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"id": 213754,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/213754/?format=api",
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"speaker_name": "Prof. Maathai",
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"legal_name": "Wangari Muta Maathai",
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"content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to raise an issue that I have raised here before but I want to emphasize it again because I think that the Ministry really needs to look into it. Going back to the colonial times, the way we were introduced into schools and into the education system, was to instil fear of teachers and authority in us. Until very recently, teachers used that approach to instil what they said was discipline into children by caning them. Now we do not cane but I must say that there is still a lot of fear in our children. I wish the Ministry would pay close attention to what is happening to our children. There is no reason why children should have fear of teachers or authority because fear kills creativity. Children need to be able to communicate and to dialogue with their teachers. But when you go to schools and see the way, for example, even governance of student bodies is organized, you can see, just like it used to be done during our times when schools were being run alongside missionary discipline, there is no encouragement despite the fact that we are talking about developing democracy in our country. There is no encouragement of democratic governance in our schools. If that institution does not instil in our children a sense of democratic system of governance, a sense of ability to dialogue, communicate and have open space, how will those children learn that you have to listen to each other, disagree and give space to each other? Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I have paid a lot of attention to schools in my constituency and I must say that I find the fear that these children have, whether in primary or secondary, as part of the reason why they act in mobs when they are dissatisfied, whether with food, the way they are being taught or the dormitories. Quite often, it is something that they could July 17, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 2543 have gone to their teachers and discussed about. They could have a dialogue with their teachers. But what do they do? They riot because they act like a mob. They have no capacity and they fear. So, the only time they get courage is when they act together in a mob. That is the way they react to their teachers; by rioting or doing whatever they want to do like being disobedient as a group. They are not willing to engage their teachers, the principal or the head teacher and say; \"this is what we would like.\" I have been to some universities and some high schools in some countries where students are given an opportunity to create their government. They have an opportunity to say that this is the person who will be our class prefect. They are able to create a student government guided by their teachers, but they learn to choose their leaders. In our schools, just like the first teachers did, it is the teachers who say; \"you shall be the prefect.\" If you go to a school and talk to a student and the student does not want to talk to you, the principal or the head teacher says; \"call so-and-so,\" because that is the student who is able to articulate well or he is the prefect. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I find that, that kind of education system is not producing people with confidence who can provide us with the kind of people in leadership positions that we really need. I wish that the Ministry would look into it. I know that there is no feeling that something is needed, but I have personally looked at it and I really think that we need to do something about that. Maybe we have counsellors in schools, although I have not come across them, but we do need an approach. Maybe we should do a research and find out about the fear in our schools. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I have also mentioned about the issue of environmental education. I again want to emphasize that I think that for a country like Kenya, where we are largely agricultural and, therefore, depend very much on primary natural resources like forests, water, soil or land, it does not make any sense for anybody to come out of school even at the level of high school and have no clue about environmental education. They are not able to think holistically about the environment. That person goes to the university and he or she is not exposed to environmental education. Tomorrow, that person becomes a road engineer. So, when they construct roads, they have no clue about the impact of roads on environmental destruction. They have no clue of how they can prevent soil erosion along the roads. When that person, tomorrow, becomes the Minister for Agriculture or Minister for Water and Irrigation, for example, he will have no clue about environmental issues, because he never studied environmental education from the very beginning. I really do not understand why, to us, other than the fact that we follow rather than think on our own--- What is it that we need as a country? What kind of thinking do we want in the people who govern our country? There is no reason why we, as a people who live on primary resources, should not expose our children to the need to think holistically and take care of our environment, from primary, secondary to college level. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the fact that we do not have environmental education, to me, is still a mystery. To me, it just means that we do not understand how important the environment is. In this House, I have raised the issue of environment severally. I can talk about the environment in relation to every Ministry, and be relevant. This is because the environment is a cross-cutting issue, throughout the Ministries. Especially, in the Ministry of Education, we need citizens who understand why we should take care of our forests, soils and land. Also, we need citizens who understand why it is important to manage our natural resources responsibly and accountably. If we will not do so, we will end up having decision makers who will make decisions while they are completely unaware of what those decisions will do to our environment. Before I finish, I would like to cite an example. We are now speaking a lot about a plant which is popularly known as mathenge . That plant was---"
}