EDUCATION KILLS

"Education is the key to success.” My exhausted exotic eyes momentarily blinked thrice as I turned my rather small head away from a gleaming slogan, artistically engraved on the ancient brick-walls of the main entrance to The Kenya National Library. Like a slinking panther, I glided through the marble floor to the reception, craving to explore the library’s catalogue, looking for a book entitled: Why Education is Useless, by Daniel Cottom. I enthusiastically grabbed the book from the self-help shelf and swiftly swapped my credit card at the programmed automated machine located at the accounting section. I stepped outside into the hot air and closed my glinting eyes as the sun rays brushed across my square-jawed face.

I visited a posh restaurant along Upper Hill, which had a difficult name to pronounce; probably coined from the Greek land. The restaurant’s interior decor was made splendid by the warm orange and yellow-pomegranate furniture, sunny-colored napkins and curtains, country-style hard wooden tables and stools. Truly, everything was solid and comfortable about the place. I was approached by a stunningly beautiful waitress. She had worn a peachy neat cotton dress, blending in well with her cleaved orange top; that vividly displayed her round and shaky, full milky breasts, seemingly eager to spill out of her bra. In real sense, her red nail polish, pink lip-stick and dress-code color mixology; made her belong to the place like nobody else. I ordered her to serve me with a mug of hot steamy sweet coffee; garnished with a balanced ratio of lemon to ginger.

I fumbled for my sleek MacBook, Apple laptop; deep into my nut-brown leather bag pack. I maximized the screen light and wore my crystal-clear glasses; aiming to prevent my eyes from being struck by a deep and lustrous darkness, like a forest pool under the shade of ancient oaks. I plugged my ears with earphones, nourishing my tender soul with some Bongo Music Hits, emanating from the Swahili land; courtesy of Diamond Platinumz, Shetta, Rayvanny, Harmonize, Nandy and Vanessa Mdee, among other movers and shakers of the renowned Wasafi Records. I sipped my coffee as cool Ninogeshe hit, by Nandy soothed my heart; triggering skeptical thoughts from my pool of knowledge, acquired from the Intellectual Community ‘University’. Thoughts of why? How? Who? firmly related to education, survival, success, love and marriage; hit my entangled mind so hard, wondering why we have so many jobless graduates and the ever proud working-class peacocks, full of debts from all corners; as they try to prove to the society how education has brought honey and milk in their stressful poor lives.

The modern world has idolized ‘papers’; this is vividly evident in Kenya, where everyone is hard-wired to look for an ‘A’ grade or least a ‘B’grade. The schools and institutions where people pour hefty amounts of money no longer offer training on how to be creative and innovative, but rather instill job hunting skills. Ironically, the theoretical schools/institutions have missions such as ‘A center for global excellence, technology and innovation’ I joined the University, with a burning desire of becoming a great Kenyan Medical Microbiologist; probably of all times. Thanks, to my prestigious High School; books were not fed to me but soul- searching was done, unleashing my enviable inner creativity and passion. The preparation done on me, back in high school gave me a C+ grade; sky-rocketing me to my then grade ‘A’ classmates, freshly harvested from top performing national schools. I am not saying all this to brag, but to make a clean breast of how immune I became to the load of bull that goes on in university. A university student will be proud go to class, sit his or her well-fed ass and allow a ‘stern-looking’ lecturer to dictate notes; probably downloaded from the internet. The notes are then archived strictly for the purpose of exams and the lovely romance game kicks off. Ample time is spent between the sheets, cuddling so warmly; often followed by the ‘intellectual mates’ seriously jumping on each other as they make some funny sounds and sweet murmurs to each other’s ear. All that can be heard at a distance, are pieces of furniture creaking and hitting hard against the walls; blending harmoniously with deeply intonated passionate moans. One would truly conclude that there are two ‘naked’ bulls in a fighting arena, busy proofing their ‘strong’campus love to each other and how they are forever meant to be.

School/Institutions scraps off potential artivists, geniuses, innovators and creatives; through curriculums that are deeply engulfed with marking schemes designed for marking examinations, aiming to label the students with alphabetical capital letters (A, B, C, D, E) on result slips/ transcripts/report cards. Comrades!!! All we are looking for in these institutions and schools is survival and self-independence. However, the bitter truth is that schools do not guarantee you survival; all they do is feed you with lots of irrelevant information and then test you, before ‘labeling’ you with the popular alphabetical letters. The real school that you need is the world; you have to discover what you love, just what causes ripples all over your tantalized skin. True survival is achieved through developing your passion and following it through thick and thin; which seems easier said than done, since we have all been brain-washed by the education system. Our minds have been splashed with futile facts that we need ‘papers’ and good grade (A/B) for us to survive in this world. I would confidently say that we are the source of all our problems; we are our own worst enemies. Cristiano Ronaldo, would probably crave to dine with me, for my unshakable confidence. Football came first in Cristiano’s life. In 2011 Celebrity Show, Ronaldo said this with regards to our world’s new social drug ‘schooling’ “I was not thick but I was not interested in schooling. I was expelled after I threw a chair at the teacher” He decided to give all his heart to football; this has made Ronaldo to be full of fortunes. I bet he would not feel any pinch if he forever volunteered to pay all the salary for our ‘highly intelligent’ Kenyan lecturers and doctors. I know everyone has his or her fate but the law of cause and effect states that,” If you do what fortunate people do…then fortunes will fall on you, than you could imagine” Ronaldo knew what his heart and body ached for and he decided to follow the shadows of his football passion, not guaranteed of anything.

See you all next time, thanks for reading