Religion and Education as a Tool for Oppression
Two of the most potent tools for oppression are education and
religion. It's a subtle way of placating the masses and a tried and
tested tool, worldwide. Rtd. Dic. Moi was passionate about Kenyans being
Christians/religious and hired Malkiat Singh to be one of the primary
pacification tools of the regime through his inaccurate and overtly
misleading books. His insistence on increasing our educational capacity
but concurrent rigidity in having control over the content worked to his advantage and had us educated thoroughly without any particular substance.
His success is also visible in the way people defend his legacy of
wanton looting and repression. I hear people talk about how he provided
free milk for primary schools. How is it 2017 and people still think
that this milk was free? He was spending taxpayer money to buy milk. We
had milk as part of our national budget. Moi pillaged this nation,
tortured, killed, maimed and made us an economic wasteland but was
always smart enough to warn us about 'siasa mbaya, miasha mbaya.' He was
the Siasa Mbaya. He warned us that multi-party democracy would lead to
tribalism while cementing tribal animosity through politically
instigated land clashes and corrosive political alliances and
idelologies.
We had religious studied inculcated as part of our education system as a way of teaching us to accept leadership as divine and to chastise opposition and speaking out your mind. We still think of activists such as Boniface Mwangi as trouble-makers. We have people speaking out against lack of leadership and we insist that he is an attention seeker. Someone is robbing your house, someone else raises the alarm and we tell them to do it in a more dignified manner? Religion is useful in inculcating transference of national problems to a deity and proposing prayer as an alternative to tangible action.
Go back to the stories we read. Read through them. Analyse the protagonists and antagonists that we learnt about. Analyse the careful placement of words and feelings and attitudes. Analyse the historical inaccuracies and the stories not told. Anyone who has submitted their writing for approval to be used in schools can tell you the differences between their drafts and the final mush that emerges
This is the reason why real education reform is necessary, not just trying to spruce up the rubbish but emptying it instead.
We had religious studied inculcated as part of our education system as a way of teaching us to accept leadership as divine and to chastise opposition and speaking out your mind. We still think of activists such as Boniface Mwangi as trouble-makers. We have people speaking out against lack of leadership and we insist that he is an attention seeker. Someone is robbing your house, someone else raises the alarm and we tell them to do it in a more dignified manner? Religion is useful in inculcating transference of national problems to a deity and proposing prayer as an alternative to tangible action.
Go back to the stories we read. Read through them. Analyse the protagonists and antagonists that we learnt about. Analyse the careful placement of words and feelings and attitudes. Analyse the historical inaccuracies and the stories not told. Anyone who has submitted their writing for approval to be used in schools can tell you the differences between their drafts and the final mush that emerges
This is the reason why real education reform is necessary, not just trying to spruce up the rubbish but emptying it instead.
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