Rowdy students mirror the rot in our society

Written by George Ogola

NaiSchool students after the institution was closed over a looming strike. With 300 disturbances in our schools in one month, ours is clearly a broken society July 25, 2008: In his recent Father's Day address in a Church on Chicago's South Side, Senator Barrack Obama admonished America's black fathers reminding them that fatherhood went beyond the period of a child's conception. He narrated his own story, telling his audience about the "hole in his heart" having been deserted by his father when he was only two years old. He complained about too many of America's black fathers abandoning their parental responsibilities and acting like boys instead of men. "And the foundations of our families have suffered because of it... There's a reason why our families are in disrepair, and some of it has to do with a tragic history, but we can't keep on using that as an excuse," Obama reiterated. The comments drew ire from the fiery Rev Jesse Jackson who accused Obama of "talking down to black people". Rev Jackson later apologised after being rebuked by among others, his very own son Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr Rev Jackson had expected a backlash once Fox News indicated they would air the comments on the O'Reilly Factor. But this gaffe inadvertently provoked a constructive discussion on fatherhood and the black father. Obama's speech also had willing listeners in the UK where Conservative Party leader David Cameron drew significant parallels with his country's black families. In the UK's inner cities, crime is partly being blamed on the absentee black father. London has in recent times witnessed a frightening spate of fatal stabbings most of them involving black youth. This year alone, more than 20 teenagers have been murdered in the city, a majority of them black, stabbed by fellow black youth. Although, as Rev Jackson later argued, there is need to deal with "the collective moral responsibility of government and the public policy which would be a corrective action for the lack of good choices that often led to their irresponsibility", the absentee black father remains in the dock.   But while in the Western metropoles the black youth suffer additional problems, their experiences are also very much a function of dislocation and of the place that blackness occupies in the West. Such cannot be said of the youth in much of Africa. It is precisely for this reason that reports that there have been disturbances in over 300 schools in just one month in Kenya is in many ways unsettling. The statistics constitute a crisis. Tragically, our response to crises has always been predictable; blithe and reactionary. The government is already talking about a task force to look into the problem, typically finding a substitute for a real solution. Senior government officials have offered several vain explanations and laughable solutions to the crisis in the schools. Internal Security minister Prof George Saitoti blames drug abuse for the unrest, but remains silent on why that is the case. Who funds the habit? How do these students get access to the drugs?   Does it not indict the school administration as well as Kenya's law enforcement? Indeed, more fundamentally, why are these children turning to drugs in the first place? Elsewhere, speaking recently in one of the affected schools, Tourism minister Najib Balala reportedly blamed the adoption of "foreign ideologies" which he complained were being aped at the expense of our local systems of disciplining children. He advocated for the return of caning in schools. Both arguments are painfully ill-informed. Often, we have a collective tendency of confusing perception with reality. This valorisation of the traditional as innately superior is outdated and fallacious. Culture by its very nature is fluid. It is this dynamism that makes humanity not only develop but actually survive. Indeed, there's nothing inherently African or Kenyan about caning in schools. The fact that it is or was commonly practiced mainly in former British territories should tell you something about its origins. Go back to basics The success or failure of a country's youth often mirrors the condition of that society. With 300 disturbances in our schools in one month, ours is clearly broken and there's every reason to believe that we need to go back to basics. We are a nation so obsessed with politics that we seem to have forgotten that the family institution has been taking the strain and falling apart over the last few years. Parenting seems to have become an optional extra. Kenya may not have a problem with absent fathers; it does have a problem with the "present absentees". Before we begin blaming foreign influences, let us look within ourselves and the support structures we have for the youth. Also, let us ask ourselves whether as a collective we have the critical mass for role models for our youth. Perhaps our leadership should ask itself if it is not insincere to look for red herrings when sleaze and impropriety at its ugliest becomes almost definitive of our body politic. The traditional values we all seem quick to praise don't seem to mean much to their most vocal proponents. In fashion-speak, socially, Kenya needs a complete make-over. We have failed our youth but the answers will not be found in a task force report which will most likely end up in a government office until the next crisis. The government, and indeed our society in general, must be reminded that this is not just a crisis limited to schools; it is an indictment of our collective failure as a society. Sadly, it is a crisis of our own making whose solution we must find. But establishing another task force is nothing but a ruse to duck responsibility.

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