers.
Lawyers who should help the courts to establish the truth are accused of conspiring against their very cause. We have failed to appreciate the core values important for meaningful private and public life. Despite the many graduating every year, Kenya’s manpower is leaking. We need to realise that a society is more than work and it is happiness more than money.
University education should advance civilisation because it generates thinkers.
Recently, there has been a massive corruption in public offices and a spate of homicides even among the young generation. The most probable reason for the rise in these statistics could be that we have become irrational, intellectually deficient, and desperate. We, therefore, imagine that death is the answer to all our problems. It is here that liberal arts courses gain significance.
Liberal arts do add a dimension of breadth, beauty, and significance to life. Lest we forget, science in its narrow sense cannot self-sustain. Science is practically an empirical process so that it follows an ordered process to arrive at the truth. However, it has been noted that those great scientific discoveries are more often than not, modelled on the scientist’s vision and his sense of the mystical.
Unfortunately, these questions are being pushed aside by hasty judgments for newness. Nonetheless, man can only confront confusion and nurture nobility and the glorious potential of humanity through liberal arts.
What is important is that Kenya’s university curriculum generates men and women who are distinguished in their areas of specialisation and committed to living to the true Kenyan spirit.
So, in this century in which technological advancement is at an all-time high, it would make sense to reassert the role of liberal arts so that our education system affirms what is big and worthy of pursuit.
