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"id": 39690,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/39690/?format=api",
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"speaker_name": "Eng. Gumbo",
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"id": 24,
"legal_name": "Nicholas Gumbo",
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"content": "I also think that it is rather simplistic to suggest that those who cannot make it beyond Class Eight become village cabbages. I stand here to testify that in most of the schools that we build with the CDF funds, we use people who after Class Eight went to the local village polytechnics and have become very good and notable fundis . This Motion is also being very unrealistic to the reality in Kenya today. As I speak, this country has an acute shortage of teachers. There are not enough schools. For example, in Rarieda, we have 116 primary schools and only 30 secondary schools and if we allow direct transition from Class Eight to Form One, where will we get the capacity to accommodate all these students who are transiting from Class Eight to Form One? Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, fundamentally, if we allow this Motion to go through, we are actually perpetuating what I call âvillagernizationâ of Kenyans. My perception of my country has been shaped from the days that I joined Form One at the Great Cardinal Otunga High School. Today, I see myself, first and foremost, as a Kenyan and secondly as a person of my community. I look into the days when I joined Form One with absolute nostalgia. Some of my friends do not come from Nyanza Province. Some of my best friends come from the Coast Province, North Eastern and these are people that I met when I moved from my village to join Form One in the early 80s. It is important that if our country is going to move forward, we must, and it is fundamental, start to think of ourselves first as Kenyans and secondly as members of the communities where we come from. I am very proud of the fact that as I grew up, having been inducted with students from other parts of the country into my secondary education up to university level, in more ways than one, I like to see myself considered, first and foremost as a Kenyan and secondly, as a member of my community. There is nothing wrong with being a member of my community, but I think Kenya is bigger than our little communities. In any case, everybody is going regional. We are looking at regional and even continental blocks. Only very recently, there was a conference in South Africa which was bringing the East African Community (EAC), the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the African Union (AU) together. It means that we must now begin to think in bigger ways to achieve the aspirations of our communities and our countries. I want to conclude by saying that I have seen, for example, what the 80 or 75 per cent rule of taking students to their areas has done. On Monday, I was talking to some students in one of the schools in my constituency and it disappoints me thoroughly that when I asked them about one of the national heroes of this country, I was shocked that the only thing that the students seem to know about that national hero was his tribe and not the contribution he has made to this country. We must tackle this problem of âvillagernizingâ Kenya at all fronts. To me, one of the best ways to do that is to insist that right from an early age, our children should learn national values. What is wrong in teaching our children at the age of ten years to see themselves as Kenyans? What is wrong in telling our children from as early as eight years that it is more important for them to regard and appreciate the cultures of other parts of the country than their own? The truth is that there is nothing that opens the eyes of people than interacting with people from other cultures. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I am totally opposed to anything that will continue to perpetuate our thinking in our little tribal cocoons. I want us to continue thinking as Kenyans. I want us to continue appreciating the gains that we have made and also to know that we can do much more. The best way to do that is to spread the education, test our children early and tell them that from Class Eight, you can go to another province and interact with the people from that province and be a Kenyan. They should mould themselves to think as Kenyans. If you abolish Standard Eight, it will mean that a child who goes to a primary school in my village will continue in secondary in the same primary school up to Form Four. They will become adolescents who know nothing about what happens in the rest of the country. They will only see themselves as little villagers who cannot appreciate the wider society and make better contribution to their country. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, before we even think of implementing this Motion, we, as a country, must work harder on national cohesion. We must work harder on appreciating each one of us. Sometimes, I am persuaded to think that part of the exam that we should undertake before we come to this House is to make leaders declare what they have done to fight the cancer of negative ethnicity in Kenya. Anything that promotes the cancer of negative ethnicity must be fought and opposed at all costs. We must also build more schools in our areas before we can think of abolishing the KCPE. We must also train more teachers. I was just doing a survey in most of the primary schools in my constituency and on average, you get six teachers per school when the school has eight to nine classrooms. Considering the Early Child Development (ECD), already there is a shortage. It means that at any one time, two or three classes are not being taught. How are we going to allow this universal transition when we do not have enough teachers? With those remarks, I strongly oppose and urge my colleagues to kill this Motion which will not help us build a united country."
}