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Kenya was established as “a white man’s country”, where colonial settlers would wield political power and wealth at the top of a racial hierarchy, and Africans would remain at the bottom, destined to remain “hewers of wood and drawers of water”. For this reason, settlers were opposed to education for Africans and consistently sabotaged its availability until the British government handed over the levers of the state to Africans. Settlers believed that education would make Africans hostile to manual labour on settler plantations and would give them political aspirations inconsistent with their designated place at the bottom of the racial hierarchy.
However, as is typical of racism and oppression, the Europeans in Kenya did not have a consistent, coherent, or united position on education for Africans. While the settlers would have rather Africans got no education, the missionaries needed Africans to gain some elementary education so that they could read the bible. To quieten the anxieties of the settlers, the missionaries insisted that they would limit this education to four years, instruction in vernacular, basic technical skills for building furniture and fixing machines, and guiding Africans on acceptable ways of organizing politically.
In this vision of education, the missionaries had no plan to build upper primary or secondary schools for Africans. As Evanson Wamagatta put it, the goal of the missionaries “was not to educate the Africans to compete with the white man, but rather to equip them to become useful subjects of the crown”. This focus on the crown distinguished the missionaries from the settlers. Unlike the settlers who were interested in building a colony in which they would be the aristocrats, the missionaries were still loyal to the aristocrats living in the British Isles. After all, missionaries were often more educated and of a higher social class than the settlers, which the settlers deeply resented. Missionaries were also not invested in the colony like the settlers, since many eventually retired in Britain.
The sympathies of the colonial administration, the third arm of the colonial trinity, straddled both positions. On one hand, the administration feared, like the settlers, that education risked spurring African political agitation, especially because they also believed that the anti-colonial agitation in India was due to the British failing to rein in on Western schooling for Indians. On the other hand, the administrators welcomed some education for Africans to perform some of the basic clerical duties, since the schools would train Africans. Moreover, having the missionaries in charge of education would contain African political consciousness.
Until 1926, when Alliance High School was established, no high schools were available for Africans. Secondary school education was available to European children, and it was modelled on the British public school system. The schools were Prince of Wales (now Nairobi School) for boys and Kenya High School and Limuru Girls High School for girls. The students who attended these schools were children of colonial officers in both Kenya and Uganda, and of British and Boer settlers.
Of course, none of the different positions within the colonial community was acceptable to Africans. Africans could see that schooling was important for providing the knowledge that allowed Europeans to make sophisticated decisions and operate within the political and institutional context. This consciousness was heightened by the fact that European children had access to a literary and secondary school education funded by the colonial government, and that they were not subjected to religious and technical education from missionaries, as African children were. There was also the obvious fact that schooling gave one access to clerical jobs that were better paying than manual labour.
From the 1910s, Africans began to agitate for schools that were not under the control of the missionaries, that had a larger literary content, that gave Africans access to secondary school education, and most of all, that were financed by public funds. The eminent education historian Sorobea Bogonko observed that between 1912 and 1922, Africans from Mumias, to Kisii, Nyahera, and even the famous CMS Maseno School, protested the dominance of religion and technical subjects, and the lack of an academic curriculum. In 1924, the Kikuyu Association, a group of Kikuyu chiefs coached on “acceptable” political agitation by missionaries like Canon Leakey, presented a memorandum to the Kiambu District Commissioner indicating their desire for a high school in the district.
Toothless bulldogs
The political agitation inspired by African displeasure with the low standards of education for Africans, among other issues, led the colonial administration to establish Local Native Councils (LNCs) in the mid-1920s. Since legislative power in the country was the preserve of Europeans at the LegCo, the colonial administration sought to pacify Africans with their own tribal councils. Through the councils, the administration could manage Africans by giving them a vent for their political discontent and the space for input on social issues such as education and cattle dipping. In reality, however, the LNCs were, as Wamagatta put it, “toothless bulldogs” because their meetings were chaired by the District Commissioners and their by-laws and levies could only come into effect upon approval by the Governor.
Thus, the LNCs entrenched a dialectic that would become characteristic of the colonial state to this day, which is that of overt concessions and covert restrictions. The colonial government would overtly concede to African agitation through new institutions, like the LNCs, but at the same time, covertly restrict expansion of the African political space within parameters controlled by the state.
Nevertheless, this colonial dialectic of manipulation did not stop LNCs from setting high schools for Africans as a major agenda. In 1925, “LNCs in Nyeri, Murang’a, North Nyanza (Abaluhyia), Central Nyanza (Luo) and South Nyanza (Kisii) each voted to raise £10,000 for the construction [of secondary schools].” A year later, the Kiambu LNC declared its intention to establish a teachers’ training college in Githunguri. In other words, the Africans who were co-opted to work within the small political space in the colonial framework still defied the limits placed on them.
However, now that the LNCs were within the framework of colonialism, the colonial administration could play the covert games of restrictions. The administration opposed the setting up of high schools, arguing that no African students would qualify for the schools, and no qualified teachers could staff them. They also suggested that rather than waste money on building additional high schools, the LNCs should send the children and the funds they raised to the missionary school.
The parasitism of this endeavour is evident: initially, the colonial government did not want to build high schools. When Africans went ahead and planned to build the schools for themselves anyway, the missionaries built Alliance and wanted the funds set aside for African schools to be sent to Alliance instead.
Meanwhile, the missionaries were doubly offended that Africans had rejected missionary schools and had defied the limits on education which the missionaries had considered suitable for Africans. Therefore, as the colonial governments stalled African initiatives to build secondary schools, the missionaries established the Alliance High School, thus remaining in control of the only secondary school for Africans.
Of course, the LNCs saw through this manoeuvring and insisted that the money they had raised should still build the additional schools. After all, AHS could not sufficiently meet the need for secondary schools for Africans across the country.
Unfortunately, because the LNCs were already in the framework of the colonial administration, they remained subject to manipulation by the colonial administration. Between 1930 and 1934, the colonial government built schools in Nyeri, Murang’a, Kiambu, Kisii, and Kakamega, giving the LNCs the impression that they would soon become high schools, but never really making that commitment outright. The administration tricked the Kiambu LNC into contributing their funds for education to Kagumo that was being touted as a government provincial school. Believing that Kagumo was being established as a high school, the Kiambu LNC reluctantly sent the funds, only to be told in 1934 that Kagumo was going to be a primary “C” (or high cost primary) school.
African impatience
Central Kenya became increasingly savvy about the double speak of the colonial administration. They began to build independent schools, defying the requirement for government approval for the schools to be opened. The Kikuyu Independent Schools Association (KISA) built Githunguri Teachers College but kept the colonial administration in the dark, only for the administration to discover that it was a post-primary level institution from seeing the notice board when they went for the opening ceremony.
Eventually, the tension between Africans and the administration came to a head with the Beecher Report of 1948, where, once again, the colonial government was up to its trickery. In the name of “standards” of independent schools, the Commission called for the admission of more Africans to secondary schools. In the fine print, however, the Commission proposed that the increased funding would go to paying inspectors from Britain to inspect independent schools, and would shut down the schools that did not meet standards or did not receive government funding.
The Beecher report became a major bone of contention in the Mau Mau struggle. The oath specifically included swearing not to implement the Beecher report. The colonial government shut down the independent schools during the emergency, and several teachers of mission and government schools became the target of Mau Mau attacks.
The Mau Mau had discovered, as Dedan Kimathi is quoted as saying, that the colonialists were rationing education for Africans like medicine. They had also discovered that the settler appetite for land and for reducing Africans to labour was not waning. Africans could not resolve these frustrations through yet another institution or education commission. They had to be the initiators of their own political institutions and their own education.
In that context, Alliance essentially functioned as the middle ground where the British made concessions to Africans, but still maintained political power and limited education for Africans. The school was designed as a concession to the clamour of Africans for sovereignty. In the vision of Carey Francis, the larger-than-life personality and long-serving headmaster of the school, Alliance would produce Africans who would hold hands with Europeans and together walk into the multiracial, happily-ever-after of the British Empire.
In reality, however, the existence of Alliance aggravated the inequality in education because it remained the only school offering secondary education for Africans in Kenya until the latter half of the 1950s. In East Africa, there was Makerere, which was established in 1921, but it did not offer ‘O-level ’ education until 1933. Alliance did not offer secondary school education until 1940. In 1946, the LNC schools of Kakamega, Kagumo, and Kisii offered only two years of secondary school, otherwise known as junior secondary, a chilling reminder of the reintroduction of junior secondary schools under the Competency-Based Education. The junior secondary level has ended up performing the same function of giving the impression that children are pursuing secondary school education when in fact, it is being prematurely terminated.
By 1956, only 10 schools offered the full four-year secondary education, which included Alliance, Mang’u, Maseno School, St Mary’s Yala, Alliance Girls, Loreto Convent Limuru, and Machakos School. Ten schools are too few, but the point was to keep rationing education while giving Africans an appearance of change. After all, with the Mau Mau resistance raging, the colonial government needed to train a few more African elites who would presumably pacify African resistance.
By 1958, however, the colonial government was up to its concession and restriction tricks again. With more schools offering secondary school education, the clamour for post-secondary education also increased. Just like with the independent schools, Africans had demonstrated the lengths to which they were willing to go to achieve higher education by attending universities in India, Pakistan, and the USSR. Overtly blocking access of Africans to higher education was not going to be politically expedient for the British, especially with the spectre of independence and the need to prevent Africans from taking the side of communism during the Cold War.
And so, as Mwenda Kithinji elaborates, the British started to plan for higher education for Africans, but again with two more restrictions. The colonial government introduced the ‘A’ level system, which was an additional two years of high school required before joining university. Given that few schools would have ‘A’ level, the students from the increasing number of secondary schools would have to compete for the few spaces in high schools if they were to join university. The second restriction was the establishment of an East African university system with different colleges in the three countries, which made admission unnecessarily difficult, especially for Africans admitted to courses offered in a different member country. As Kithinji argues, the colonial officials “were keen on using higher education to deradicalize Africans who were bitter about British colonialism, and as an instrument to rewarding African loyalists, thereby conveying the message that radical politics were worthless”.
Paragon of inequality
While Alliance’s stature may be a product of the hard work of the top students around the country who attended the school, it is also a socio-political product of inequality. AHS was designed to protect a few students, while the colonial government used trickery and legislation to make access to secondary school a nightmare for most Africans. During the emergency, Alliance was also a sanctuary from the war that raged around them. Boys in AHS uniform were not subject to harassment and arrest by the colonial police. In his memoir, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, an alumnus of the school, recounts being with some students at Kikuyu shopping centre when, suddenly, there was a police raid. The students were not touched because they were students at Alliance. As Ngugi puts it, “Our Alliance uniform was a magic veil: the hounds did not even seem to see us.”
Another alumnus, Benjamin Kipkorir, also tells of being arrested in Kitale on his way to back to AHS after the holidays, for the misdemeanour of riding a bicycle in the early evening without headlights. When Kipkorir and his friends tried to bribe the police, they were arrested with the additional charge of attempting to bribe an officer. Eventually, the corruption charge was dropped because of Kipkorir’s fluency in English and the fact that the African Inspector of Police had seen him on the train earlier on.
Alliance students would also benefit from the influence of Carey Francis in colonial circles. Francis would hound the colonial administration with scathing letters whenever his students came into contact with the colonial police. He argued that Alliance students were special because they were “boys with dignity and education from one of the chief schools in the colony”, and wondered if boys from the Prince of Wales School would have been subject to such treatment. Francis’s issue was racist distinction of the elite students, rather than the colonial situation itself.
What Francis embodied is the eschewing of politics. For him, the British Empire was a moral project; not a political one. He therefore sought to train his students to become technocrats above the politics of the British Empire and the anti-colonial struggle. He constantly told his students that politics was for rabble-rousers. The school would not facilitate the discussion of the political events happening around them. Francis represented the middle ground, apolitical education that assumed that the British imperial system was universal and above cultural specificity or African political sovereignty.
And indeed, that is what his alumni turned out to represent. They were consistently the top Africans in the British tactics of overt concession and covert restriction. In 1957, the colonial government organized elections to increase African representation in the LegCo as a means of conceding some political power in the face of the anti-colonial struggle. In that election, Alliance alumni won six out of the eight seats won by Africans. Similarly, Alliance alumni were prominent in the independence Kenyatta government, which was, in itself, a concession to African self-rule but neocolonialism through the back door. In the first cabinet of that government, three-fifths of the posts were taken by Alliance alumni. Francis taught his students to be efficient technocrats but to avoid the larger question of the imperial – later neocolonial – framework in which they operated.
That framework is erroneously named by politicians and the mainstream media as “a failure to translate theory into practice”. In this formulation, the problem of schooling is falsely defined as a gap between the idealism of school and the reality of life. However, that is not where the problem lies. Nationalists and conservatives alike have come from the same school system, regardless of how problematic the curriculum may be. The real issue is that we have retained the colonial education logic of conceding to education reform while behind the scenes thwarting African self-determination, whether political, economic, or intellectual. In such a system, reforms in curriculum content and teaching pedagogy do not change much. The school continues to do what it has always done: train Kenyans to be technically proficient but politically disengaged and philosophically illiterate.
And this critique is not limited to the alumni of Alliance High School and its girls’ partner school. Even the prestigious old-name national schools that later joined the elite list of secondary schools are grounded in similar roots of inequality: favouritism by the colonial establishment, parents drawn from the families of chiefs and the clergy of mainstream churches, access to schools that were originally for Europeans and therefore endowed with facilities, a wide range of subjects, extracurricular activities, and alumni support. Yet, while the alumni occupy the top ranks of key sectors of society, they seem unable to challenge, let alone uproot, the structures of inequality that are causing great social strain in Kenya today.
Binyavanga Wainaina aptly diagnosed this impotence of educated Kenyans in his essay “Schooling for Small Minds”. Binyavanga profiled educated Kenyans as comfortable with imperial domination, content with “enough of a school system, a health system, a private sector, good banks and tall buildings for everybody to see them”. What remained unsaid, however, is that “this splendour is available only to the 5% who make it through the filters”. And the filters are brutal: high failure rates, compromised examinations, a desperate search for opportunities to study and work abroad, and worst of all, a willingness to risk one’s entire material wealth for schooling or for an appointment in the civil service. Binyavanga inevitably concludes: “Our country is an imperium: as we were in colonial days, African bodies [are] at the service of an imperial political class that designs all policy to perpetuate itself.”
This logic to education was renewed with the competency-based education, where the Ministry of Education promised Kenyans better education defined by individualist frivolities such as talent, parental involvement, and personalized teacher attention. Children supposedly had more space to flourish, but at the same time, they had more obstacles to overcome: expensive teaching materials and uniforms to be bought, an incomprehensible evaluation system that borders on surveillance, and an elaborate system of selecting rigidly defined careers whose existence is tenuous and whose potential is doubtful. It is easy to suspect that at work is the old colonial fear that broad, literary education will develop the political consciousness of Kenyan youth. Except that this time, the fear is shared by both the Bretton Woods institutions and the Kenyan elites who answer to them. Thus, Competency-Based Education appears to be the good, old colonial game of overt concessions and covert restrictions in education.
Fear of African sovereignty
Long story short, Alliance High School was established to thwart African initiatives to provide education for African children. Both the missionaries and the colonial administration desired that any education Africans received was firmly in the control of Europeans because they feared that African-controlled schools would, in the words of one Chief Native Commissioner, “easily become hotbeds of ill-informed political and anti-government propaganda”. Underlying that opinion was the racist belief that Africans could not cope with abstract thought, since “Africans’ brain capacity was lower than that of Europeans”. Sadly, these arguments were repeated in some modified form by the government and the mainstream media during the implementation of CBE.
However, the Europeans could not tell Africans outright that Africans did not need any education and that if they did receive education, Europeans had to supervise it. Instead, Europeans engaged in a game where they appeared to honour African demands but imposed restrictions in the fine print. Alliance was that concession to African demands for secondary school education, while behind the scenes, the colonial community crushed African initiatives to build their own secondary schools. The ultimate goal was to suppress African political aspirations on technicalities of “quality” and available funds.
In my chapter in a recently co-edited book on The Education Alibi, I argue that the Kenya government has maintained the same fear of knowledge and education outside of its control, clearly oblivious of the racist attitudes in which that fear is rooted. Competency-Based Education was the latest reiteration of this instinct in which the Kenya government, in collaboration with the Bretton Woods institutions, overtly promised Kenyans an innovative education. In reality, CBE has sabotaged education with pathways, digital surveillance, management of parental care, and an additional layer of schools to serve as a cliff off which Kenyan children fall, and their education prospects are dashed.
Similarly, the recent closure of the Kenya Institution of Management on spurious grounds of lacking accreditation, accompanied by the punitive measure of cancelling certificates issued since 2018 and warning employers about the graduates, falls in the same category of global capitalism’s fear of knowledgeable Africans, and ultimately, of African innovation and growth. The instinct of the Kenyan state remains the same as a century ago, which is to contain African knowledge because of its potential to generate African innovation, economic growth, and political sovereignty. It is no wonder that in the name of reform, Ministry of Education officials repeat arguments straight out of the colonial handbook.
So, while individually the alumni of Alliance and other prestigious, old-name schools may attribute their success within the capitalist economy to their individual brilliance and intellectual heritage, the reality is that they are trained to serve a purpose, which is to give Africans the impression that they are running an efficient economy. In reality, as Binyavanga put it, “This splendour is available only to the 5% who make it through the filters.” Kenya is still firmly in the bosom of the imperium, and we need a discussion of how to break the impasse, rather than of where we went to school. After all, when we were in secondary school, most of us were adolescents. We were too young to understand the function for which we were being trained in the first place.
