There has been sustained debate in education circles in Kenya on the place of values in the education system.

Experts are split along cultural, religious and ethnic lines, making it difficult to decide which values should be taught.

But it can be done in the pathways being introduced under CBC with the direct involvement of the communities, and Thomas Lickona shows how in his 1991 book Educating for Character: How Schools Can Teach Respect and Responsibility

Thomas lays down sequential steps in a 14-point overview that I will try to adapt to the Kenyan context by paraphrasing or inserting my own expertise.

He starts by proposing an Education Standing Committee to help select target values from the diversity of material available but anchor it on the Constitution. The committee should be given latitude for long-range planning and resourcing of the programme and its ultimate implementation. This should be crystal clear from the start.

Though the Ministry of Education has a wide variety of stakeholders, the committee should not be a crowd, because a quick turnaround is needed for the decisions made.

Second, the committee should undertake a needs analysis using the broadest of approaches. The survey should cover parents, teachers, school administrators, subordinate staff, school sponsors and experts to the broadest extent possible.

The survey should have a matrix for values that should be prioritised and why a particular group(s) think the chosen set of values are important.

Third, the committee should assess how a select set of schools are teaching values and what needs to change or can be learned from them.

Fourth, the committee then develops a plan on what the short-range and long-range goals should look like and how they will be met by developing a resourcing and staffing plan.

The next step is getting feedback from the stakeholders on the plan before disseminating it.
The sixth step is around organising rules and practice guidelines for parent or guardian committees for each school.

Committees liaise with schools on which trajectory education at home should take with regard to value-based education. These committees should be resourced and their capacity enhanced.

The seven step is on sub-county special focus committees to deal with zone-specific issues that are a high priority but are concerned with what strategy people call low hanging fruits. It can be a case of best practice sharing or common denominator in the sub-county.

The next step is creating value-based education resource centres in each zone. Many schools are not engaging in value-based education because teachers, parents and guardians lack the necessary resources and motivation.

After the resource centres are established, there is the need to create a professional teacher and parent development programme and provide resources and staff.

This should be followed by a school pairing system where quality circles are established to sustain the momentum.

Let learners have a secure space not only to exercise democratic governance but also maintain and provide feedback loops for all those participating.

After that, the real building blocks are put together for a value-centred education curriculum by identifying values for each grade, defining educational objectives for the values, and developing corresponding classroom and out-of-classroom activities.

Then get publicity – planned in a way to get feedback, information and criticism. Sometimes criticism is mistaken for opposition. Not all criticism is for opposition, but for implementation of large-scale initiatives where the destination is beyond the scope of our eyes from where we stand.

Last, keep evaluating the programme, making it better and learning from the best practices and challenges.

— The writer is a strategy and education expert;
[email protected]