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"content": "I really want to commend this Committee and urge the rest of the Committees to demonstrate that the Senate is the House of devolution; it is the people’s House. If we have incidents of insecurity, for example, it would be interesting to see the Senate’s Committee on National Security and Foreign Relations in Maralal, Garissa, Mandera, if insecurity incidents happen there. That way, we will connect more with the people we represent in this House. Therefore, this is an example to be emulated by the other Committees. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, this report is well written and simple enough to understand. It reminds me of a discussion we had earlier on in the Rules and Business Committee. We were asking ourselves: What are the standards of Committee reports? Are there guidelines on what a Committee report should look like? In terms of size, we have had all manner of reports. Some come up with 200 paged reports, others 50 and so on. In our view, going forward, the secretariat, which is the office of the Clerk, should provide practice notes to our Committees where we have a standard way of reporting by Committees. In my view, a report should be short and direct. The recommendations should be extremely practical and highly identifiable. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, Early Childhood Development (ECD) is an important component of our education system. For a long time, this is an area which has been neglected. Perhaps the challenges we are facing as a nation today in the education sector stem from the fact that we have not made effort or taken adequate interest in developing children during their formative years. I am aware that in other countries, they invest a lot of time and resources in the first ten years of a child’s life because after that, it is extremely difficult to inculcate new values. But whatever you can instill in a child in the first ten years of their life is permanent. That is why I am told that, for example, the oriental countries of Japan, Malaysia and even China are very strong societies. The ethical foundation of the population is extremely strong and, so, they are able to deal with things like the fight against corruption easily because of those values. The issues to do with corruption are fought from very early stages. I am saying this because I have seen one of the recommendations of this Committee, which I fully support; this is on the issue of having a standardized curriculum for early childhood education. But what are we going to teach these children? Is it what I have seen in urban centres and other places, where some of the Senators are parents? I have seen children as young as four or five years learning very sophisticated things. I do not think that is the way to go. For some of the countries that have made a lot of progress in terms of an education system that has a value system ingrained in it, they make sure that the first five years of primary school, including pre-primary, are actually used to inculcate a value system that is consistent with national values and nationhood as opposed to teaching small children complex mathematical problems and how to tackle scientific issues when they are six years old. I thought this curriculum, therefore, would be simple enough so that the children can have all the time in the world to play, but also learn very basic things that are missing in our society today. That is why you see people are even saying, for example, that things like ethnicity and violence that we see in this country are because we have been unable to change people’s attitudes and appreciation of The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}