When we walked into Maseno School many years ago, legendary principal Walter John Okumu (WJO) Amadi instilled in us two key lessons.
The first was that we had come alone, and would bear individual responsibility for any misconduct. Therefore any group mentality had no place in the school.
The second was more important than the first. We were made aware that Maseno was not just a school, but represented a deep history, pedigree, impeccable culture and a stellar cast of alumni whose footsteps we were lucky to walk. We were, therefore, just a fraction of the whole catalogue of items that made up an institution dating back to 1906, before even our grandfathers were born.
With that background, we knew we walked on hallowed grounds, and the thought of destroying any of the infrastructure in the school was totally alien.
It turns out the current generation of students — the one christened “Kamama” and “Kababa” — has no qualms about setting all that on fire. Until recently, the idea of school disturbances, arson and attendant criminal acts, were generally accepted as belonging to “those small schools”.
But in the widespread insanity of recent school fires, premier public schools with immaculate traditions went up in flames too. It didn’t make sense.
It is taken for granted that the children who go to top schools have higher ambitions and sharper minds, enough to understand the near-sanctity of their schools. There is, however, an intriguing concept to the good old individual responsibility.
Many schools in the modern era have installed CCTV cameras in the compounds. So culpability for these fires is easier to investigate than during the times we went to school.
The problem is, even where the few bad apples have been identified, the entire school’s student community is made to pay for the damages. I don’t know much about child psychology, but I wonder how effective the “you came here alone” is if students know that it doesn’t matter who the perpetrators are, they’ll all be made to pay.
Beyond just paying, a more disturbing trend has emerged where on reopening of schools closed after these cases of arson, parents have been made to bear the brunt of the supposed disciplinary measures.
I have seen queues outside locked school gates, where the “cleansing” ceremonies look eerily like colonial-style Mau Mau identification parades. And if you thought that was bad enough, parents have come from those parades lamenting how school managements have used these opportunities to demand payment of all fees arrears, including unofficial levies charged outside the approved ministry fees guidelines.
Picture this for a moment: A dormitory goes up in flames. The school management and board inform the parents what the value of the damage is, and how much each parent is to pay. On top of that, there is no readmission of your child, if all fees arrears and extra levies (usually given fancy names like “Motivation”, “Building Fund” or “Special Charges”) are not completely settled.
Simply put, the burnt dormitory will be built, the bad apples will be expelled and school fees and other levies will be cleared. For parents watching from outside a locked gate, they must wonder if the burning of the school was a bad thing in the eyes of school management to begin with!
In the ideal world, crime is solved first by investigating the motive, and second by finding out who benefits the most from it. I am sure there are school tender merchants and suppliers for whom the burning of schools was the jackpot season.
In the modern era, nearly all schools have parents’ WhatsApp groups for all the classes. The official position is that these groups enable teachers and school management to communicate with parents, share interactive sessions for gauging performance and solving problems, as well as announcing events.
But a casual glance at most of these groups will show that the conspiracy of silence is so dominant that what remains unsaid is the most important part. Many parents feel that speaking up in these groups may get their children targeted at school, and in this era where getting school slots is harder than entering heaven, not many wish to risk.
Therefore, when it comes to illegal school levies, poor management, incessant arson and unfair treatment of the parents who pay for all of the above, the default setting is silence.
I don’t need to remind you that the net effect of this is the current blame game.
It is easy to make roadside declarations about how these teenagers will not be allowed to rejoin any school, or that their records will follow them forever, especially with the deployment of the National Education Management Information System — so obsessively quoted by CS George Magoha. However, we will not solve the schools crisis when only one part of the stakeholders issues decrees and threats all over.
The easier narrative last month was that the children were burning schools so that they could be given a mid-term break. But as at the time of writing this, some of the schools where the break had been granted were going up in flames again.
What could have suddenly triggered the resilient desire in the students to burn their schools, and are we being naïve blaming it all on students?
Well, we certainly can’t get that answer when school management locks itself in, keeps parents out, and the two treat each other like belligerents in a perennial conflict. At least one of those schools remains closed indefinitely as parents and management square it in court, with no knowledge of when the matter will be resolved, given the notoriety of our courts in delays.
Clearly, there is a communication breakdown, and an insane desire to lump parents with their children as the “accused”. Parents must decline that invitation.
I have recently seen a joke on social media that goes something like: “Dear teachers, we don’t call you to come home over the holidays to help us discipline the children when they misbehave. So when we hand them over to you, please deal with them without calling us!”
Back to my original point about the history and pedigree of some of these schools, as well as the concept of individual responsibility.
I don’t know where we will take the children to teach them that some of the buildings they are setting on fire were built by White missionaries long before Independence. And they stand there because generations of students owe their whole lives to them, and to those who sacrificed to have those schools there.
Neither do I know what it will take schools management and the Education ministry to realise that for as long as everyone pays for the damage, the lack of individual responsibility for crime in schools breeds the same herd mentality they seek to weed out.
But the constant arson is also a pointer to budding criminal networks in the schools environment.
In this scenario, parents are a critical partner in solving the problem, not part of those who need to be punished.
