Many academic institutions in Kenya are moving online in an attempt to get learners to continue with their syllabus despite the glaring social and economic inequality.
On the economic side, the goal of the institutions seems to be money and so is the pain of parents paying school fees for kids they stay with at home who still need food, data bundles to access those online portals etc.
On the social economic side, Kenya is a poor country where most people get by, many earn very little that cannot enable them to eat three-square meals per day.
Now Kenya Methodist University (KEMU) has written to students to pay school fees or the second semester which will be conducted online.
“Following the Presidential directive to close all institutions of learning by March 20th due to COVID-19 pandemic in the county, all existing KeMU students were migrated to our on-line digital platform for continuity of their studies. Since then, teaching and learning has been going on well in this platform. This Memo is to notify you that 1st Trimester 2020 comes to an end on Friday 24th April 2020. By this date, all students are expected to have completed and submitted their Continuous Assessment Tests and any other projects/work given by their lecturers during this period. Final examinations for 1st Trimester has been deferred by University Senate to a later date to be communicated. However, the Senate decided that the students will be allowed to continue with their studies on-line awaiting this important communication. The 2nd Trimester for continuing students begins on 4th May 2020 and all students will be taught on-line through KeMU’s digital platform until directive of reopening University for face to face learning is given by the relevant authorities”, the document seen by kenyanbulletin.com says in part.
A student wrote to kenyanbulletin.com to complain about the above stating that
“Hello, I am writing to you to inform you that Kenya Methodist University has released a memo instructing their students to pay fees for Trimester 1,2020 as well as Pay 30% of fees of Trimester 2, 2020…It’s something which will be had to be done by parents since the situation around is worse due to Covid 19…more details are on the attached file that has the memo. Kindly report this news to people it makes us students to be worried what plans does such a university has”, he said.
The church-run university whcih has been strugglign with debt has fallen into the myopia of the Kenyan state believing that online learning and technological development is in itself a great messiah that will save mankind from ignorance.
The praise of technology as a great things has its roots in neo-colonial mentality, even as Dr. Wandia Njoya of Daystar Univesity puts it more aptly.
“At first I have resisted the idea of digitizing education because I was thinking of how many children will be thrown under the bus. But this morning, I thought: wacha iendelee. It will collapse this capitalist education system, which is a good thing. E-learning works only if learners are mature and have a good grasp of content. The education system was already not providing good content. It was a suffocating and very narrow system, allergic to broad knowledge and abusive. Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) openly said that CBC is anti-knowledge. The neoliberals who came up with this idea of e-learning were actually making a business decision. It was hatched in the 1980s when US and UK wanted to use the world prestige of Ivy League in the US and Oxbridge in the UK to create a global education monopoly for themselves. The idea was to make the elites around the world salivate education in the US and UK. When tech came along, the Anglo-American hyenas figured that since not everybody can fit in Harvard, then Harvard can come to you via the internet. So those people pontificating and shooting off the top of their mouths that digital learning is about tech and development have no idea. It was always about business. The West laid the foundation stone for this mess in the 1980s with GATS…”, she wrote
The fight between the KEMU Management and parents is that one concerning insensitivity in time of coronavirus.
Bloated universities that had taken too many unnecessary loans from banks are feeling the heat of not having tuition money so as to sustain themselves.
KEMU just like University of Nairobi (UoN) and others need to be reminded that there are complaints on the lack of access because of Kenyans are poor and can’t afford the luxury of online education from primary to secondary and institutions of higher learning.
Education Cabinet Secretary Prof George Magoha as with all leaders in Africa, are signatories to mediocrity and bootlick the white man shoes, their language is corruption and when they are full, they vomit on our shoes.
KEMU Document
