When I joined Jinja College, the Head Prefect at the time was a respectable character. I remember he used to bend slightly, cross his left arm against his belly, hold his books in the other arm, and march. Okay, now that I remember this, I realize the guy took himself too seriously, but that guy really commanded respect. If you wanted to go to town on a Saturday, all you had to do was ask a teacher for permission. The teachers trusted you to come back. My father only drove me to school the first term of S1. The rest of my time there, I commuted to school on my own. In fact, the only other time he came back to school is when Mr. Kawuki expelled me for talking during prep time. That guy ruined my TikTok career. I would be competing with Kasuku right now for gossip.
My point, anyway, is that we were mature at 13. In fact, the stories of the Form Aboves were also stories of a free school that is contracting into a prison every day. They would reminisce about how much free time they had in school. How once upon a time, they were allowed to have radios in school. About sosh. They made us wish we had joined Jinja College earlier.
When I left Jico, I went to Namirembe Hillside, the dystopia of education. For a person from Jico, I could not believe that that place qualified to be called a school. The whole thing was a bunch of buildings on a 50 by 100. Okay, maybe a little bit bigger. But you'd still need only like two or so steps from your class to your dormitory. There was a fene tree in the middle of the football pitch that also doubled as the school ground and parking. It had never seen grass. The basketball court too was kataka marked with charcoal. But the most shocking thing about Namirembe Hillside for an OB of Jico was the fact that they caned students. Imagine caning the HP that I described earlier. That school, my guy, was a prison. It was the place that parents who wanted to outsource parenting took their children to be herded. But despite all that, it took more children to Makerere University than Jinja College. And that is the only metric that mattered to both the teachers and the parents.
So it is not surprising that today, children in Jico are even required to wear after-class uniforms. They are not trusted enough to even be allowed to look different. I imagine they even started caning students. They are not allowed out of school unless they're sick. They are not allowed phones or even radios. They are forced to wake up at 5 am and stay up until 10 pm to memorize the thoughts of better men than them. They are in a prison or a kraal. It is hard to tell the difference these days.
School is suffering from a measurement problem. The metrics set by Makerere University, the government, and other stakeholders are reducing schools into certificate-minting industries. We are no longer teaching, training, or raising children. We are optimizing them for exams. The student that comes out of Jinja College today isn't human enough to live in the real world; he has been reduced to an exam-passing body.
But Makerere University as well is regressing. At this rate, in 5 years, they will require a uniform.
Even worse, when a former student has magically survived the system and resisted the procrastination of doing PhDs and whatnot, the real world doesn't welcome them. Our parents have refused to retire. They are still doing jobs they got in their 40s while in their 80s. So there are no jobs for us. And even us, if we follow suit and are lucky to get our parents' jobs when we are 50, there will be no jobs for our children until they're 100. And I hate jobs personally; having no job is not the worst thing in the world, but the bigger picture I am trying to paint is our regression as a species. We are staying as children for the majority of our lives. Most of us, especially from rich families, live and die without ever taking on responsibility because we are still eating from our fathers' plates. For most of you, the only risk you've ever taken in your lives is betting on Arsenal to beat Manchester United—which, by the way, Arsenal will win by 3 goals on December 19th just FYI. We have built an education system that has infantilized the whole nation. We don't have adults. 18 is not just the age you're supposed to start sending nudes, drinking beer, or voting; it is when you are legally an adult. But if you're being honest with yourself, would you trust your 18-year-old daughter to go to Mombasa and clear your new car? Chances are that you're raising an 18-year-old child. And it is not your fault. Everyone else is. And the problem starts with school.
This nationwide infantilization is exactly why when one reads Steven Pinker's books about how there is progress, one feels like stoning Pinker to death. Don't cherry-pick the things that have grown and pretend that the things that haven't don't exist just because they are harder for you to measure. That positive-thinking evangelical mindset of Steven Pinker is what atheists like Steven Pinker would call a mental illness.
This whole post was supposed to be a small motivational thing about asking parents and teachers to trust their children and students a little more. To allow them to take a bit more risk. To indulge them a little bit more. To listen to them a bit more. Those kids know more than what they are capable of skillfully expressing, and if you cap them to what you know, you're going to mentally cripple them. In fact, the one main thing where Zohran and I disagree is on removing AI from school. The kids are going to be fine. Allow the kids to grow up in the world they will actually live in.
