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{
"id": 1492351,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1492351/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Hon. John Kiarie",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": {
"id": 13322,
"legal_name": "John Kiarie Waweru",
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"content": "Kenya Science Teachers College in 1995 belonged to yours truly, the one and only John KJ Kiarie. He was a champion in science. That did not stop me from going into the areas of drama, journalism, media and other emerging performing and visual arts. The idea of drawing a dichotomy between the sciences and the arts is leading us to where we are today, having a gross shortage of science teachers. If Kenya is seeking that pole position in the new world, the new world of emerging technologies known as the fourth industrial revolution, the world of cryptocurrency, block chain technology, artificial intelligence, the internet of things, we must also deliberately develop the science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields without cutting them away from the arts. To your point, Hon. Temporary Speaker, a surgeon today needs to be an amazing artist. If a surgeon is not a good artist, he risks botching up an operation on a girl who has gone for a Caesarean Section (CS) operation to a point where this girl might never want to wear a bikini again in her life. A surgeon needs to be an artist so that when he conducts surgery, he does not leave you with scars like the ones I was left with after the post-election violence of 2007/2008 when the operation was botched by a scientist who was not an artist. An artist also has to be a scientist. You cannot be a good sculptor if you do not understand the science of civil engineering. This place that we are seeking to be a science museum is not speaking against the museums that exist. A point was made here to the effect that there already exist museums of natural history. Allow me to say that the museum of natural history is in every sense a dead museum where you put taxidermies and old animals and old artefacts. However, a science museum is a living museum. In a language that we must preserve, they say, Itininanagira nyeki ; to translate that is to say that if you go to London, you shall find on one street the science of art, the science of natural history, the science museum, all of them put together in one street as museums lined up in a way that all of them do attract the public that they need to. Finally, Hon. Temporary Speaker, in establishing a science museum, we shall be bringing science home. Kenya is the cradle of mankind. By being the cradle of mankind, it means that science and technology was birthed in this country. What has happened over the years is that because of brain drain, we have bled so much technological minds to other capitals. If you go to London today, you will find that it is a Kenyan by the name of Prof. Washington Yotto who is the chairperson of the Science Museums of London – a science museum group that has more than five science museums in the world. Such brains can be domiciled in Kenya at Konza. If we decide to have a science museum, we can have such amazing brains that are out there come back and establish the museum and lead it to be the first science museum not only in East Africa, but also in Africa. Hon. Temporary Speaker, mine is to thank all the Members who have contributed to the Motion. We have an opportunity here even as other jurisdictions are presenting committees of the future. We, as Parliament, before we decide to bring a committee of the future to this House, I want to start by setting the pace by establishing a science museum that becomes a repository for our African traditional and emerging technologies to showcase them to the world, preserve them and ensure that Africa does not remain the scientific dwarf that it is referred to."
}