Education for Development: Myth or Reality? The Kenyan Experience

Abstract

Education is seen as a powerful tool by which men and women are liberated from their natural state whether that described as ignorance, poverty, disease, selfishness, fear, corruption, injustice, enslavement, moral bankruptcy, or some other undesirable conditions and therefore freedom is the goal of education.  Since attaining her political independence in 1963, Kenya has continued to invest heavily in education with the hope that this would help to transform the country into a modern progressive state. Kenya, fifty years after independence she is still bedeviled by corruption, bad governance, negative ethnicity and impunity.  Although Kenyans have acquired literacy, academic knowledge and skills, education has not translated into the kind of thinking, mental attitudes and behaviour that is necessary for transforming society. This paper will explore the liberating and transforming power of education at the level of the individual and the society. It will then go on to demonstrate that only the right or intellectual learning at the expense of values and character education is responsible for our educational failure in Kenya.