Diversionary tactics and pleading will not solve the crisis in education

President Uhuru Kenyatta greets 7 year-old Emmanuel Kwanya when he arrived in New York for the 70th Session of the United Nations General Assembly (Unga) on September 25, 2015. The address the President made this week on the teachers' strike may have been necessary, but was utterly unremarkable. PHOTO | PSCU 

In Summary

• The address may have been necessary, but was utterly unremarkable. The speech raised more questions but provided no answers.
• This is the first government to make and break a direct electoral promise to children. It is the first administration in Kenya to teargas school children on the school playground in broad daylight.
• Teachers deserve their salary increment. They have earned it and we should afford it.

By GODWIN MURUNGA
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This has been a depressing week.

It started with the ill-advised decision to shut all schools that operate under local curriculum. Thereafter, everything went downhill with the special pleading that passed for a televised presidential address to the nation regarding the teachers’ strike.

The address may have been necessary, but was utterly unremarkable. The speech raised more questions but provided no answers.

Its mode of delivery was suspect and the data presented was of questionable accuracy. The resolve the President intended to communicate flopped before a perceptive, conscious and undeterred public.

INACCURATE INFORMATION
The state has already lost the moral war against teachers. It long ago lost its credibility in the eyes of the little ones.

Why? This is the first government to make and break a direct electoral promise to children. It is the first administration in Kenya to teargas school children on the school playground in broad daylight.

It has now closed schools and is edging closer to keeping students home for a long time. Its objective is to fully undermine the little remaining morale that sustains teachers in our debilitating teaching environment.

Jubilee is working overdrive to bury the morale of teachers for the foreseeable future.

The televised address did not help matters. The President aimed, but failed, to shift the blame for the current crises in the education sector to teachers.

A perceptive journalist, Alphonce Shiundu, demonstrated that the President had wrong figures in some places, made conclusions that are not statistically feasible in other places and engaged in scare mongering in ways that do not befit his office.

RAVENOUS APPETITE
Some have argued that instead of critiquing the President, we should provide solutions. If I had solutions, I would have run for the presidency. Am I wrong to assume that the president read his job description?

Presidents are elected to find solutions to tough challenges, to unravel complex situations and give a way forward. We reject any attempt to shift the onus of solving the problem.

To be clear, teachers are not responsible for the wage bill that is consuming our taxes. The President presides over an unfair arrangement, in which a gluttonous class demands frugality from everyone but themselves.

A significant amount of the huge wage bill is consumed by a few in the high offices who use our money to satisfy their ravenous appetite.

Thus, it is all well for the President to remind us to live within our means. The President might not know this, but we already live within our means. He, however, might wish to address himself to those in his government.

SCARE-MONGERING TACTIC
Many Kenyans might not know that the Central Planning and Monitoring Unit was represented at the court case that TSC filed against Knut and lost.

Why should we believe the new statistics the President canvassed at a press address if able government institutions failed to provide them to a competent court for proper scrutiny?

This is why the attempt to associate salary increment for teachers with VAT is not only diversionary, but a scare-mongering tactic that Kenyans must dismiss.

Teachers deserve their salary increment. They have earned it and we should afford it. What Kenyans expect from the President is a candid discussion on fairness and equity in the allocation and use of wages.

IRRATIONAL SYSTEM

Mr President, we are unhappy about the unfairness of most Kenyans shouldering the excessive greed of a minority.

If the President had spoken about eliminating corruption and sharing wages proportionately, and outlined a strategy of securing enough money for teachers through a rationalised system of expenditure, I doubt that too many Kenyans would disagree or be too skeptical.

But the President came to justify why an irrational system must remain.

He forgot that nations across the world invest inordinately in education