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{
    "id": 1478805,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1478805/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 140,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Moiben, UDA",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Phylis Bartoo",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": " Thank you Hon. Temporary Speaker for giving me an opportunity to contribute to this Motion by Hon. KJ. A science museum is primarily devoted for science. Worldwide, in established countries, science museums play a very important role in educating students, professionals and citizens. When I was lecturing at the university, we used to have problems with history students. We encountered situations where history post-graduate students who were collecting data were not able to get real life data, especially in our museums. A case in point is Fort Jesus and the Archives in the Central Business District. There is nothing lively in those spaces. They just have documents that do not communicate. Hon. Temporary Speaker, if we establish real museums where we have information from the past to the present, they will be very informative and important to our post-graduate students. I particularly talk about post-graduate students since I come from the academia. If one visits a country like Israel, one will get real life experiences. You will get carried back in history. You go back in history. You learn about their cultures. You learn about mummification – how they used to preserve their dead. It takes you back in time and you feel connected to the past. You feel like you can identify. You feel like you can touch the past. It is very communicative. That is the essence of a science museum. In Kenya, we have many activities and cultures which need to be documented. Those cultures are not just for the present, but they will also shape our future. We are re-shaping our educational curriculum. We have the Competence-Based Curriculum (CBC) which aims to teach our learners to practise what they learn in class. Where else can they refer to history? What can they relate to if we do not have facilities such as science museums in Kenya, where they can go and interact with knowledge that shapes their future? Science says that the past shapes the future. Science museums are very important. Our museums in Kenya are only for recreation. We only visit them to pass time and for tourism. I do not think the tourists who come to Kenya take home so much because we do not have much to talk about. Fort Jesus is dead. You only meet young men and women there who take you around, creating stories which even they might not be very sure about. The sites are also dilapidated. There is not much to talk about. For instance, they can only talk about the slave trade which happened in Kenya, and the barter trade which was going on across the Indian Ocean. If we establish a communicative science museum, we will document all the stories and theories which we have heard about Kenya. Many people will visit Kenya to get a feel of what happened in the past. Our cultures will soon become dormant because we do not have a place to preserve them so that even our young people can have a connection. Those museums will help us to appreciate revolution. Culture and life are not static. What will we tell our people in the next 100 years if we do not have somewhere to store information? What will we tell our people in future if we do not have places to store our stories? For instance, Kenya is currently going through an impeachment process of a sitting Deputy President, which is new and unprecedented. Those stories should be preserved in our museums. Our children will learn that in 2024, the Parliament of Kenya had a procedure for impeaching a Deputy President. We should preserve that information in videos. Where else will we store that information? Not everyone can get an opportunity to come to Parliament to get that story, but that story can be found in a science museum. A science museum will facilitate the convergence of various disciplines. It will bring together science, technology, maths and the arts. Therefore, it will improve our daily lives. We are teaching our students to be innovators. Where will they learn about innovation if they do not get the knowledge from the past so that they can relate it to what is currently going on in the present? 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."
}