Education

National School Exams are here once again. I know you will be anxious for your kids to do well. But please remember. Amongst the kids who will be sitting exams there is an artist, who will not need to understand Math.

During the colonial period in Africa, education was almost entirely the monopoly of the missionaries. Missionaries had close ties with the colonial power. In Kenya education became the weapon white settlers chose to maintain a firm grip on the country. By limiting the advancement of Africans in every way. Nothing posed a greater threat to their rule like an educated African.

Worldwide, within universities, museums have for long supported education in a number of disciplines both in the sciences and in the arts. Through their extensive collections museums have made available historical objects and artifacts crucial to learning and research. University museums as repositories are unique in themselves. The origin of university museums can be traced back from around the 17^th Century

In the age of Amazon.com, and other online book service, the book market is wide open. With money to spare one can sample as never before the book offerings of the world. I have been indulging my pleasure and doing just that. And I ran across this this amazing new novel, Burden of Failure, by a Ugandan author.

We had grown up under the awful Emergency of the 1950s, reading colonial pamphlets printed in red ink, showing rows of Mau Mau fighters being publicly hanged on high posts. The Lari massacre and the subsequent government reprisals took place within walking distance from our village

A large black Rolls Royce cruised slowly along the tree lined lane that lead up to the Big School. A lane usually closed to traffic. There it drew to a stop. Out came the Governor General of the newly independent State of Uganda, Sir Walter Coutts And there to receive him was Ian Robinson Headmaster of King’s College Budo

A final year student of Bristol University stands before a class of teenage boys and girls at Cheltenham Demonstration Secondary School, the year 1965. He is young, good looking, well dressed in tie and suit. Beside him stands the school’s headmaster similarly attired

Today as a matter of course no school going child in Africa is complete without his or her school uniform. Adorned in often bright school colors, book bags dangling from shoulders, every day bright eyed kids take to school as their parents look on admiringly.