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"content": "So, even if a child is born and does not stay in that environment, if after two years, you take that child back to that environment, they will remember that language and learn it very fast. Which means, therefore, that after they have been born, the kind of education they get in those early days has an enormous influence on their culture, upbringing and attitudes. Therefore, although the ECDs are the responsibility of counties, the syllabus for ECDs – what children learn – must be a syllabus or form of education that makes them Kenyans because the environment they live in is a Kenyan environment. So, if we are going to have national integration and national values, it must begin from the kindergarten. Counties should realize that, that is an enormous responsibility. The second thing, Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, is an issue that Sen. Musila raised, which is very important. Of course, Sen. Kagwe presented this issue very graphically; that we have these polytechnics in our counties and they seem to be training people in very limited skills – carpentry, tailoring and at times computer lessons. But there are so many opportunities for giving skills or technical training in our polytechnics; and those polytechnics can link up with the more developed polytechnics in their counties. I will give you an example. In Kisumu, we have the Kisumu Polytechnic, which is really the equivalent of this polytechnic here in Nairobi, which is now a university, and it has tremendous resources. It has so many things. When I visited that polytechnic as the Minister for Medical Services a couple of years ago because we were opening a medical laboratory there for training laboratory technicians, I told them “look, we have built so many village polytechnics in Kisumu Rural Constituency; why do you not use those village polytechnics as your extensions so that you do not leave it to the constituency or the location to deal with these polytechnics; you will use them as your extensions just as much as Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) can use health centres in Nairobi as their extensions.” The way health facilities are now going, you now find that these hospitals are opening extensions in the whole country, going to the people. In like manner, the bigger polytechnics you find in Kisumu, Kakamega and these big headquarters of counties, they can actually use these village polytechnics as their extensions because that is where the people are, rather than concentrating on just training a few students in the town. Even those students can be used as teachers in the village polytechnics. Mr. Temporary Speaker, when I was growing up many years ago, in Ndiru Primary and Intermediate School, Siriba Teachers Training College used to use the primary and intermediate schools in the catchment areas of Siriba - which is pretty big because they used buses within the teacher training schools to bring teacher trainees to come and teach us. Those teacher trainees were some of the best teachers we ever had because they came, first of all, to impress us that they were actually teachers. This is because they were in training. Secondly, when their supervisors came, they were to be at their best. Students really looked forward to being taught by these trainees. There was another added advantage when they came around. They were always given oranges, juice, biscuits and bread and when there were leftovers, they gave us. So we used to look forward to that. However, that was just an added advantage among the many reasons why we used to look forward to this Mr. Temporary Speaker, just as much as my colleague said, we should do some probe on the training of Early Childhood Development Education (ECDE). I remember my early teachers, rather than train us, gave us porridge, biscuits or leftovers but we looked forward to that. I am just trying to emphasise the fact that we should use the major polytechnics in our counties to provide teachers to the other village polytechnics. I do not think that a whole polytechnic must always employ many teachers. We do not have them. We should use what we have."
}