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"id": 1196600,
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Daadab, WDM",
"speaker_title": "Hon. Farah Maalim",
"speaker": null,
"content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Speaker. This Motion on teachers speaks very much to the hearts of the people from pastoral and nomadic areas in this country. If I take you back a little bit in history, education was not provided by colonial governments. It was provided by missionaries. Because we had stuck to our faiths which we have had for more than 1000 years, and they could not preach their faith in our backyards, they abandoned our places and never brought us education. The first secondary school in North Eastern Province was put up in 1968. That is when they did the ‘O’ Levels. There was no secondary school in the whole of the North when we got Independence. We had a similar situation in Marsabit, Isiolo and many other places. Fortunately for those of us who were in Isiolo, Meru was within a certain proximity, and I remember that most teachers who used to come and teach in our schools were Meru and Pokomo from Tana River in Coast Province. There has to be a policy in this country that is deferential, that promotes affirmative action and is able to bring areas that were traditionally and historically marginalised up to speed with the rest of the country. We never got that. The subsequent independent Kenyan Government, with Prime Minister, Jomo Kenyatta at the helm, concentrated on high potential areas to provide education. In slightly less than 10 years, we had something that can only be equated to a genocide of the mind. Genocide or ethnocide is not just the act of killing someone or cleansing them. When you subject them to certain other inhumane activities and cultures, that is a form of genocide. Because of one incident of lawlessness that happened in our region, the TSC withdrew in one sweep 5,000 teachers from those areas. Today, some schools only have one teacher and eight classrooms. The teacher acts as the headmaster and the one who is supposed to teach all the classes. The teachers did not run away for their own security; they were withdrawn by TSC. You deny people knowledge, you confine them to permanent underclass. That has been the intention of TSC as presently constituted. You find that a Form 4 student who has never seen a biology, chemistry or physics teacher is supposed to do national examination and compete with students in Alliance and Mangu high schools, where teachers only teach twice or thrice in a week. There is an over-concentration of teachers in these schools. You then tell such students to also compete for opportunities in teacher training colleges. The former Cabinet Secretary for Education, Amina Mohamed, understands our conditions. She lowered the requirements and said that a student with a C- (minus) can be admitted to a teacher training college and be trained as a teacher. Nancy Macharia and TSC decided to go to court, saying that move was going to compromise academic excellence. As a The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}