WAHOME: Debunking myth that science exams must be failed

The nearly two million Kenyan students set to sit their national examinations in December should counter the myth that sciences must be failed by watching the amazing way in which their parents, sibling and neighbours have become adept at using complex modern mobile-based technologies.

For indeed, a great technological revolution has taken place worldwide within the past few decades and impacted traditional telephony irreversibly. It looks quite unbelievable that in our lifetime, we have queued at the coinbox booth and rushed to a neighbour’s house to pick up a call. Or even sent ‘salaams’ over the radio for lack of a more immediate channel!

In my estimation, a detailed users’ manual capturing all the digital competences in the hands of a contemporary Kenyan should be fatter than A F Abbot’s Ordinary Level Physics, that Goliath of high school textbooks.

It is therefore quite remarkable how smoothly the uptake of mobile ‘literacy’ has happened, even among the most rural folk. Were it not for Kenyans’ renowned resilience, mass bootcamps would have been needed in order to bring us up to speed.

Quite recently, persuading people to talk or send their hard-earned money through curious handheld gadgets would be met with the bewilderment reserved for occult science. Right now, most Kenyan grandmas – I cite them only for maximum contrast – could give me a run for my money in any mobile phone-based money transferring ‘examination’ (pun intended).

In this new magical paperless money dispensation, proverbial old dogs— many formerly allergic to sciences—now even teach me their new esoteric tricks of ‘buying float’, ‘depleted account’, ‘e-loans’ and so on so triumphantly.

Tongue-in-cheek, I’d say that the skills of today’s average connoisseur of money transfer services are at par with what Introduction to Computing and Business Mathematics students take years to learn. Talk of a steep learning curve.

The lesson here for curriculum architects and science teachers is quite straightforward: a Pavlovian dose of relevance can make any ‘difficult’ subject likeable and exciting. I am sure the telecom companies used no fetishes to make ‘scientific’ inroads.

The thing is that, when Kenyans were ‘shown the money’, their dormant intellectual reserves automatically activated. Therefore, aligning syllabi closely with students’ most basic needs, abilities and aspirations should be the way to go. If that was the original spirit of the competency-based curriculum, I will never cast the first stone.

Irrelevant education breeds misery. Remember that archaic-sounding history lesson, Maize Farming in Ancient Mesopotamia, which Kenyan students were once forced to master under the terror of the whip? It is now constantly and angrily mocked on social media for failing to confront Kenya’s contemporary severe droughts.

Come to think of it, could the mathematical content I teach my university students also going to be obsolete in a rapidly digitalising world?

Lecturer, Laikipia University