The aim of education is to develop innate powers of children

Former Education Secretary in the now defunct Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology Prof Harry Kaane once declared that the actual customers of education services of a country are employers and not students.

Contrary to common view, Kaane, a professor of mechanical engineering, argues that educational institutions should be primarily concerned with the interests of employers—be they the government and its various institutions or the private sector.

Kane made the remarks some ten years ago while representing the then Minister for Education Prof. Jacob Kaimenyi during the launch of the ISO system at the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) for the Ministry.

This view of education struck my mind as extremely strange. It has been popping up in my mind again and again. And I have felt very uneasy with this instrumental function attributed to education. I am writing this to relieve my uneasiness.

The day-to-day concern with any society on questions concerning education has always been children, young and relatively older children. Children and young people are the centre of every kindergarten, school, college and the University. Not employers.

The concern of modern societies is finding ways of developing the inborn potential of all the children, be they rich or poor, boy or girl, abled or disabled, to the fullest extent possible.

The potential of children in all its imaginable dimensions, is but a seed, at birth.  It is in the interest of the society to cultivate their humanity—in terms of intellect and character. Without properly developed intellects and character, children cannot take off in whatever direction their abilities and interest should take them.

Shakespeare celebrates man in Hamlet, with a series of rhetorical questions. “What a piece of work is a man! How noble is reason! how infinite in faculty! in form, in moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!”

Shakespeare may not have been an educator in the technical sense of the word. He is here, however, saying that children have limitless potential. The embryonic abilities have no boundaries.

It was marathoner Eliud Kipchoge who said that no human is limited.

The incipient abilities in some of the children are polymathic — wide knowledge or learning in possibilities. The duty of educational institutions therefore, is to cultivate children’s thinking powers and their character—ability to think and at the same time to have compassion and care for the environment and fellow men and women.

The obligation to educate children therefore, must touch off the reasoning powers which Shakespeare says are not only infinite, but angelic. This is the irreducible minimum. It doesn’t matter what educational system a society has taken.

Every child has an appointment with the future. The child will, in the fullness of time, want to play his finest role in that future and in an ever changing and demanding arena.

The public and private institutions that might play his or her part are equally subject to ever spreading, changing and demanding environments. Properly educated, there should be no function the child, as an adult cannot discharge—beyond the instrumental spinoffs of education.

From my experience, discussions with educators, reading and observations, the knowledge and skills employers require are a fraction of the quantum of knowledge and skills that the human mind is capable of mastering.

Give learners the right learning resources and environment, there is nothing that they cannot make sense of. There is nothing that they cannot do for themselves, and the society. They become benefactors to society rather than liabilities. They add energy to the environment. They don’t subtract the energy the environment already possesses.

The education gives them the intellectual furniture and discipline needed to tackle any issue, problem, challenge and crisis that might face an institution or society.

The quantum of knowledge the institutions require are embedded in a rigorous and coherent curriculum educational systems prescribed for learning institutions.

What the institutions ultimately want are men and women and not boys and girls to run its affairs.  Although they look for technical skills and other competences from fresh recruits, they nevertheless want sturdy people with sturdy character.

Yes. The primary customers to education services are students or learners; at whatever level of education. Employers are not their immediate focus, ultimately critical though they are. The employers play their role as stakeholders in the task of building men and women for the society—but not to dictate policy makers in management of education.

An educational institution serves the best interests of the society—employers, the state, the church and other interests’ groups—by developing the intelligence and character of the students in the best way possible.

It is the intellectual and spiritual attributes of learners that educational institutions are called upon to cultivate to the best extent possible.

At the launching of John Hopkins University, the first research University in the USA, President Daniel Gilman noted: “The object of the university is to develop character — to make men. It misses its aim if it produced learned pedants, or simple artisans, or cunning sophists, or pretentious practitioners. Its purport is not so much to impart knowledge to the pupils, as whet the appetite, exhibit methods, develop powers, strengthen judgment, and invigorate the intellectual and moral forces. It should prepare for the service of society a class of students who will be wise, thoughtful, progressive guides in whatever department of work or thought they may be engaged in.”

I wholeheartedly embrace Gilman’s conception of education. An instrumentalist view of education restricts the potential of what learners are capable of becoming and doing as adults.