(T. O. Eisemon (Auth.) ) Benefiting From Basic

COMPARATIVE A N D INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION
Series Editor: PHILIP G . ALTBACH, State University of New York at Buffalo, U S A
Editorial Advisory Board:
SUMA CHITNIS, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Bombay, India
S. GOPINATHAN, Institute o f Education, Singapore
G A I L P. KELLY, State University of N e w York at Buffalo, U S A
KAZAYUKI KITAMURA, Research Institute for Higher Education, Hiroshima, Japan
THOMAS LABELLE, University of Pittsburgh, U S A
G U Y NEAVE, Institute of Education, University of Education, U K
Volume 1 WAGNER: Future of Literacy in a Changing World
Volume 2 EISEMON: Benefiting from Basic Education, School Quality and

Functional Literacy in Kenya
Volume 3 TARROW: Education and Human Rights
Volume 4 THOMAS & KOBAYASHI: Educational Technology: Its Creation,

Development and Cross Cultural Transfer
Volume 5 BRAY with LILLIS: Community Financing of Education: Issues and

Policy Implications in Less Developed Countries
Volume 6 LAUGLO & LILLIS: Vocationalizing Education: An International

Perspective
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Publisher at Pergamon Press
Benefiting from Basic
Education, School Quality and
Functional Literacy in Kenya
by
THOMAS OWEN EISEMON

McGill University, Montreal, Canada
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First edition 1988
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Eisemon, Thomas.
Benefiting from basic education, school quality, and school
outcomes in Kenya.
(Comparative and international education series; v. 2)
1. EducationKenya. 2. Basic educationKenya.
3. LiteracyKenya. I. Title. II. Series.
LA1561.E47 1987 370'.9676'2 87-6920
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Eisemon, Thomas Owen
Benefiting from basic education, school
quality and school outcomes in Kenya.
(Comparative and international education
series; v. 2)
1. Educational sociologyKenya
I. Title II. Series
370.19'09676'2 LC206.K/
ISBN 0-08-034995-1
Printed in Great Britain by A. Wheaton & Co. Ltd, Exeter

Introduction to the Series
The Comparative and International Education Series is dedicated to inquiry

and analysis on educational issues in an interdisciplinary cross-national
framework. As education affects larger populations and educational issues are
increasingly complex and, at the same time, international in scope, this
series presents research and analysis aimed at understanding contemporary
educational issues. The series brings the best scholarship to topics which have
direct relevance to educators, policy-makers and scholars, in a format
that stresses the international links among educational issues. Comparative
education not only focuses on the development of educational systems and
policies around the world, but also stresses the relevance of an international
understanding of the particular problems and dilemmas that face educational
systems in individual countries.
Interdisciplinarity is a hallmark of comparative education and this series
will feature studies based on a variety of disciplinary, methodological and
ideological underpinnings. Our concern is for relevance and the best in
scholarship.
The series will combine monographic studies that will help policy-makers
and others obtain a needed depth for enlightened analysis with wider-ranging
volumes that may be useful to educators and students in a variety of contexts.
Books in the series will reflect on policy and practice in a range of educational
settings from pre-primary to post-secondary. In addition, we are concerned
with non-formal education and with the societal impact of educational policies
and practices. In short, the scope of the Comparative and International
Education Series is interdisciplinary and contemporary.
I wish to acknowledge the assistance of a distinguished editorial advisory
board including:
Professor Suma Chitnis, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Bombay, India.
Professor Kazayuki Kitamura, Research Institute for Higher Education,
Hiroshima, Japan.
Professor Gail P. Kelly, State University of New York at Buffalo, USA.
Dean Thomas La Belle, University of Pittsburg, USA.
Dr S. Gopinathan, Institute of Education, Singapore.
Professor Guy Neave, Institute of Education, University of London.
PHILIP G. ALTBACH

A cknowledgements
Various individuals provided practical assistance without which this book

could not have been completed. Of particular importance was the assistance
of Mr. Ali Wasi and Miss Mwanasiti Ali who were involved in the initial
fieldwork in Msambweni. They were a source of sound advice and support.
Mr. Andrew Nyamete, Miss Rashida Keshavjee and Miss Salma Soroka
participated in the later phases of data collection and analysis, and their
assistance is much appreciated.
Professor Carl Frederiksen at McGill University assisted with the develop-
ment of instruments to assess the comprehension skills of children in
Msambweni. Discussions of the project with him produced many insights
into the cognitive consequences of secular and religious instruction.
Special recognition is given to the International Development Research
Centre (IDRC) which not only provided financial assistance for fieldwork
but also fostered the collaboration with the Bureau of Educational Research
at Kenyatta University that made this study possible. Dr. Eva Rathgeber at
IDRC offered valuable advice, frequent encouragement and made helpful
comments on portions of the manuscript. In addition, she worked closely
with the Bureau's director, Professor George Eshiwani, and myself in the
development of a research programme on the cognitive outcomes of primary
schooling in Kenya which has supported this and related research activities.
Finally I gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Professor Eshiwani
who made important contributions to the conceptualization of the study
and guided me in understanding the instructional implications of school
expansion in Kenya in the independence period.
Montreal 1985
vi
INTRODUCTION
The Acquisition and Uses of Literacy

in a Coastal Society
Primary schooling is the terminal stage of schooling for children in most

African countries, and most children leave school without passing the school
leaving examination. Primary schools, especially those in rural areas,
are overcrowded. Teachers are poorly trained. Classrooms lack sufficient
textbooks for self-study. The high wastage rates and poor performance of
African and other Third World students in school leaving examinations and
in international tests of educational achievement cast doubt on the efficacy
of schooling in imparting basic knowledge and skills. Studies of the retention
of literacy and numeracy by adults who have obtained primary schooling
have given little encouragement to the belief that the cognitive effects of
schooling are enduring for many school leavers. How these findings can be
reconciled with the claims made for the importance of schooling as an
instrument of social and economic change is investigated in this book.
The research that is reported here was begun with the intention of
explicating the mechanisms through which schooling has been shown to
have a profound impact on measures of social and material improvement.
The cognitive outcomes of literacy acquisition in Koranic and secular
schools in the Msambweni location in coastal Kenya are the focus of the
study.
Literacy is thought to be involved in many of the social and economic
changes which schooling has been shown to effect. It is presumed to be
responsible for the adoption of new ways of processing and using informa-
tion that, in turn, may influence a wide range of behaviours. Fieldwork was
undertaken to develop a description of learning tasks related to the
acquisition of literacy in Koranic schools and in overcrowded and impover-
ished classrooms in rural schools, to specify the cognitive skills associated
with the performance of these tasks, and finally to examine their significance
in daily life.
Attention will be given in subsequent chapters to the comprehension of
texts used in schools and of instructional materials used outside schools to
communicate information about health and agricultural practices. Compre-
hension comprises, besides the ability to access and recall information,
making inferences from written texts and from the prior knowledge which
the text may elicit. Comprehension of texts may be regarded as a set of
1
2 Benefiting from Basic Education in Kenya
essentially school based skills as most African countries lack a literate

tradition and alternative institutions for imparting literacy. Important
exceptions are countries like Kenya which have large Muslim communities
where literacy is also acquired from religious instruction.
The fieldwork in Msambweni was preceded by a pilot study carried out
in Kisii district in western Kenya in 1984 which comprised classroom
observation as well as observation of school leavers in work activities
ranging from subsistence agriculture to wage/salary employment. Kisii, an
important centre of tea and coffee production and one of the first districts
in Kenya to be affected by missionary education, has one of the highest
rates of school participation in the country. Yet students from this district
do very poorly in the national school leaving examinations (KNEC, 1983).
They usually rank at the bottom of the list of rural and urban districts in
the Certificate of Primary Education and Kenya Certificate of Education
(O level) examinations. Enrolment increases at the primary and secondary
level in Kisii have been more modest than in other districts. In the decade
1973-1983, for instance, primary school enrolment grew by only 12%
(personal communication, Ministry of Education, 1984). This was much less
than the national average (158%). Low quality primary schooling is not a
recent condition; Kisii schools have been overcrowded and lacked sufficient
trained teachers, textbooks and other learning resources for many years.
Two schools were selected for study in the town of Kisii. Lessons observed
at the two schools consist of a series of drills related to the topic of
instruction. They typically begin with a recapitulation of the previous lesson,
usually highlighting information that may be needed for the school leaving
examination. Since there are not enough textbooks for students to share, the
teacher summarizes the student text in the form of an exercise, reads it aloud
several times and writes it on the blackboard to be copied into the students'
exercise books. The exercises vary only slightly depending on the subject of
instruction; computations for mathematics, fill in the missing words for
history, science, English and most other subjects.
The pilot study involved, in addition to classroom observation and
analysis of instructional materials, the administration of instruments to
test comprehension to determine whether drill type learning experiences
influence the cognitive skills implicated in comprehending different types of
texts. The instruments tested comprehension of similar information on
science experiments presented in a narrative form or as a set of sequentially
related procedures. While students at both schools experienced great
difficulty in comprehending narrative text, they easily understood lexically
similar information presented in a more familiar way, as instructions to be
followed. The highly formalized, sequentially structured learning experiences
observed in Kisii schools seemed to foster skill in comprehending pro-
cedures. Learning activities in North American schools, in comparison,
involve more experience of situations in which information is presented or
The Acquisition and Uses of Literacy in a Coastal Society 3
is expected to be communicated in a narrative mode ("Now make up a story
a b o u t . . . "). It is perhaps for this reason that North American studies
indicate that narrative passages are comprehended more easily by elemen-
tary school students than texts reporting procedures (Bracewell et al, 1982).
These preliminary findings suggested that differences in school learning
activities may contribute to the development of different competencies in
processing information.
Abilities in comprehending and communicating procedures have an
important relationship to the use of new techniques of production and to
the adoption of practices which are thought to improve human welfare. Kisii
is one of the most agriculturally rich and educationally advanced districts
in Kenya and, throughout the country, agricultural prosperity is closely
related to educational development. The contribution of agricultural
prosperity to educational development is clear; educational expansion is
made possible by local financial contributions toward the costs of school
construction and, at the secondary level, of employing teachers as well.
But how does schooling facilitate agricultural development? Education is
presented in development planning in Kenya and other African countries as
a key social input in the modernization of subsistence agriculture. Such is
the premise of adult education programs, literacy campaigns, and of efforts
to achieve universal primary education. Reading and computational skills
have come to be viewed as a prerequisite to the adoption of new production
techniques requiring the use of agricultural chemicals and machinery for
cultivating, harvesting, and processing crops (Harma, 1979).
Information about the use of agricultural chemicals and equipment was
collected through interviews with extension workers, and others connected
in their distribution as well as from observations of instructional exchanges
with cultivators. Safe and effective use of these products assumes more than
an ability to read and to carry out simple arithmetic operations. It involves
prior knowledge and complex skills in comprehending and using procedural
information. Agricultural chemicals, for instance, must be used during
favourable weather conditions as a part of a programme of agricultural
interventions, beginning with tilling, furrowing, row planting, proper spac-
ing, and sequential application of herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides at
various stages of plant growth with equipment appropriate to the task.
Schooling may transmit important knowledge of agricultural chemistry and
biology and skills associated with the step by step sequencing of work
activities which these and many other production technologies, even rela-
tively simple ones, require.
Religious and Secular Instruction

The present research expands upon the Kisii pilot study. The location of
fieldwork was shifted to a coastal district, Kwale, where it was possible to
compare the effects of literacy instruction in religious and secular institu-
tions. Although Kwale district was an early site of missionary activity, there
was much resistance to western schooling among Muslims who preferred to
send children to Koranic schools. Two features of Koranic instruction were
of special interest. First, children in Koranic schools are taught literacy in
a language, Arabic, that they are not encouraged to understand until they
have memorized large sections of the Quran. Only when they have done this
are they taught a few chapters in their mother tongue. Importance is placed
on understanding the correct meaning of the Koranic text notwithstanding
the fact that translation activities are deferred until the end of studies.
Second, Muslim children learn to read in order to memorize and, as a result,
are always working with printed texts.
Today, most Muslim children in Kwale district attend government schools
as well as the Koranic schools. In government schools, the children receive
a secular education in Kiswahili, their mother tongue, for the first three
years. English is the medium of instruction for the five-year upper stage of
the primary cycle and the language of the school leaving examination.
School children seldom study from textbooks. Instruction in both kinds of
institutions emphasizes memorization and recitation: in one case, because of
the absence of texts combined with the use of the school leaving exam-
inations to monitor student learning; in the other, because of the use of a
sacred text which is to be interpreted literally. A comparison of the cognitive
outcomes of secular and religious schooling is undertaken to examine how
teaching strategies, language use, and text availablity affect comprehension
and whether comprehension skills can be generalized from one domain to
another.
The use of literacy outside schools will be studied as well. Primary
schooling in Kwale district is oriented to the development of literacy in
Kiswahili and in English, both of which have the status of national
languages in Kenya. Kiswahili is the language of petty commerce and trade,
and of government at the local level. Although English no longer enjoys the
status of an official language, it remains the language of national government
and is important in many economic activities, especially those in urban
areas. A knowledge of both languages enables participation in the modern
sector of the economy as well as access to a wide range of goods and services
that are associated with improved living conditions and a better life.
Findings will be presented from a study of the retention of literacy in
Kiswahili and English which examined the comprehension of instructions on
the use of malaria pills for prophylactic and curative purposes. Malaria is
widespread in coastal Kenya. Most residents of Kwale (and perhaps most
people in malarial areas in Africa) prefer to go to a hospital where they will
be treated for malaria by injection. When drugs are used, overdosage and
underdosage is prevalent. Experiments were designed to find out whether
this results from the absence of important prior knowledge which is assumed
in written and oral instructions, but is presumably learned in school.
Findings from a similar study carried out in Kisii on the comprehension of
instructions on the use of agricultural pesticides are also presented in order
to assess literacy outcomes in a non-Kiswahili speaking area.
Msambweni, Kwale District

Data for this research was collected over a six month period, from April
to September 1985, in the Msambweni location in Kwale district, about
50 km south of the port city of Mombasa. The Msambweni location
comprises several small villages, at the centre of which are a district hospital,
a division office, a government secondary school, quarters for government
employees and many small shops. Estimates for 1983 provided by the
Ministry of Health and Social Services indicate that about 120,000 (120,272)
people live in Kwale district, about a sixth of whom (23,991) reside in
Msambweni (Personal communication, Ministry of Health and Social
Services, 1983). Fieldwork focused on the Vengujini sublocation around the
town of Msambweni. It consists of six villages, Mwaembe, Sawasawa,
Chiuriro, Vengujini, Bomani, and Kinondo, with a population of approxi-
mately 6,000 (Personal communication, Ministry of Agriculture, 1985).
To the north of Msambweni is the holiday resort of Diani Beach which
is a popular destination for European expatriates and tourists. This resort
development has brought few benefits to Msambweni, however. Most food
and other supplies for the hotels and beachfront properties at Diani are
brought from Mombasa, and labourers and managerial staff are imported
from other areas of the country to operate the hotels. But Msambweni is
situated along a wide, white sandy beach protected by reefs and has much
potential for tourism. In recent years, several beach houses have been built
and there are plans to construct a 96-room condominium complex on what
a promotional brochure describes as "one of the few unspoilt stretches of
coastlines in the world." "The white beaches," it adds, are "empty apart
from the few local fishermen prodding in the rock-pools for c r a b . . . "
(Kenya Villas, n.d.). Poor secondary roads leading to Msambweni from the
coastal highway connecting Mombasa with Tanga and Dar es Salaam have
made tourism difficult. The election of a new member of parliament in 1983
and the government's decision last year to double the size of its tourist
industry which accounts for almost half of the country's foreign exchange,
have increased the likelihood that the dirt roads to Msambweni will soon
be tarmacked.
A large sugarcane factory is located south of Msambweni in Rimisi. The
fertile land around Rimisi was alienated by Europeans at the beginning of
this century for plantation production, despite the fact that it was within
the protected ten-mile coastal strip which the British colonial authorities
administered on behalf of the Sultan of Zanzibar until independence in 1963.
Families were imported from Mozambique to work the land. Their de-
scendants have remained wage labourers.
Across the coastal highway are the Shimba Hills which separate the
well-watered lowlands from the savannah of the interior. A large part of
the Shimba Hills has been developed as a national game park. It is one
of the less visited parks owing to poor roads and the lack of tourist
accommodation within and outside the park. The district headquarters at
Kwale, in the Shimba Hills, was selected by colonial administrators for its
elevation and presumably healthier atmosphere. Coastal Shimoni, the site of
the first government offices, was considered to be unsuitable for European
habitation. Indeed, malaria, bilharzia and other tropical diseases are still
epidemic in coastal areas.
Internal Migration and Expansion of the Market Economy

The environs of Kwale were once part of the Digo settlement scheme
created at the time of independence to protect the interests of the indigenous
Digo community which allied itself with African nationalism when proposals
were made to reintegrate the coastal strip into an Arab coastal state
administered from Zanzibar. Prior to then, most coastal land was "owned"
by Africans of Arab descent or by Europeans who had acquired land deemed
to be vacant by colonial authorities. The Digo settlement scheme enabled
many subsistence agriculturalists to obtain land titles and, in a gesture of
appreciation, the Digos acknowledged government ownership of certain
lands and allocated a large tract of beachfront property at Msambweni to
the country's first President, Jomo Kenyatta. This land was later transferred
to influential Asian and European Kenyans who are developing many of the
properties for tourism.
In the early 1970s, all tribal lands were opened to settlement by any citizen
with enough cash income to purchase a title, or to acquire a loan for this
purpose. Good, fertile, inexpensive land was scarce in the central and
western parts of the country but not in the Coast Province where there were
large tracts of "vacant" government land to be sold or leased and small
holdings that could be purchased for bargain prices from Digo and other
coastal peoples with little cash income. Migrants from the central and
mid-eastern parts of the country began settling on the south coast well before
independence with the encouragement of colonial authorities who regarded
them as instruments of development, exemplars for the Digo population.
The abolition of tribal lands in the early 1970s encouraged the influx of
migrants from upcountry into the former Digo reserve and throughout the
district, pushing the Digo community into the narrow strip between the
Shimba Hills and the "unspoilt stretches of coastline" from Diani to
Msambweni which are now targeted for tourism.
The lands cultivated by the 640 families in the Vengujini sublocation of
Msambweni generally range from 1.4 to 4 hectares (Personal communi-
cation, Ministry of Agriculture, 1985). This is enough to produce food
sufficient for an average family of seven. (Family sizes are smaller in Kwale
than in many upcountry districts due to the high rate of infant mortality.)
Few cultivators possess land titles and therefore cannot obtain agricultural
credit. Typically, land is leased from a relative. The cultivator owns all crops
which are produced, except for coconuts and fruit which belong to the family
which originally planted the tree, whether or not it has title to the land. The
principal crops grown in Msambweni are maize, cassava, rice, and sim sim
in the dry season. Cassava is now grown for domestic consumption. It was
once an important cash crop in coastal districts when it was used to produce
starch. Today, maize and rice are the main cash crops. But the prices paid
to producers by state marketing boards for both crops are probably well
below the cost of production. Producers receive about Ksh. 3/(.250) per kilo
for maize, for instance. Consequently, very little maize and rice are produced
for sale to the government, despite favourable weather and soil conditions.
In 1984, the year of the worst drought since independence, the entire Coast
Province, which was unaffected by the drought, produced only 600 bags of
maize and 12 bags of rice for distribution to other parts of the country
(Personal communication, Ministry of Agriculture, 1985). The total pro-
duction of rice and maize for sale was much larger than this, however.
Maize produced in Kwale district is sold illegally in the drought-affected
highland districts bordering the Coast Province, and rice grown there
reaches markets as distant as Nairobi where shortages are chronic.
Still, most cultivators are engaged in subsistence production to varying
degrees. Maize, rice and other crops are usually planted using the traditional
broadcast method. New varieties have been introduced on a few experi-
mental plots at the instigation and under the close supervision of agricultural
extension officers. Row planting, proper spacing, continual weeding and
separation of crops have been promoted through the contact farmer scheme
for many years with no discernable effect, except among cultivators from
up-country that have purchased land in the area.
The country's former president, who often visited Msambweni and died
there in 1978, is said to have characterized the Digo, for whom he had much
affection, as an unenergetic people waiting for coconuts to fall from the trees.
Although this statement is difficult to attribute with certainty, it is repeated
and embellished by many up-country representatives of government in
Msambweni and elsewhere in the district on occasions when explanations for
its economic stagnation are offered. Development is viewed, quite simply, as
doing what is done up-country; adopting modern agricultural practices,
participating in the cash economy, and sending children to school in the
hope that they will be employed in wage labour and be able to purchase land
for the family with their earnings. Behaviour considered antithetical to
development and the forms of social and political organization which
support it is, of course, to be discouraged in the interests of progress. This
involves continual government vigilance especially insofar as the activities of
traditional authorities are concerned.
Authority and Social Control

At the local level, vigilance is exercised through the institution of the
chieftainship, a legacy of colonialism that has proven to be surprisingly
useful in the modern era as an instrument for social control. Chiefs are the
"indigenous" political authorities with which government deals when local
co-operation or compliance with development initiatives is required; raising
funds for school construction, for example. They are appointed by and are
accountable to government and in many instances have no relationship to
traditional leadership based on clan and age set membership. Instead, chiefs
are selected from among local applicants on the basis of formal education,
government, experience, political loyalty, and other factors extraneous to
traditional status attainment in most African societies. That, of course,
fosters conflict with traditional authorities, conflicts in which the chiefs
invested with the power to detain and charged with enforcement of laws
prohibiting oathing, witchcraft, cattle stealing, and similar practices, have
the upper hand.
The chief in Msambweni is assisted by sub-chiefs assigned to the villages
which make up the sublocation. He shares secular authority with the division
officer who is the official representative of government, and with the
educational, health, and agricultural officers that are posted there. But the
chief is a permanent figure of secular authority. He is appointed by the
President on the recommendation of the District Officer and the local
member of parliament and will remain until retirement unless he is removed
for malfeasance. Unlike chiefs in other parts of the country, especially in
pastoral areas, the chief at Msambweni has little reason to envy the influence
of traditional elders who once managed local affairs. Although the Msamb-
weni Digo continue to initiate boys and girls, the age-set structure (rikas)
of the Mijikenda people of whom the Digo are a part has come under
pressure from religious as well as secular authorities. Kambis, elders from the
most senior rika, no longer perform what are now legal functions presided
over in the first instance by the chiefs, such as the adjudication of land
disputes, marital claims and punishment of theft and other crimes.
It is uncertain when the Digo of Msambweni were converted to Islam. The
Arab settlements at Gazi north of Msambweni and at Wasini to the south
are many hundreds of years old. The Digo and other Mijikenda peoples
migrated to the coastal areas of Kenya from present day Somalia long
afterward, perhaps in the 17th century (Spear, 1978). A hunting and food
gathering society, the Digos interacted with the Arabs and settled among
them, but they were neither slaves nor agents of the Arabs in the lucrative
slave and ivory trades with the interior. They confined Islam to the port cities
and plantations along the coast and, in doing so, the Digo demonstrated a
talent for resistance that was to frustrate the Arabs' successors who
possessed more sophisticated instruments of cultural change.
The European missionaries established schools near Mombasa in the
mid-19th century, largely to provide training for the slaves freed by the
British Navy which had intervened to destroy the flourishing trade between
the coast and the spice islands of Zanzibar and Pemba. The freed slaves
received a practical education in preparation for wage labour on the mission
plantations, in the port cities, or for employment as porters in caravans
organized by European and Asian traders which opened the interior of the
country to the market economy. Schooling was associated with wage
employment, and wage employment with slavery, an association that persists
to the present day in the use of the Kiswahili term Mtumuwa (slave) to
describe those whose labour is sold for wages, mainly schooled migrants
from up-country who are typically Christian.
The conversion of the Digo to Islam was accelerated by the proclamation
of a British Protectorate on the East African coast in 1895 (Sperling, 1985).
In Mombasa and the "ten mile strip" linking that city with the German
colony of Tanganyika, the British acted as representatives of the Sultan of
Zanzibar in matters affecting the small Arab community. Arabs were
exempted from the hut and poll taxes applied to other Africans in order to
press them into agricultural work on lands acquired for European settlers.
The Arabs were defined as non-African for these purposes on the basis of
their religion and exempted accordingly. The conversion of the Msambweni
Digo to Islam was virtually complete by the second decade of this century.
Most of the population had assumed Islamic names; some even took the
title of Sharif and in doing so associated themselves with the lineage of
the Prophet. Whenever a mosque was constructed, a madrassa was soon
established for educating Muslim children.
The Institutionalization of Koranic Education

The expansion of the madrassas paralleled efforts to promote secular
schooling for Arabs in Kwale and other coastal districts. Recognizing the
limited potential for missionary education in Muslim areas, the colonial
government sought to establish schools which taught secular subjects and
offered religious instruction as well. These efforts were fiercely resisted by the
Arab community which by then included many Digo converts. In the early
1920s, for example, the government opened a school at Waa between
Msambweni and Mombasa. The Muslim community built a madrassa on
adjacent land and within a few years the government school closed and was
relocated in Mombasa. (Another government school was established on
BBE
the same site after the Second World War, eventually becoming a large
secondary school.)
Traditionally, Koranic instruction was carried out in the home under the
father's supervision, or with the involvement of a relative, often an uncle able
to read and recite Arabic. Family madrassas have not disappeared entirely
and family members are still significant in religious instruction. But one
outcome of government promotion of secular education was the for-
malization of Koranic education. The Digo community, aspiring for recog-
nition as Arabs, raised funds to construct madrassas and pay Koranic
teachers to organize instruction for their children. The madrassa teacher
(Mwalim, learned man) and the Imam, who is responsible for various
religious and legal functions, are the principal figures of spiritual authority
in the Muslim community. However this authority is consensual, requiring
correspondence between the interpretations of the faith espoused by the
representatives of religious authority and those held by the community.
Responses to Secularisation
When discordance occurs, the community may elect different leadership
or, as is often the case, a section of the community will establish its own
mosque and/or madrassa. Four of the six villages in the Msambweni area
have mosques, and there are five madrassas. Some have been established for
reasons of convenience owing to the distance between some of the villages.
Others have been established for a clan or clan cluster, the members of which
live in the same area though not necessarily in the same village. Yet each
mosque and madrassa is unique in ways that are important to the community
and revealing of the varying degrees of Islamization within Digo society as
well as of its responses to secular influences.
Tolerance for indigenous practices which are antithetical to the Islamic
religion is a source of controversy in the Msambweni Muslim community.
Islam is, seemingly, an exacting religion. Adherents must accept the oneness
of God, the authority of the Quran and the "pillars" of the faith (prayers,
alms, fasting, etc.). And these are not, as with many tenets of Christianity,
relegated to individual conscience. The obligations of the faith are to be
strictly observed. However, there is much more flexibility in the faith than
this formulation acknowledges. The spread of Islam to sub-Saharan Africa
was accomplished not by forced conversion, through slavery or warfare, but
by the gradual assimilation of individuals whose beliefs became progressively
more "orthodox" through trade and intellectual contact with the rest of the
Muslim world.
The Digos share with the other Mijikenda beliefs about a common origin
(Singwaya) and descent from a common ancestor that provide a cultural
framework for the social organization of their society into age sets, as well
as for ceremonies such as initiation and rituals associated with marriage and
death which punctuate the life cycle. Many are incompatible with orthodox
interpretations of Islam, although there is much scope for accommodation.
Circumcision of boys and girls, for example, is a pre-Islamic practice of
many African societies; it also exists in Middle Eastern countries. The
Prophet had little to say on the subject and circumcision was integrated into
Islam as a ritual that has become closely associated with membership in the
religious community. Initiation of boys and girls in African societies, though
involving the act of circumcision as a culminating experience, is preceded by
instruction in what are, in any interpretation of Islam, heretical beliefs and
practices such as those relating to placating or invoking the assistance of
ancestral spirits. Today, most Digo Muslims in Msambweni initiate their
children before the age of five, often at birth. Ancestor worship persists,
however. There are several shrines called mizimu along the seashore at
Msambweni where offerings and sacrifices are made to the spirits. This is
preached against by some Imams in the Friday darassas (sermons), and is
a subject of concern to some madrassa teachers. Others are indifferent to
such practices. To take another example, uchii (palm wine) had important
ceremonial purposes among the Digo, in the paying of the bride price, for
instance. The Quran is unambiguous about abstinence from alcohol. Yet
uchii is still used in many marital and burial ceremonies. Again, there is
division within the Muslim community about this practice. It is tolerated by
some religious authorities as a matter of importance to families and clans,
while others attempt to eradicate the practice by emphasizing its incompati-
bility with Islam. The relegation of such pre-Islamic communal activities to
the realm of the family and clan seems effective in ensuring substantial
modification of these practices, as in the case of initiation, or their eventual
elimination.
Paradoxically, although the Muslim community has become more "ortho-
dox" in many respects, its institutions for imparting religious learning have
become more secular. Until very recently, madrassa teachers received no
formal training and were qualified to teach the Quran on the basis of their
facility in reading Arabic, their dedication to propagating Muslim learning,
their skill in organizing instruction, and their ability to retain the confidence
of parents. Children were admitted to madrassa at preschool age and
progressed according to their performance in recitation, completing in-
struction whenever the Mwalim (teacher) determined that their knowledge
of sacred texts was satisfactory. The Mwalim maintained strict discipline
with a switch or whip made of braided palm leaves. Madrassas were
constructed of mud and wattle with thatched roofs for use in the wet season.
In the dry season, children often sat outside and received instruction under
the shade of a tree. The provision of Koranic texts and slate boards for
transcription sufficed for learning resources.
Two of the five madrassas in Msambweni have remained like this. The rest
have become more like secular schools, at least superficially. They are housed
in buildings with concrete walls and galvanized tin roofs that are indistin-
guishable from the government schools. A few madrassa teachers have
received formal training at institutions newly created for this purpose. One
madrassa in Msambweni now employs a trained language specialist. Another
groups children for instruction according to their age and placement in
school. Children at this madrassa sit at desks and follow a syllabus of studies
leading to an oral examination that is referred to appropriately as the CPE
or Certificate of Primary Education examination. A graduation ceremony is
arranged for the successful students at which prizes are given. In brief, these
madrassas have tried to retain enrolment and their central role in the Muslim
community by being what many parents expect "good" education to be;
instruction carried out under the supervision of a trained teacher, planned
in a sequential fashion in accordance with principles of child psychology and
provided in an atmosphere thought to be conducive to learning.
Almost all of the school-age cohort in Msambweni is enrolled in one of
the three primary schools in the Vengujini sublocation. School enrolments
have grown considerably in the independence period. Only one of the three
schools was constructed prior to independence, and it was built for the
children of parents from outside the district who were employed in the
district hospital and other government offices. Muslim children attended
the madrassas.
The growth in school attendance is the result of government incentives as
well as of factors that have made schooling not only attractive but essential
for the Muslim community. The government of Kenya gradually abolished
primary school fees beginning in 1974 for the first four standards. By 1979
tuition fees were eliminated, contributing greatly to the dramatic rise in
primary school enrolment in the 1970s. Perhaps the most important factor
in increasing school participation in Msambweni and elsewhere in Kwale
district has been the marginalization of the Muslim population due to the
expansion of the cash economy, wage employment and changes in land
tenure that have favoured migration into the area. The Muslim community's
low level of educational attainment has put it at a serious disadvantage
vis--vis other communities in the country in claiming the economic benefits
which development planning promises: land titles, employment, better
roads, hospitals, government maintained secondary schools, and other
public goods. At the same time, the community has lost through national
integration the relative political autonomy and protection from the market
economy that colonialism afforded. A sign posted at the entrance to the
headmaster's office in the Harambee (community sponsored) secondary
school at Msambweni succinctly states the importance of schooling for
Muslim children and their parents, "No English, No Jobs." The implications
are self-evident; no jobs, no cash income, no land, in sum, no means to resist
the centripetal influence of the modern state.
CHAPTER 1
Benefiting from Basic Education
TWENTY YEARS of African educational research has established a convincing

social and economic rationale for expanding primary schooling which,
happily, reinforces political conviction in most countries. Primary schooling
has been associated with:
transformations of belief systems favouring the acquisition of

rationalistic, empirical attitudes conducive to the adoption of modern
technologies and methods of production in daily life;
profound cognitive changes linked to the development of skills in using
written language;
involvement in the market economy, increased earnings and higher
levels of productivity in agriculture and wage employment;
and,
lower fertility, good nutritional practices and better health.
Yet the contribution of school knowledge and skills to these effects is still
poorly understood. For many reasons, most educational research has tended
to use input/output models for assessing the effects of instruction on learning
and its outcomes in terms of changes that can be correlated with schooling.
To attribute change to school knowledge and skills does not reveal much
about what is acquired and retained from schooling, or what is necessary
for change to occur. Comparison of individuals with different levels of
schooling with respect to important outcomes such as increased farm yields,
may suggest gross school effects but will also reveal large within-group
differences that may approach or exceed the between-group differences that
are the objects of educational policy. Unless efforts are made better to
understand how school experiences facilitate individual and societal change,
the policy implications of this research will remain ambiguous.
The relationship between school experiences and school outcomes is the
subject of this book. Its purpose is to examine the instructional antecedents
of the development of capacities to make use of products and processes of
modern technology that increase productivity and benefit individuals and
society. Such capacities are central to various explanations of the re-
lationship between schooling and social and economic change which impli-
cate the school curricula, literacy, and organization of instruction, and the
13
articulation of schooling with the wage and monetary economy as some of
the mechanisms through which individuals are changed and benefits to
society occur.
Unfortunately, explanations of school effects have only a very oblique
relationship to research dealing with the internal efficiency of schooling,
which has been guided mainly by concerns about the effectiveness of
instruction conceived in the narrow sense of learning what is necessary to
progress from one stage of schooling to the next. The correlation of
schooling with various social and economic outcomes was for many years
supportive of quantitative expansion of education, particularly at the
primary level, and indifference to its implications for instruction. Recent
evidence of the variability of outcome responses has led to a concern for
reducing the variability of school inputs to facilitate retention and boast
achievement, thereby increasing the efficiency of educational investments
(Heyneman and White, 1986). Whether interventions which make schools
more internally efficient also increase their external efficiency is, however, a
matter that will be considered in subsequent discussion.
Theories of School Effects

Modernization theory, influential in functionalist representations of devel-
opment processes in the 1960s, emphasized the attitudinal changes exposure
to a novel social structure might induce that predispose individuals to adopt
new behaviours. Attention was drawn to similarities between schools and
other complex organizations which were presumed to be modernizing
influences, and to what distinguished schooling from traditional institutions
concerned with enculturation and production. According to Moore, the
antecedents of modern attitudes are to be found in the formal structure of
schooling requiring progressive development of strategies in the mastery
of subject matter (Moore, 1965, 110-11). An analogy is made to the factory
whose workforce is stratified according to hierarchically ordered tasks and
individual competencies, and to incremental processes that characterize
production in complex organizations. The attitudinal consequences of
exposure to the factory-like social structure of the primary school were
thought to be profound in developing countries where schooling is the
principal means of obtaining access to the modern economy. In school
the child acquired individualistic, meritocratic and universalistic values as
well as new behaviours, such as those related to the capacity to work co-
operatively and independently according to a time schedule, which are
imbedded in modern production (Dreeben, 1968).
The educational implications of modernization theory are associated with
the writings of Inkeles who constructed a psychometric profile of the
"modernity syndrome" (Inkeles and Smith, 1974). The modernity syndrome
presumes a graduated set of responses to modern institutions and influences
Benefiting from Basic Education 15
ranging from affirmation of customary pre-industrial beliefs ("tradition") to
the adoption of values of instrumental importance in modern society that
may be in conflict with those inherited from previous generations. Becoming
modern involves affecting rationalistic, empirical, egalitarian beliefs. Psycho-
metric instruments were developed by Inkeles to measure these attitudes,
permitting comparison of individuals varying in their exposure to schooling
and other modernizing influences (Inkeles, 1974).
Inkeles identified four processes associated with school learning as
being crucial to the explanation of school effects: reward and punishment,
modelling, exemplification and generalization. Reward and punishment
is mentioned in connection with the socialization of children into the
sequential routines that are a part of classroom life, and of modern society
by implication. According to Inkeles, such experiences teach the principle
of planning. The contact of children with figures of authority within the
school, particularly with teachers, leads to imitative behaviour involving
the expression of modern values and forms of conduct like receptivity to new
ideas, impartiality and co-operation. The school, in exemplifying these
values and behaviours, encourages their acceptance. Generalization is
emphasized in connection with the development of personal efficiency
through mastery of school skills.
Inkeles speculated that the effects of schooling on affective modernity were
incidental to the formal learning of core subjects such as history, geography,
civics and science, which transmit modern knowledge. When items eliciting
school knowledge of these subjects were omitted from measures of modern
attitudes, "education still showed as a substantial independent cause of
individual modernity" (Inkeles, 1973, 175). Consequently, while modern
knowledge might facilitate or enhance the acquisition of modern attitudes,
it was the organization of learning in schools that provided opportunities to
think and behave in modern ways.
African research demonstrated the importance of schooling in trans-
mitting new values which, intuitively, had much to do with bringing about
the kinds of social and economic changes that modernization promised. But
in contrast to similar studies conducted in other parts of the developing
world, African research pointed to the school curriculum as the source of
modern attitudes (Armer and Youtz, 1971). Scores on attitudinal measures
of individual modernity were found to increase with number of years of
schooling. In relation to home environment, urbanization, factory experi-
ence, and other modernizing influences, school effects were greater. That the
content of schooling might be at least as influential as its structure was
strongly suggested by examining, the effects of Koranic education. Such
education is formally organized in the sense that it is text-based and carried
out in an institution providing systematic instruction in which learning is
assessed according to performance criteria. More than six years of Koranic
education was negatively associated with individual modernity. Curricular
effects were also evident in comparisons of students with the same number
of years of schooling who attended different kinds of secondary schools;
grammar school instruction in arts and science subjects was more modern-
izing than teacher education or polytechnic training.
Inkeles recognized that school characteristics could enhance or limit its
socializing effects. Unless the school environment exemplified modern values
and self-consciously fostered their acquisition in children, affective change
might not be discernableor might in extreme cases contribute to rejecting
modern orientations. If a pupil's school experience, Inkeles noted, is "one
of continuous frustration, failure and rejection, (then) insofar as this pupil
generalizes from his school experience . . . it will hardly be by way of feeling
more efficacious or more open to new experience" (Inkeles, 1973b, 178).
An important weakness of modernity research was that it offered little
more than speculation as to what caused affective change in the school
environment. Significantly, the modernizing characteristics of schooling
were substantiated with North American theories and examples (Dreeben,
1968). How much personal efficacy is fostered, for instance, in primary
school systems in many developing countries in which wastage may
account for a fourth to a half of the entering cohort, and in which less than
a third of those surviving until the terminal year of primary schooling are
likely to gain admission to secondary schools? What opportunities do
students in impoverished rural schools have to develop independence,
responsibility, or initiative, where there are few textbooks for them to study
from, and achievement is determined by performance on national exam-
inations set with reference to a national syllabus that teachers have difficulty
in covering?
Modernization theorists attributed benign and essentially progressive
effects of schooling which were oversimplified and expressed in the prop-
osition that the more schooling an individual receives, the more modern he
will be, and his society will be better off for it. Newly independent African
governments which were establishing universities and rapidly expanding
academic secondary education in the late 1960s obtained some assurance
that they were responding appropriately, at least insofar as the priority they
placed on creating a critical mass of highly skilled manpower was concerned
(Harbison and Meyers, 1964).
The Economic Benefits of Educational Investments

The importance given to secondary and higher education seemed less
sensible as greater progress was made in replacing expatriates in government
service, and as more bilateral and multilateral assistance agencies became
involved in financing educational expansion. Enthusiasm for secondary and
higher education waned among foreign donors when evaluations of the
social rate of return to investments in primary, secondary, and higher
education indicated much higher returns for primary schooling (Psacharo-
poulos, 1973, 1983). The significance of this research is difficult to exagger-
ate. It had a profound impact on the lending priorities of the World Bank
and, consequently, on the educational policies of African countries as well
as on how school "effects" were studied.
The theory of rate of return analysis assumes earnings to measure
productivity and individual's earning functions to be an equilibrium price.
An individual will continue to invest in schooling as long as income benefits
(private return) exceed returns to alternative investments. Rates of return
to society's investments in schooling (social return) are projected from
earnings functions on the assumption that increased earnings attributable
to incremental increases in levels of schooling are redistributed through
differential taxation and public expenditures producing social benefits.
School-related increases in earnings are explained by the contribution of
education to the acquisition of vocational skills and knowledge including
"reasoning skills (and) changes in beliefs and values and in attitudes toward
work and society" (World Bank, 1980,47). Such skills, knowledge, beliefs,
values and attitudes raise the productive capacities of the labour force by
enabling more efficient use of production technologies and physical capital,
generally. The value thus added to an individual's capacities is viewed as
fairly uniform for levels of educational attainment and as stable or con-
sidered to increase at a constant rate over the individual's productive life
varying with capacities possessed upon entry into the labour market. The
contribution of schooling to more efficient utilization of all factors of pro-
duction is acknowledged in the form of higher incomes and, in the case of
wage salary employment, in the practice of remunerating workers according
to their levels of schooling. The evidence adduced in support of the prop-
osition that schooling increases productive capacity and, hence, economic
growth, uses qualitative improvement of the labour force to account for
most unaccounted for growth (Schultz, 1961, 1963; Denison, 1962), or seeks
to explain the proportion of variation in per capita growth rates that can
be assigned to the level of human resource development (Hicks, 1980), or
to measure how much additional output is created by combining investment
in physical capital with investments in education (Wheeler, 1980; Marris,
1982). While these analyses do not reveal very much about how schooling
might increase productivity, or about the conditions that maximize use of
school-acquired knowledge, skills and affective dispositions, they do create
a compelling argument in favour of increased investment in education.
Many objections have been raised against the use of rate of return analysis
to estimate individual or social benefits accruing from educational in-
vestments. Some have been addressed by improvements in the quality of
data. Attempts have been made to control for ability in selection to academic
and technical secondary and post-secondary education as well as to take
account of the impact of educational expansion on unemployment; and the
findings of recent studies strengthen previous claims. For example, an
Indonesian comparison of academic with vocational education established
higher returns to academic instruction for male, urban graduates even under
assumptions of higher, temporary unemployment (Clark, 1983,46). Some
are inherently difficult to address in any satisfactory way. Rate of return
analysis equates costs with benefits at the time data were collected, and even
sophisticated extrapolations based on time series data may provide a poor
indication of what returns might be in the future after major educational
investments have been made.
A more serious objection is that in light of the constraints on obtaining
comprehensive data on individual earnings, rates of return are almost always
calculated with income estimates for individuals employed in the formal
sector of the economies of developing countries. Advocates of rate of return
analysis recognize the biases in earnings estimated from labour statistics and
have attempted to correct them in sample surveys to the extent that more
comprehensive self reporting of income is requested (Heyneman, 1984).
Objections about the quality and interpretation of earnings data are
countered with the contention that individual benefits to schooling would
probably be greater if income could be better estimated.
Evidence relating to the impact of schooling on physical output is more
convincing than uses of income estimates to measure productivity. Un-
fortunately, there is very little evidence of school effects on industrial output
where comparisons between workers in similar jobs with different levels of
education is possible. Factory level studies tend to place importance on work
experience as the major factor affecting worker's earnings as well as output
(e.g. Fuller, 1975). More supportive, insightful evidence of the productivity
raising effects of schooling is to be found in the literature on education and
agricultural productivity (Lockheed et al, 1980; Jamison and Lau, 1982;
Jamison and Moock, 1984).
A number of studies summarized by Lockheed, Jamison and Lau (1980)
correlate schooling with what are represented as significant increases in the
value of crop production. In eighteen developing country studies, farmers
with some primary education (four or more years) produced almost 13%
more crops than farmers who had not been to school when other inputs
affecting crop production were controlled (Jamison and Lau, in Psacharo-
poulos and Woodhall, 1985,46). The effects of schooling on agricultural
productivity seem to be mediated by choice of and skill in using production
technologies (Jamison and Lau, 1982,195-222). For example, each year of
schooling was estimated to raise output by 2% and 3% in Thailand if
chemical fertilizers were applied (Jamison and Lau, 1982,10).
Risto Harma has proposed a model describing how formal schooling may
increase agricultural productivity. On the basis of interviews with extension
officers and observations of farmer "entrepreneurs" in Latin America,
Harma identified four stages of agricultural productivity and the knowledge
and skill requirements associated with each stage. At the first level,
traditional farming involving use of local varieties and technologies, some
elements of numeracy are required: minimally addition and subtraction
(as reported by Heyneman, in Habte et al, 1983, 16). At the highest
level of agricultural technology which is associated with the use of high
yielding varieties, fertilizer, tubewells and irrigation, reading comprehension
and written communication are necessary, as is knowledge of concepts of
elementary chemistry, biology, physics and the ability to interpret as well as
make use of new information.
Two studies can be considered to be tests of Harma's model, and their
findings are not encouraging. The first comprised a review of research to
determine whether literacy influenced the adoption of modern farm practices
(Villaume, 1977). Data from India and Brazil were used to construct a model
to assess the contribution of schooling and literacy to agricultural inno-
vation. The findings indicated that the direct and indirect effects of schooling
and literacy were negligible in comparison to size of land holdings and
cultivator's income, "a clear indication of the necessity of considering
socio-economic opportunity in explaining adoption (of agricultrual inno-
vations)" (Villaume, 1977, viii). Non-formal learning, involvement in agri-
cultural extension programs, for example, had more impact than schooling.
The second, a study of the effects of farmer education on farm efficiency in
Nepal, concludes with the observation that neither literacy nor measures of
agricultural knowledge are highly associated with technological adoption or
agricultural output (Jamison and Moock, 1984). Numeracy was found to
have a positive effect on productivity, but only for the use of fertilizer and
the production of wheat.
Notwithstanding the weak evidence of effects of measures of school
knowledge and skills in raising agricultural productivity, the rates of return
to rural education have been estimated for Korea, Malaysia and Thailand
to range from 10 to 26% depending on prices for farm products and the age
at which benefits are assumed to begin (Jamison and Lau, 1982, 225). The
apparent contradiction may say more about the way in which literacy,
numeracy and retention of agricultural knowledge are studied, than about
their effects on agricultural production. How school knowledge and skills are
integrated into agricultural practice is a very complex topic that does not
easily lend itself to survey research.
Cognitive Outcomes of Schooling

Evidence of the high social returns to primary schooling stimulated
research which conceptualized school influences as resulting from skill
acquisition occurring in the context of attitudinal and behavioural change.
The effects of schooling on cognition have been widely recognized for many
years and, indeed, are fundamental to the notion that schooling increases
labour productivity and in doing so, enables other kinds of social and
economic transformations to occur. Schooling imparts literacy and numer-
acy as well as the contingent thinking necessary to acquire these skills, while
the organization of modern agricultural and industrial production affords
opportunities for them to be utilized (Heyneman, 1983).
Goody and Watt, in identifying the cognitive changes associated with
mass literacy, made an important distinction between the intellectual
operations which literacy enabled and those that were permissible in
ordinary speech (Goody and Watt, 1963). Production of written text
required elaboration of formal logical structures, i.e. specification of re-
lationships between events that in speech could be imputed from knowledge
external to the frame of discourse. Written language, for example, fosters
different kinds of reasoning. Development of alphabetic systems, Goody and
Watt speculated, facilitates intellectual discovery and cultural innovation
particularly where literacy is widespread.
Literacy and numeracy are considered basic to functioning in a modern
society. Numeracy, the ability to perform arithmetic operations, differs
from literacy in the sense that comprehension and production tasks are
analytically identical. But like literacy, numeracy requires that symbolic
knowledge be integrated into formal structures for purposes of comprehen-
sion and production.
The impact of modernization on cognition was first investigated by the
Soviet psychologist Luria. He studied nomadic and peasant societies in
Central Asia which varied in their response to collectivization schemes that
transformed traditional production and permitted extension of schooling
into areas previously resistant to schooling and other "modern" influences.
Luria tested the reasoning of individuals who were affected by col-
lectivization and compared them to those who were not. He "found striking
differences in the way these two populations responded to simple verbal
syllogisms" (Cole et al, 1971,185). His studies proposed that patterns of
cognition could be changed by a powerful combination of modern
influences, technology, new forms of production, literacy and schooling.
John Gay, who collaborated with Cole in a study of the Kpelle society
of Liberia, examined problem-solving strategies in mathematics (Gay and
Cole, 1967). He compared unschooled to schooled Kpelle and both groups
to American high school students. The performance of schooled Kpelle was
similar to American students on experimental tasks thought to involve
"universal" cognitive skills. Kpelle who had not been to school had difficulty
in sorting and classifying familiar objects and did poorly on verbal tasks
measuring more complex skills in inferential reasoning. However, Gay
doubted that these findings were evidence of the cognitive deficits that
the term illiteracy may imply. Unschooled Kpelle agriculturalists used
complex cognitive processes in solving a wide range of problems which were
meaningful to them; in estimating weight and value of agricultural produce,
for instance. They performed poorly on school-like tasks that were presented
as hypothetical problems, the solution to which necessitated an ability to
infer rules from individual cases, a mode of reasoning that unschooled
Kpelle were hesitant to employ in experimental situations.
In later research, Cole established that "moderate levels of education led
to performance that American research has found to be characteristic of a
higher development level" (Cole et ai, 1971, 224). Moderate education, the
completion of two to six years of schooling, increased skills in discriminant
learning and in solving word problems. Although Cole's earlier studies
suggested an experiential explanation for the development of different
intellectual structures and processes for integrating knowledge, it was now
unclear whether the tasks characteristic of school instruction facilitated the
cognitive changes observed, or whether they were incidental to literacy.
A major five-year research project was begun in 1973 to study the cognitive
effects of various ways of acquiring literacy among the Vai of Liberia, a
Muslim society and one of the few in Africa to have evolved a script for an
indigenous language. Vai speakers were of special interest because they may
become literate in English in school, in Arabic in Koranic school or in Vai
as a result of self-initiated, informal learning. Analyses of performance
related to categorization, memory, logical reasoning, encoding and deco-
ding, semantic integration and verbal explanation indicated that "literacy is
not a surrogate for schooling with respect to its intellectual consequences"
(Scribner and Cole, 1981,252). English schooling "enhanced" task per-
formance on almost all outcome measures except those which modelled tasks
associated with Vai and Arabic script learning such as incremental recall.
The effects of English schooling were most apparent in tests of verbal
explanation, including facility in communicating information and solving
syllogisms. "We have no reason to believe," Scribner and Cole observe in
this connection, "that skills required to explain why these problems were
answered in a certain way are fostered by knowledge of a written lan-
guage . . . " "Rather," it is concluded, "they strike us as being exactly those
skills that are acquired in a teacher-pupil dialogue in the classroom"
(Scribner and Cole, 1981, 255). Rather oddly, Scribner and Cole invoke the
findings of micro-ethnographies of teacher-student dialogue in American
classrooms to substantiate their speculation that skills in verbal explanation
are acquired in explanatory learning tasks which are a prominent feature of
instruction: "What made you give that answer? How do you know?" etc.
That such dialogue is a prominent feature of classroom instruction in Liberia
was not established.
The distinction made between literacy and school effects in Cole's most
recent research is of considerable importance in light of the findings from
studies of cognitive skill retention among school leavers. These have cast
doubt upon the long-term effects of even substantial school instruction on
retention of literacy and numeracy skills. Retention studies are difficult to
carry out for many reasons. Literacy and numeracy are not easily defined
in terms of performance measures that are meaningful insofar as the
cognitive requirements of daily life are concerned. Moreover, retention
should be studied longitudinally, but this is seldom possible. Consequently,
cross-sectional approaches are used in which comparisons are drawn
between the performance levels of students and school leavers. An example
and still perhaps the most satisfactory examination of retention of literacy
and numeracy skills, is Simmons' study of Tunisian urban workers. About
half of Simmons' sample, who were presumably literate in French and
Arabic when they left school, had lapsed into illiteracy or semi-literacy after
about five years, i.e., they were unable to read or understand a national
newspaper. Almost the same proportion could not do simple arithmetic
operations involving multiplication and division (Simmons, 1976,86).
Scribner and Cole's subjects who had been to government or Koranic
school were not tested for literacy; self-reported literacy sufficed as a
criterion for the assignment of subjects to literacy groups. There is no way
of knowing what proportion of schooled Kpelle might be "functionally"
illiterate or semi-literate as Simmons' defined these terms. However, it is
likely that the proportion is very high given the fact that Scribner and Cole's
study population covered a much wider age range (from less than twenty
years to fifty years and older compared to ages fifteen to twenty-five), and
was composed mainly of individuals residing in towns and villages in rural
areas where literacy skills are less apt to be a part of daily life (Scribner and
Cole, 1981,292-4; Simmons 1976,90). The cognitive effects of schooling
may, thus, be more enduring than the literacy and numeracy skills which
schools transmit if these effects are understood in a broader sense in terms
of cognitive strategies and processes which may be generated by formal
instruction.
In most educational research, literacy has been considered to be, quite
simply, the ability to recall and integrate factual information from a written
text that a school child should be capable of understanding. Tasks created
to assess comprehension of written texts in test situations typically combine
factual recall with the text present with "problem-solving" exercises re-
quiring the assembly of new information into syllogisms. The tasks are
assumed to be nominally equivalent for individuals of similar age and
educational experience. The strength of this approach is its simplicity and
ability to differentiate the school-age population in terms of skills that have
an intuitive relationship to instruction and examination and are, in fact,
highly correlated with school achievement. Its chief weakness is that the text
comprehension tasks may have little to do with literate performance that is
meaningful to most people including many school children.
The problem of nominal equivalence of literacy tasks is particularly acute
with respect to the assessment of literacy retention among adults. Simmon's
study of Tunisian urban workers, which has been mentioned above, used
sixth-grade students as the control group for measuring literacy losses. In
other words, text and tasks that were comprehensible to these students
should be understood by adults who had left school after completing sixth
grade. School control groups have been used for many studies of literacy
comprehension, and five or six years of primary education seems to be the
baseline adopted in most of them (Hartley and Swanson, 1984, 33-37).
Recent research has challenged the notion of a threshold level beyond
which literacy becomes permanent. In a study of Egyptian primary school
dropouts and students attending school, Hartley and Swanson have sug-
gested that the "striking flatness of the (literacy) retention curves and the fact
that the curves of dropouts from lower grades actually rise renders moot
most arguments concerning threshold levels". "Rather than lapsing into
illiteracy," they argue, "the children with the lowest level of skills are likely
to build upon the few skills they have mastered in school" (Hartley and
Swanson, 1984, 5). An important feature of their analysis is that the lower
skill levels of dropouts were taken into consideration. Thus, they lost less
literacy than is commonly supposed because they exhibited less competence
in literacy tasks while in school. Among the factors which showed the
strongest relationship to skill retention were the individual's health status
and parental socio-economic status. School variables "were relatively less
important" though level of teacher training and good school facilities had
some positive effect (Hartley and Swanson, 1984,11). But like previous
studies of literacy retention, no effort was made to connect performance
measures to observed instructional experiences or to determine their rele-
vance to adult literates.
Effects of Education on Health

Correlations between schooling and lower fertility, lower infant mortality
and better child nutrition have been reported in many countries. Excellent
reviews of this literature can be found in several World Bank publications;
in Colclough (1980), Cochrane (1979; 1980) and O'Hara (1979), for instance.
Most of the primary studies employ bivariate or multivariate analyses and
interpretation of results focuses on the linearity, direction and magnitude of
relationships between schooling, health and other social welfare measures.
Compared to the effects of other development investments that improve
living conditions, school effects are usually much smaller and strengthen the
influence of more significant factors such as access to health and social
services (Moock and Leslie, 1985).
Schooling exposes pupils to a wide range of social and occupational roles,
notable among them, positions of public trust and responsibility in teaching
and school administration, which afford a standard of living that is enviable
in rural areas in many developing countries. Formal employment, in turn,
provides the wherewithal to satisfy the expectations schooling generates,
disposable income to purchase consumables including medicine, modern
health care, nutritious food, safe water and better education for children.
What schooling imparts, in brief, are not only notions of a better life but
the means through which this can be achieved, educationally as well as in
terms of the social conditions that facilitate satisfaction of material aspir-
ations. Perhaps the most important of these are residence in an urban area
where a greater variety of consumer goods, health, educational and social
services are available, and the adoption of fertility control technologies to
reduce family size. Although the importance of social and material better-
ment is taught in a formal sense (in, for instance, home science and health
science classes where instruction is also given in what might be implied with
respect to individual behaviour), it is the examples that schooling provides
that are perhaps most influential.
A major review of research on the effects of education on health edited
by Susan Cochrane (1980) indicates a strong relationship between schooling
and better health. "An additional year of schooling for a mother," it is
claimed, "results in a reduction of 9 per 1,000 in the mortality of her
offspring," for instance (Cochrane 1980, 92). Husband's education produces
a much smaller effect, less than half. While these findings are supportive of
efforts to educate women and keep them in school longer, they have few
other implications. O'Hara's model of the effects of education on health
which is presented in this review identifies two channels through which
schooling influences health: first, education increases participation in the
monetary economy, and some of the income thus obtained is used to
purchase food, housing, and medical care; second, schooling provides
individuals with the knowledge and skills to utilize efficiently medical
services and other resources that improve health (O'Hara in Cochrane
1980, 35). Elaborating on the possible effects of health instruction O'Hara
comments:
Different kinds of education may of course operate through these channels in

different proportions. A knowledge of diesel engine repair would presumably
operate through high income, while training in home economics is designed to
operate through nonmarket activity. The latter, however, usually includes some
coursework dealing with health, which presumably should be especially effective
in increasing health through non-market channels (O'Hara, 1980, 35-36).
In a footnote to this observation, O'Hara expresses regret that "for policy

purposes, this presumption can scarcely be tested using the existing literature
because information on type or content of education is rarely available in
conjunction with health data" (O'Hara 1980,36). Indeed, the model he
proposes for analyzing the household production of health includes mea-
sures of parental levels of education, income, and expenditures and no
measures of the amount of instruction received on health and related topics,
or the knowledge or skills developed and retained from such instruction.
To recapitulate, research on sources of school influences has posited
attitudinal, cognitive, and behavioural changes arising from those social and
instructional experiences we associate with modern, secular schooling. The
benefits of schooling are well established. It is the processes through which
these benefits occur that requires more careful study.
The contribution of factual knowledge of school science, or of the
cognitive skills implicated in becoming literate and numerate school to small
family sizes, increased productivity and other outcomes is usually noted
without the explanatory mechanisms being explicated. The mechanisms by
which school experiences are transformed into school effects are necessarily
hypothesized. Present strategies do not relate the effects investigated to
observed school experiences that might impart relevant attitudes, knowl-
edge, skills or behaviour. How does schooling benefit individuals and
society? To answer this question it is necessary to describe schooling with
reference to what is actually communicated in processes of instruction, and
to understand how school skills and knowledge might be used in daily life.
Unfortunately, the qualitative characteristics of schooling in developing
countries to which school effects are intuitively linked have not been of much
concern to educational researchers or policy makers until very recently.
Almost twenty years ago at the time when most African countries were
becoming independent and educational assistance was being sought from
metropolitan countries, Beeby, a colonial education officer and later the
Assistant Director General of Unesco, wrote that "we are still grievously
ignorant of how a school system actually develops and need to know a great
deal more about it before we can, with complete assurance, advise emergent
countries on their broader educational problems" (Beeby, 1966,106). Con-
ventional wisdom indicated that qualitative improvements in schooling
could be achieved by higher levels of teacher training, better facilities,
more texts and at the primary level, more individualized child centered
teaching practices monitored by national examinations and frequent school
inspection. However, for most developing countries, costly qualitative
improvements had to be funded out of what was left over after demands for
increased access to schooling had been temporarily satisfied.
BBEC
CHAPTER 2
Qualitative Consequences of School

Expansion in Kenya
Going to School, an English primer used in Kenya and other African

countries, describes a child's first day at primary school (Macmillan, 1977).
"This is your classroom," the child's teacher explains, "it is a big class-
room." Inside, the child is given a textbook and other school supplies and
assigned a desk which he will share with another student. The accompanying
illustrations depict a well funded primary school in an urban area: a spacious
school compound, buildings roofed with corregated iron connected by a long
verandah, and bright uncrowded classrooms. These conditions are un-
familiar to most African children, especially those in rural areas who attend
primary schools usually made of mud and wattle, where they are crowded
into classrooms with more than fifty students, lacking sufficient textbooks
and other learning resources.
Newly independent African governments soon asserted control over
primary and secondary education in response to demands that the state
provide greater access to education to raise the skill level of the labour force,
to foster national integration and loyalty to a new political culture, and to
correct disparities in educational opportunity inherited from the colonial
period. The result was the establishment of highly centralized systems in
which government control over education at the local level is exercised
through financing or co-financing of school construction and maintenance,
the introduction of national standards for instruction, teacher recruitment,
and the provision of instructional resources, development of syllabi and texts
for adoption by all schools, and use of national examinations to assess
student learning. Since schooling was regarded as a public good in most
African countries and, in addition, a wise investment of scarce public funds,
few researchers have concerned themselves with the transformations which
enrolment increases have brought about at the school level. These increases
have been in the order of 5 to 10% per annum at the primary stage in some
African countries (Unesco, 1985).
Recent literature on the educational systems of developing countries is
replete with assertions that the quality of schooling has suffered in con-
sequence of increasing school enrolments, although these are often expressed
as qualifications to support further expansion (e.g. Colclough, 1980).
26
Qualitative Consequences of School Expansion in Kenya 27
Evidence of the poor academic performance of Third World students in
relation to others in developed countries has been provided by the inter-
national studies of educational achievement (Heyneman and Loxley, 1982;
1983a; 1983b). These have shown that "children who attend primary school
in countries with low per capita incomes have learned substantially less after
similar amounts of time in school than have pupils in high income countries"
(Heyneman and Loxley, 1983, 5). In science, for instance, average achieve-
ment scores for primary school age children from countries such as India and
Colombia are one-third lower than the scores for American children, and
half of the level achieved by Japanese students on tests measuring out-
comes of instruction that are comparable in scope, content, and objectives
(Heyneman and Loxley, 1983, 1173). While the student's socio-economic
background has in most western educational research been demonstrated to
have more impact on academic achievement than qualitative variations in
the instruction students receive, very different findings are emerging from
similar research in developing countries. There, school quality seems to have
a much greater influence on academic achievement than factors in the home
and family environment predisposing the student to do well in school
(Heyneman, 1975; 1979).
School facilities, textbook availability and teacher training have been
correlated with student achievement in many developing countries. A large
proportion of the variations in achievement in science is accounted for by
a combination of these factors; 90% in India, 88% in Colombia, compared
to about a quarter of the achievement variance explained by schools and
teachers in developed countries (Heyneman and Loxley, 1983,1180). Among
the other qualitative factors which make important contributions to student
achievement in developing countries is the availability of textbooks
(Heyneman and Jamison, 1980; Heyneman et al., 1981). In fact, textbook
availability may have a stronger relationship to achievement than either
school facilities or teacher training (Heyneman et al., 1981,227). The
distribution of trained teachers, textbooks and other indicators of school
quality within an educational system is, of course, uneven in any country.
The bottom 40% of developing country students in terms of access to a
composite measure of primary school quality generally received less than a
third of their country's school resources, which is about the proportion of
resources received by such students in more developed countries (Heyneman
and Loxley, 1983, 115). It is just that the overall quality is much lower, and
qualitative factors are more important determinants of achievement.
School Quality and School Expansion in Kenya

In Kenya, as throughout Africa, primary school enrolments have greatly
increased in the independence period. Less than one million children
(840,677) were enrolled in primary schools at independence in 1963.
Enrolment increased fourfold to more than four million (4,384,559) in 1984.
The rate of increase has been especially dramatic since 1974 when tuition fees
were gradually abolished. (See Table 1 below.)
TABLE 1
Primary School Enrolments in Kenya 1963-84
N o . of
Year Primary Schools Enrolment % Change
1963 6,058 840,677
1964 5,150 1,014,719 21
1965 5,078 1,010,889 -3
1966 5,699 1,043,416 3
1967 5,959 1,133,179 9
1968 6,135 1,209,680 7
1969 6,111 1,282,297 6
1970 6,123 1,427,589 11
1971 6,372 1,525,493 7
1972 6,657 1,675,919 10
1973 6,932 1,816,017 8
1974 7,706 2,711,657 49
1975 8,161 2,881,155 5
1976 8,544 2,894,617 1
1977 8,896 2,974,849 3
1978 9,349 2,994,894 1
1979 9,622 3,698,246 23
1980 10,255 3,973,040 7
1981 11,127 3,981,162 1
1982 11,497 4,158,972 4
1983 11,856 4,323,811 4
1984 12,543 4,384,559 1
Source: Ministry of Education, 1984.
About ninety percent (96%) of the school age population is now attending
primary school (Ministry of Education, 1984).
Each step taken to increase participation in primary education, the most
recent being the lengthening of the cycle in 1984, which expanded enrolment
by about 583,000, has had serious and sometimes unanticipated implications
for school financing and instruction (Personal communication, Ministry of
Education, 1985). While educational policies effecting school expansion are
made at the national level, much of the onus for carrying out government
directives is borne by local communities and parents who must raise funds
for school facilities and equipment.
A presidential Working Party appointed in 1981 to examine what might
be involved in establishing a second university for Kenya recommended
major changes to the structure of the country's educational system (Republic
of Kenya, 1981). Chaired by the former head of a Canadian maritime
university, the Working Party proposed that another year be added to
university studies, secondary education be shortened to four years and
primary education be increased from seven to eight years; in other words,
reorganization of schooling along the North American pattern. The Work-
ing Party's report ended many years of speculation prompted by the
government's concern over the large number of primary school students
proceeding to secondary schools who after completion of their and A level
examinations, were denied admission to the University of Nairobi. Less than
a third (30%) of the students who sat for the A level examinations obtained
sufficient marks for admission to the University, and slightly more than half
of them were actually awarded places due to the lack of residential and other
facilities (Eshiwani, 1983,29). A new university and a shorter secondary
cycle would lessen demands for greater access to secondary and higher
education, at least temporarily. At the primary level, the Working Party
recommended that numeracy and literacy be emphasized for the first six
years, and that the last two years of primary education have a practical bias,
providing children with skills necessary to modernize rural life.
8 + 4 + 4?
In early 1984, the government moved to implement the Working Party's
recommendations relating to primary education. Ministry of Education
officials, who for many years had assumed that any revision of the primary
cycle would be in the direction of the two stage, nine year program proposed
by the National Committee on Educational Objectives and Policies
(NCEOP) in 1976, were now asked to make preparations for an eight year
program that was more vocational in orientation (NCEOP, 1976). The
Ministry's task force on curriculum implications recommended:
a s t r u c t u r e . . . that should lead to the development of communication skills
(literacy) through the teaching of Mother Tongue, English and Kiswahili
languages. The development of numeracy will be done through the teaching of
mathematics, while the development of scientific outlook will be done through
the teaching of integrated science. The development and acquisition of social and
cultural knowledge, skills and attitudes will be done through teaching of social
studies, religious education, music and physical education. Art, craft and home
science will provide for practical knowledge and skills (Ministry of High
Education, 1984,4).
Greater importance would be given to Kiswahili and practical subjects

to prepare students, most of whom would terminate their education at
the primary level, for self-employment in rural areas. New syllabi and
texts would have to be developed, and teachers trained to use them. More
teachers would have to be employed and facilities for pre-service teacher
training expanded. Finally, new classrooms should be constructed for
students in the eighth year, some of them equipped for teaching practical
subjects.
The Ministry created another task force to ascertain how much all this
would cost. Its report, submitted in late 1983, urged caution and gradualism
in implementing the 8 4-4 + 4 reform in 1984 as the government intended.
The report began with the observation that the cost of "sustaining the
present (educational) system represents about 26% of the national
budget" (Ministry of Education, 1984,2). The task force estimated that
more than 13,000 (13,289) Standard VIII classes would have to be created
and as many new teachers employed, the classrooms equipped and free
milk supplied to the additional 437,330 students. The total cost: Ksh.
439,039,516./($3,337,000). Some of the equipment costs could be shifted to
local communities, which would, moreover, make contributions to the cost
of classroom construction. Yet the savings to the government were projected
to be less than a quarter of the total (Ministry of Education, 1984,12). The
task force also drew attention to the effects of the eight year scheme on the
availability of trained teachers. About two-thirds of the "teaching stock" at
the primary level in 1983 were qualified, typically with one or two years
of training beyond the completion of level studies. Implementation of
the scheme would set back the progress that had been made in increasing
the proportion of trained teachers in primary schools.
The reports of other committees established to examine implications for
secondary and higher education gave little encouragement to the govern-
ment's plans for implementation in 1984. Their mandate, however, was not
to determine whether or when the 8 + 4 + 4 should be implemented, but how
it should be done. Doubts about the reform were expressed less and less
obliquely in articles on education appearing in the English language press
in late 1983 and early 1984. In February 1984, the Minister of Education
and the President reiterated the government's determination to proceed with
the 8 + 4 + 4 scheme, and cautioned that "there should be no more debate
about it" (Weekly Review, 1984,9). This resolved, the Kenyan Institute of
Education was instructed to prepare a new syllabus for Standards VII and
VIII (in less than a month), and district education officers and school
authorities were made responsible for seeing to it that new Standard VIII
classrooms would be ready in time for the registration of students in
January, 1985.
Qualitative Implications of Educational Expansion

The Kenyan government has now employed more than 18,000 untrained
teachers to enable schools to extend instruction by an additional year
(Personal communication, Ministry of Education, 1985). It has required
teachers to donate a portion of their low salaries to school building funds,
and forced parents to make substantial sacrifices for classroom construction
and furnishing. Parental contributions range from Ksh. 100-500./($8-38)
per child depending on construction and equipment costs, the wealth of local
communities and the ability of headmasters to raise funds from other
sources. Teachers, parents, and older students have been involved in school
building. Few schools outside Kenya's principal cities and towns had
marshalled the teaching and instructional resources necessary for the eight
year program when it was finally introduced; even the textbooks for
Standards VII and VIII were not available in many rural schools in time
for the first session.
While there has been a fourfold increase in primary school enrolment
since independence, the number of schools has grown at a much slower rate
(69%, see Table 1). Despite the progress made prior to 1984 in teacher
training, expansion has been accompanied by qualitative deterioration of
other instructional conditions. Initial projections of space and facilities
requirements seldom take into account the doubling or tripling of enrol-
ments. School compounds frequently lack space for recreational use and
for the teaching of agriculture, crafts and other technical subjects. School
administrators are under pressure from district education officers and from
parents to accept as many students as possible whether or not they can
be accommodated in existing facilities. Thus, the Ministry norm of forty
students per primary school classroom is seldom observed especially in
schools located outside the main urban areas.
Classroom construction understandably has priority over completion of
facilities to support teachingstaff rooms, for example, with implications
for lesson planning and marking, which must be carried out under con-
ditions similar to those that prevail in the crowded, poorly lit classrooms.
Many primary schools have small libraries or storerooms containing,
mainly, collections of textbooks discarded from previous years, maps and
other materials. These are important teaching resources and are usually not
intended for student use.
Syllabi and textbooks are distributed to the teaching staff; parents must
purchase texts for their children at a cost of Ksh. 10-60./per copy, in total
as much as Ksh. 400./($30) for students at the upper primary level. For this
reason, students rarely own textbooks and share the few copies that teachers
make available to them.
School life is often fictionalized in curriculum planning and development,
educational evaluation and educational policy making in Kenya and else-
where in Africa. A manual on methodology prepared for school teachers
by the Kenya Institute of Education and distributed by the Ministry of
Education with the syllabus, for instance, advises the adoption of the New
Primary Approach to instruction involving "teaching where children learn
by participation" (Ministry of Education, 1975, i). Modern methods of
teaching, requiring teachers to create classroom learning centres for integrat-
ing different subjects of instruction and encouraging independent learning
activities, are distinguished from "old thinking." The favorable conditions
implied in Going to School, to which reference was made in the introduction
to this chapter, are assumed to prevail. The subject guides to primary school
syllabi expand on this assumption. The General Science guide presupposes
that schools have water for some of the laboratory demonstrations. Many
arts and crafts projects require spacious, all-weather classrooms with work
tables, facilities found in some of the teacher training colleges, and in schools
only in a few urban areas. "The design of the classroom and its decoration,"
teachers are reminded, "should be such that children find it an attractive
place to be at" (Ministry of Education 1975, 15).
Performance is measured by achievement in a national examination,
on the basis of which about a third of the graduating students proceed
to secondary education (Eshiwani, 1983,46). Until the adoption of the
8 + 4 + 4 reform in 1984, students who completed seven years of schooling
took the Certificate of Primary Education Examination administered by the
Kenya National Examinations Council. Standards are very rigorous, as this
sample English composition indicates:
Always Do as You are Told
Early one market day James' and Jane's mother set off for the market.
Before leaving the homestead, she instructed them to look after their
younger brother, John, until she returned.
James and Jane faithfully watched Johnbut only for a short time. As
time elapsed they began to grow bored. Presently, Peter and Mary, their best
friends, came over to play.
"Why don't we skip?" Mary suggested.
James and Jane, only too glad to have an opportunity to play, immedi-
ately agreed. Jane fetched the rope from the house and soon the four
children were playing happily. John began to cry but they ignored him. The
sun rose higher and higher in the sky. It became unbearably hot and the four
children went into the house for a cool drink, all thoughts of John out of
their minds. Then they went back to their game.
The sun was setting when James' mother returned from the market. Seeing
that the children were playing, she assumed that John was asleep.
"Is John asleep?" she asked the children.
"Yes," James replied, without thinking.
Their mother was entering the house when a loud cry broke the stillness
of the night air. It came from the direction of the store. James' mother
practically threw down the basket she was carrying and rushed to the store.
The sight she saw almost made her scream. There, attempting to climb a pile
of bricks and gurgling happily, was John. She rushed to his side. He tottered
and fell. As might have been expected, John began to cry and stopped only
when he was lying in his mother's armsin the house.
James and Jane, fearing that some disaster had befallen their younger
brother, crept stealthily into the house praying that they would not be
sighted. It was all in vain. Hearing the soft tread of footsteps on the floor,
their mother looked up to see James and Jane, guilt written all over their
faces.
They were given a thorough scolding and retired to bed vowing to always
do as they were told. They were lucky that John had not been injured. Who
knew what would happen next time? Hopefully, there would never be a next
time (KNEC, 1983,7-8).
This composition received a mark of 38 out of a possible 40. Although

the Kenya National Examinations Council concedes that it is "well beyond
the standard expected," the paper is given as an example of the "quality
brought about by the teacher" (KNEC, 1983,9). In the 1982 examination
for which this composition was submitted, more than two-thirds (67%) of
the English composition papers received marks of 10 or lower, an improve-
ment over the results of the previous year (1981) when 75% of the students
obtained only a fourth of the total marks. The improvement was attributed
to more frequent visits by school inspectors and district education officers
(KNEC, 1983). Other factors such as repeating, supplementary instruction,
illegal tutoring (or "coaching") and discouragement of weak candidates also
contribute to the gains in examination scores. These practices have become
more pervasive due to popular pressures for quality education and for more
liberal access to secondary schooling. That, in turn, has led to the length-
ening of the primary cycle, vocationalization of the curricula and revision
of the Certificate of Primary Education (CPE) examination.
It has been apparent for some time that the structure which guided
expansion in the independence period, and which is the largely unreformed
legacy of colonialism, could not be sustainededucationally or politically.
Court observes in this connection that perhaps the outstanding fact about
education in Kenya "is that everyone has wanted it and wanted it more than
any other single thing" (Court, 1974, 10). A system which terminates the
education of most of the students surviving until the final year of primary
schooling raises awkward questions about its legitimacy. Of the more than
370,000 students who sat for the CPE examination in 1981, only 120,000
were admitted to secondary schools (Ministry of Education, 1983, 2). Anger
is directed against the National Examinations Council, which functions
with scrupulous indifference to the expectations of politicians, educational
authorities and groups that perceive themselves as educationally disadvan-
taged. As a result, the examinations have been denounced by local politicians
and government officials offended by district ranking of candidates, spokes-
men for the Kenyan National Union of Teachers (although teachers mark
the examination papers under guidance from the Council), and most recently
by the President who attributed failures to "the unrealistic and biased nature
of the CPE examinations" (Weekly Review, 1984,9). But a government
cannot continue to claim that it is powerless to correct what it believes to
be the abuses of an agency which it created and made autonomous.
The unpopular Certificate of Primary Education examination will be
succeeded by the Kenya National Primary Education Examination, to be
administered from November, 1985 by the Council whose senior officers
have been replaced. Students will be examined in all subjects, academic as
well as practical. The examination will involve national testing as well
as continuous assessment carried out by teachers with direction from the
Ministry of Education.
The primary cycle is now divided into lower (Standards IIII) and upper
(Standards IV-VIII) stages. Students, especially those in rural areas, receive
instruction in their mother tongue for the first three years, and English
is introduced as a subject from Standard I. English is the medium of
instruction from Standard IV (where it is not used in the lower standards
for this purpose), and is the language of the school-leaving examination.
Kiswahili is taught as a subject from Standard I, and in major towns and
in Kiswahili speaking areas, it is also the medium of instruction through
Standard III. Practical subjects (Agriculture, Mathematics, and Home
Science) are given importance in the upper stage. Language teaching,
particularly English, is emphasized at the lower and upper primary levels as
is indicated in Table 2 below.
TABLE 2
Primary School Curricula 1984
Standards 1 and 2 3 4-8
1. Mother Tongue 5 periods of 30

mins./wk. 5 of 30
2. English 7 periods of 30
mins./wk. 6 of 30 9 of 35
3. Kiswahili 5 periods of 30
4. Mathematics 6 periods of 30
5. Science and 4 periods of 30
Agriculture 3 periods of 45
mins./wk. 3 of 40
6. History 2 of 30
7. Geography 2 of 30 3 of 35
8. Arts & Crafts 2 periods of 45 mins./wk. 2 of 40 2 of 40
9. Music 1 period of 30 mins./wk. 1 of 30 1 of 40
10. Physical Ed. 5 periods of 30 mins./wk. 3 of 30 3 of 40
11. Home Science 2 of 40
12. Religious Ed.
and Pastoral
Program 1 of 30 4 of 35
TOTAL 40* 40* 46*
Source: Ministry of Education, 1984.
Includes extra periods for review.
However, the objectives which have been established for primary edu-
cation are much more ambitious than this summary of school curricula
might imply. Children should acquire: "functional literacy and numeracy
and an elementary understanding of science; positive attitudes towards
work, community and national development... ; knowledge, skills and
attitudes necessary for raising and improving the quality of family life;
and functional knowledge and skills for civic participation" (Ministry of
Education, 1982,2). That these outcomes are achievable is suggested by
educational research which has established a strong relationship between
schooling and various social and economic outcomes. Efforts to attribute
social and economic changes to the acquisition of literacy, numeracy and
knowledge of biology, chemistry, etc. in school have not so far taken into
account how qualitative characteristics of instruction may affect the devel-
opment of cognitive skills or their usage in daily life.
CHAPTER 3
The Implantation of Western Schooling

in Coastal Kenya
Kwale district, which is the locus of this study, is still one of the least
developed districts in the country, educationally. The school participation
rate in Kwale district in 1984 (64%) was about two-thirds of the national
average (96%), and even below those of many other districts with pastoral
populations; considered by educational authorities in Kenya and by edu-
cational researchers elsewhere to be the most resistant to formal schooling
(Personal communication, Ministry of Education, 1984). In district com-
parisons of the performance of primary school students on the 1982
Certificate of Primary Education examination, Kwale ranked 31st among
the thirty-nine rural districts in the National Examinations Council's Order
of Merit. The mean score for students in the district (141) was more than
twenty-five points below that of Marang'a, the most meritorious rural
district (168), and forty points below the top ranking students in Nakuru
municipality (181) (KNEC, 1983, 71-72). Notwithstanding the low school
participation rate in Kwale district, the poor performance of its students in
national examinations, and the official characterization of coastal peoples as
educationally "backward", a 1981 national survey indicated a relatively high
level of adult literacy. More than half of Kwale residents (57%) could
comprehend Kiswahili text, and a similar proportion (57%) could write a
simple paragraph. Most other Kenyans who have had more access to formal
schooling were found to be illiterate in any language (Personal communi-
cation, Ministry of Education, 1984). The unexpectedly high adult literacy
rate may well be due not to formal schooling or to other "modernizing"
influences present in this predominantly rural district, but to the existence
of a large number of Koranic schools that were developed first in the Arab
settlements on the coast, and which then spread among the African peoples
of the district earlier in this century.
The Muslim peoples of coastal Kenya were the first to be exposed to
western education. In contrast to other African coastal societiesthe
Yoruba and Ibo in West Africa, for examplethey resisted schooling and
expansion of the wage economy, which had effects devastating to their
society. In coastal Kenya, western schooling was provided initially to freed
slaves converted to Christianity, tangible evidence of the good brought
36
The Implantation of Western Schooling in Coastal Kenya 37
about by the suppression of the slave trade. This was the justification offered
for British involvement in the dismantling of the Zanzibari federation of
Arab trading centres and, subsequently, for British colonization of East
Africa. European missionary activity and administration transformed a
centuries-old Arab society which flourished on the coastal trade and
plantation production into an economic and educational backwater of
modern Kenya.
The Swahilis
The term Swahilis identifies coastal peoples of Arab, Asian or African
origin, most of whom speak Kiswahili as their mother tongue and practise
Islam. Individuals of Arab descent were categorized as non-Africans by
British colonial authorities, and were entitled to a measure of self-
government. More importantly, they were exempted from hut and poll taxes
and were not coerced into sending their children to missionary or govern-
ment schools. The origins of those who were classified as "Arabs" have been
traced to migrations from Oman and Persia in the eighth and ninth centuries
which resulted in Arab settlements being established from Mogadishu to
Kilwa along the East African coast. Most early migrants were Sunni
Muslims. Since independence in 1963 at which time the Arab population
risked being designated as foreigners, they have lost their separate status and
now regard themselves as Swahilis (lit. "men of the coast").
In colonial society, the Afro-Arabs comprised the converted African
peoples of paternal Arab descent including the former slaves of Arab traders
and planters. The Arabs introduced the cultivation of sugarcane, rice and
cotton into East Africa and these staples were traded with the Arab states
of the Indian Ocean. Slavery was important to plantation production until
the beginning of this century and was itself a source of great wealth
especially after the Sultan Seyyid Said of Oman made Zanzibar his new
capital in the 1830s and obtained slaves from the East African interior to
develop the island's economy (Hailey, 1956, 383). Afro-Arabs referred to
themselves as waungwana if their parentage was free of the stigma of slavery,
or as watumwa (slave born). Both groups aspired to be classified as Arabs
(Mambo, 1980, 17). Converted Africans that did not obtain Arab status in
the colonial period are known collectively as mahaji, including the southern
Mijikenda Digo who comprise the majority of the African population in
Kwale district (Mambo, 1980, 19). Most were converted after emancipation
and have retained many features of their pre-Islamic cultures (Mwambo,
1980,19).
The Mijikenda, a Bantu-speaking people, populated the area between the
coastal strip settled by Arabs and Afro-Arabs and the hills and savannah
of the interior. They migrated to the Kenyan coast from present day Somalia
in the 17th century, and are comprised of nine distinct groups: the Kauma,
Giriama, Chonyi, Jibana, Kambe, Ribe, Rabai and Duruma, as well as the
Digo. The Digo, who are of the most interest to us, were the first to migrate
from Singwaya which was the ancestral homeland of the Mijikenda (Spear,
1978,18). Digo is derived from the name of one of the sons of the elder wife
of Muyeye, the father of the Mijikenda (Spear, 1978, 17). Mijikenda age-sets
date the migration of the Digo to their present home in Kwale district where
they built a kaya for ritual purposes and protection which can be seen today
near the district headquarters in the town of Kwale. Their conversion to
Islam was accelerated by colonial taxation of Africans which was intended
to drive them into the wage economy of the European coastal plantations
that supplanted those managed by Arabs and maintained by slavery
(Cooper, 1980).
Christianity, Slavery and Land Alienation

The first Christian missionaries representing the Church Missionary
Society (CMS) began work at Rabai, northwest of Mombasa, among the
Mijikenda in 1846. A second mission station was established sixteen years
later at nearby Ribe under the auspices of the United Free Methodists.
Neither mission had much success in converting the Mijikenda to Chris-
tianity. But they soon found a different and more promising role in
educating Africans freed in the British Navy's suppression of the slave trade.
In the 1870s the CMS expanded its activities in East Africa with the founding
of a mission for freed slaves at Freretown (1875) opposite Mombasa where
Africans were educated for evangelical work, and later (1888) another in the
city itself. The early association of missionary activity with the destruction
of the coastal plantation economy upon which the Mijikenda indirectly
depended arrested the development of western schooling for the indigenous
population throughout the colonial period (Mambo, 1980).
This was not for lack of missionary effort, however. In 1862, the
Methodists attempted to open a station south of Mombasa among the Digo.
The two European CMS missionaries appointed for this task contracted
malaria and the enterprise was abandoned (Mambo, 1980, 47). An African
missionary sent to the same area in 1878 was sacrificed in a Mijikenda ritual
(Mambo, 1980,48). In 1882 the Church Missionary Society made another
attempt to establish a mission on the south coast. It was closed in 1897
(Mambo, 1980,48). If missionary activity was to show appreciable results,
then care had to be taken to work only among those for whom the Gospel
had already brought salvation, i.e. the slaves and the African societies
subject to the depreciations of the slave trade.
The missions at Rabai, Ribe and Mombasa grew with the increasing
efficiency of the British Navy and the influx of slaves from the Arab coastal
towns. These were loosely federated to the Sultanate of Zanzibar until 1890
when Seyyid Ali ibn Said sought British protection. In that year, Britain
established a High Court in Zanzibar for its subjects in East Africa whose
legal status was ambiguous and a source of conflict as the missionaries
provided refuge at their stations to fugitive slaves. The slave trade was
suppressed in measured steps culminating in the annexation of East Africa.
In 1845 the British prohibited the trade of slaves from the mainland,
Zanzibar and Pemba, and thirty years later (1873) the trade with Zanzibar
and Pemba was discontinued. Slavery on the East African coast was not
altered by these actions. The willingness of missionaries to harbour and
educate fugitive slaves at this time became, according to Spear, "a major
cause of conflict... between Swahili and the missions on the one hand, and
between the missions and Mijikenda on the other. Swahili attacked several
of the mission stations and Mijikenda objected to the settling of foreigners
(ex-slaves) on their land" (Spear, 1978, 139). In the 1880s, the Imperial
British East Africa Company made amends by compensating slave owners.
Slavery was finally abolished in 1907 twelve years after the British Protec-
torate was proclaimed. By then it had become manifestly evident to the
Arab, Afro-Arab and Mijikenda peoples that missionary work and the
modernizing influences it represented threatened the pre-eminent role which
Muslim communities had enjoyed for centuries, despite the fact that Muslim
law and institutions were unaffected by the proclamation.
The Muslim population did not passively accept the onset of colonial rule.
In 1895-96, insurrections occurred from Malindi to Vanga, the most serious
led by the Swahili chief Mbaruk and his confederate Khamis bin Kombo,
who instigated the rebellion in the south (Salim, 1973, 101). The sons of
Mbaruk, Ayub and Sebe returned during the First World War to assist the
Germans in their raids on the coastal towns of southern Kenya (Salim,
1973,175-76). Earlier, in 1914, the colonial government's efforts to conscript
the northern Giriama into the Carrier Corps provoked armed resistance
(Spear, 1978, 141). The lack of missionary success with the indigenous
Muslim population, together with their potential for disloyalty and
rebellion, dictated a policy of caution and avoidance of unnecessary
interference in their affairs.
In the first years of the protectorate, the British administered coastal
Kenya through existing institutions of governance, specifically, through the
liwalis and mudirs who previously represented the sultan and now acted as
agents for the colonial government among the Arab community, adjudi-
cating disputes according to Muslim law and ensuring that the roads and
other public conveniences were well maintained (Salim, 1973,93). As the
pretense of British protection of the rights of the Sultan of Zanzibar on the
Kenyan coast slowly gave way to overt colonial control, the importance of
Arab administration diminished. Zanzibar itself was made subject to
colonial regulations in 1913. When a Legislative Council was created for the
colony in 1907, requests for Arab representation were rejected (Salim,
1973,95-96). The new Council passed an ordinance (1908) giving the
colonial government the right to expropriate native land.
Intended to facilitate construction of the Kenya-Uganda railway and
stimulate European settlement of the fertile highlands of central Kenya, the
ordinance was also applied in the coastal districts where slavery had been
recently abolished. Europeans soon established plantations on the land
"vacated" by Arabs and other coastal peoples.
Large tracts were acquired by East African Estates Ltd., Margarini
Estates, British East Africa Rubber and Cotton Estates and the British East
Africa Corporation. Since the freeborn population showed no interest in
agricultural wage labour, labour was recruited from other regions. Salim
remarks in this connection that "by 1910, the bulk of labour for European
plantations on the coast was from interior tribes. Some of these men walked
the 300 miles to Mombasa. One attraction was the fact that coast planters
paid Rs. 7-10 per month, as against Rs. 3-5 in the Highlands" (Salim,
1973, 118). The Arabs had always recruited slaves from the interior who if
they were used for plantation labour on the coast, eventually lost their tribal
indentities and increased the Muslim population. In time many migrant
wage labourers were to settle on the coast where land was less expensive
than in their home areas, increasing the cultural heterogeneity of the
population.
Once the centre of British interests in East Africa, the coastal districts
faded in importance as missionaries and government officials and the settlers
moved inland to create a prosperous agricultural economy with the labour
of the Kikuyu, Luo and others who embraced Christianity and missionary
education with enthusiasm. The political changes that took place up-country
in the next fifty yearsthe agitation for settler self-government, the circum-
cision controversy, increasing African discontent on the issue of land
alienation, the escalation of political consciousness among African societies
and, finally, the independence movementwere followed with interest by
coastal peoples. But they played no major part in these events, and have
remained at the periphery of national political and economic affairs.
Education and Social Change in Colonial Kenya

An Education Department was established by the colonial government in
Nairobi in 1911 principally to oversee the activities of missionary societies
which began work among the sedentary agriculturalists of the interior
largely in areas alienated for European settlement. In the early colonial
period, and, in fact, until independence, European missionaries took upon
themselves the responsibility for representing African interests to the
colonial government. This, of course, brought them into frequent conflict
especially with the settler population which required African land and
African labour for its material prosperity. A notable early example was
missionary opposition to the eviction of the Maasai from their ancestral

lands in 1904 and 1911 (Ole Sena, 1986). However, missionary activity was
considered crucial to parliamentary support for construction of the East
African railway and other infrastructure investments that made European
colonialization possible. Missionaries undertook the 'good works' which
made colonialism palatable to an often skeptical British public. The activities
of British missionaries in Kenya and other parts of Africa were financed by
public subscription and were the object of much public interest. Neither
colonial officials nor the European settler community had constituencies as
large or as politically influential as those which missionary activity gener-
ated. Conversion through education was perhaps the most important work
of the missionaries and by 1919 more than thirty thousand Africans were
attending 410 mission schools (Sheffield, 1973,17).
Missionary success created many problems, however. The most serious
resulted from missionary effort to suppress the practice of female circum-
cision, an important initiation ritual among the Kikuyu and most African
societies. In the late 1920s, Presbyterian missionaries intensified their
campaign to eliminate the practice by making it incompatible with par-
ticipation in communion and other rites associated with the faith. This
caused widespread disaffection and along with the introduction of the Native
Lands Trust Bill in 1929 which provided for expropriation of lands originally
set aside to create the native reserves, aroused the Kikuyu to political action
(Bennett, 1963, 70-71). The Kikuyu Central Association that Harry Thuku
founded in 1922 to protest against land alienation took up the issue of female
circumcision, defending it as a practice central to African customs which
European missionaries and European settlers were bent on destroying. The
Association's secretary was the mission-educated Jomo Kenyatta.
In the early 1920s (1922) the colonial government began providing funds
to mission schools which inspection indicated to be well administered and
that provided a sound practical training to Africans (Sheffield, 1973, 19). The
grants scheme gave colonial authorities a measure of control over the
activities of missionary societies that had opened East Africa to European
governance and settlement and, ultimately, made them subordinate institu-
tions in colonial society. The missionaries' sphere of influence, educationally,
was delineated at the Le Zoute Conference of Protestant Missions in 1926.
They were to be mainly responsible for primary and secondary education.
Whatever further education might be required locally would be provided by
the colonial governments of East Africa (Sheffield, 1973,21). The state
retained residual responsibility at the primary and secondary levels. In
Kenya a school was established for Europeans in Nairobi in 1904 and by
the early 1920s operated five schools for Europeans, two for Asians, and
seven for Africans, four of these located in coastal districts (Mambo,
1980,109). The government and missionary schools were articulated into an
educational system organized along racial lines. In 1924, the government
BBE D
created advisory committees for European, Asian and African schooling,
and separate arrangements for financing each. In the same year, the
government allowed the establishment of Local Native Councils which had
the power to raise and expend funds for educational purposes.
Three native reserves were formed out of the unalienated land cultivated
by Africans along the Kenyan coast: Nyika the largest one, comprised the
present day Kilifi and Kwale districts, and two others further inland,
Pokoma and Taveta. Local Native Councils raised funds for African
schooling, and collected the hut and poll taxes for the colonial government.
They received no grants from Nairobi for educational purposes. In the
Central Province, the Councils were active in financing the expansion of
education in the Kikuyu districts where they fostered the growth of the
independent African schools and churches after the circumcision crisis.
The great financial sacrifices which the Kikuyu made to increase school
enrolments placed them educationally well ahead of other groups, especially
those on the coast. The Local Native Councils at Kilifi, Kwale, Tana River,
and Taita-Taveta allocated less than one percent of their expenditures to
schooling in the years preceeding the Depression (Mambo, 1980,179).
The coastal councils opened few new schools, preferring to provide supple-
mentary funding to the missionary schools which had made little progress
among the Muslims.
The Church Missionary Society founded a multiracial school in Mombasa
in the 1890s which enrolled Europeans and Asians in addition to Arabs and
Swahilis. However, Asian Muslim parents whose children accounted for the
majority of the pupils soon established their own school (Mambo,
1980,110). In 1912 Arab parents in the city petitioned the government for
an Arab school to be operated at public expense. This became by the late
1920s the nucleus of a small system of about ten Arab schools and
outschools which extended along the coast from Malindi to Vanga and
taught Koranic subjects, English and, in the school at Mozeras, agriculture
as well (Salim, 1973, 149). Attendance at most of these institutions was very
low (less than 150 at the largest one in Mombasa). Eventually, the Local
Native Councils were required to take over many of these institutions on the
grounds that the pupils were mostly non-Arabs and, hence, not entitled
to government funding (Mambo, 1980, 187). The government fared no
better in its efforts to promote technical training. The first government
technical school was opened at Machakos during the First World War and
a second was built at Waa, south of Mombasa in 1921 which taught
carpentry, masonary skills, and tailoring, subjects thought by colonial
educators to be "in touch with rural requirements" (Sheffield, 1976,23).
About 75 students were attending the Waa school in 1922, half of them
Christians (Mambo, 1980, 124). Disappointment followed indications of
future success, and the school was handed over to the Roman Catholic
missionaries in 1935.
In the inter-war years neither the government nor the missionaries or the
Local Native Councils had much success in their educational activities in
most coastal districts. The Muslim community remained resistant to Chris-
tian evangelicization and rapidly grew with the conversion of the Mijikenda
peoples. Unlike the African societies of the interior, coastal societies "had
long been in contact with alien cultures and a proselytising religion . . . their
familiarity with other cultures made their own more resilient" (Spear,
1978,140). Confronted with Christianity and the European plantation
economy the Mijikenda remained peasant proprietors and became Muslims.
What is important to emphasize is that the Mijikenda had a choice to make.
Although they were subject to land alienation, the Mijikenda were not
displaced or coerced into participating in the colonial government's plans to
make the country suitable for European settlement. The Arab population
was even less affected by colonial administration owing to its protected
status. For the Arabs and Muslim Africans, schooling had acquired negative
connotations from the association of missionary and government initiatives
with the decline of the importance of the Muslim community, and the
attractiveness of western schooling had not increased despite various
attempts to divorce Christianity from secular instruction and to give secular
schooling an Islamic, practical orientation. Muslims had little to gain by
going to school. Graduates of the Coast Technical School at Waa, for
instance, were unemployable (Mambo, 1980,187). Not even the Local
Native Councils on the coast would hire them when it was proposed in 1928
that this would have a good effect on African youths.
Among the coastal Muslims, only the Asian community which through
Indian emigration at the beginning of the century had become demo-
graphically substantial and politically conscious of its future in Kenya, was
greatly involved in the colonial economy and intent upon developing its
educational capacity. By 1911 the Asian community in Kenya was about
three times as large as the number of European settlers: 10,651 to 3,175
(Hailey, 1956,404). This was of great concern to the Europeans who began
pressuring the British government to restrict Asian immigration as early as
1902 (Bennett, 1963, 7). Of even more concern to the Europeans in the early
years of the Protectorate was the possible competition between them and the
Asians for land in the Central Province which was suitable for European
agriculture. The 1908 Land Ordinance restricted Indian acquisition of the
lands taken from Africans, which were set aside for European settlement.
This matter resolved, the European community moved to prescribe the
political rights of Asians who regarded themselves and indeed for a time
were regarded by the British government as just like any other British
subjects, British immigrants included.
The Legislative Council created in 1907 had Asian representation, much
against the wishes of the settlers. After the First World War the Europeans
campaigned for greater assurances from the British government of their
position of political pre-eminence in the face of Asian agitation for voting
according to a common electoral role.
In 1920 Kenya became a colony with the political privileges of the settler
community preserved. A 1923 White Paper on British colonial policy in
Kenya made reference to the paramountcy of African interests in denying
Asians political representation in proportion to their numbers (Bennett,
1963, 50-51). The effect of the restrictions on land acquisition and political
participation was to strengthen the position of the Asian community in
colonial commerce, and in skilled occupations in government and the private
sector. Separate taxation for education for the Asian, African and European
communities was introduced in 1926 when approximately two thousand
(1900) Asian pupils were attending schools operated by government and by
religious and philanthropic societies. Per pupil expenditures, however, were
only slightly higher than those for Africans, each representing about a sixth
of the expenditure for Europeans (Sheffield, 1976,22). Asian educational
activities developed very rapidly in the 1920s and throughout the Depres-
sion. In Mombasa, the number of students increased from an estimated
300 in 1923 to more than twenty-five hundred (2,578) in 1936, almost half
(46%) of them attending government schools (Mambo, 1980, 215). Several
Asian secondary schools were established prior to the Second World War;
Allidina Visram High School, the oldest, began instruction in 1921. This
inspired the government to establish a residential secondary school for the
Arab population at Shimo-la-Tewa, north of Mombasa in 1931 whose
graduates were to enter government service.
The educational development of the Asian community, Arab and African
historians have implied, had a retarding influence on the indigenous coastal
peoples, particularly the Arabs (see, for example, Salim, 1973 and Mambo,
1980). Asian graduates were recruited into government service whereas in
the early years of the Protectorate, colonial authorities had relied on Arab
functionaries. Asian representation on the first colonial Legislative Council
offended the Arab community almost as much as it offended the settlers and
Sir Percy Girouard, one of the first governors of the East African Protec-
torate who expressed indignation at the proposal that "the small Indian
community here should be represented and the highly educated and re-
sponsible Arabs from whom we took over the country, b e . . . classified as
subordinate" (Salim, 1976,96). When the composition of the Legislative
Council was being reassessed in response to Asian agitation in the early
1920s, the Arabs formed an association, the Coastal Arab Association
(1921), to demand electoral representation. The Association was comprised
of Arabs and Swahilis but since none of the members of its executive
committee could speak English, an Asian newspaper editor acted as its
spokesman (Salim, 1976,180). Sanction for the committee's demands for
representation was obtained from the Sultan of Zanzibar whose interests the
British were protecting. In 1922, the Association organized a mass meeting
in Mombasa to indicate public support for its demands for four seats on the
Legislative Council and two seats on the Council's Executive. In the end,
Arabs were granted one seat, five seats for the Asian community and eleven
for the Europeans. Africans were represented by two missionaries who
served on the Council and its Executive Committee (Salim, 1976, 184).
Unfortunately, the election of an Arab representative to the Legislative
Council "caused a serious split in the Arab-Swahili community" (Salim,
1976, 186). For purposes of the 1923 election, many Muslim Swahilis were
considered African and not eligible to vote for the Arab representative. This
restriction was imposed, apparently, at the insistence of leading members of
the Arab community (Salim, 1976,187). Earlier, in 1910, the government
made a distinction between Arabs and Swahilis insofar as the application for
the hut and poll taxes were concerned. Those who claimed an exemption had
to prove Arab ancestry. But in law, the terms native and non-native had
ambiguous application to the coastal Muslim population, "the Arabs
remained 'natives' under some provisions of the law and 'non-natives' under
others" (Salim, 1976,188). Excluded from voting as Arabs, the Swahilis
formed their own association in 1927, referring to themselves pointedly as
Afro-Asians (Salim, 1976, 188). The two associations enjoyed brief promi-
nence in 1930 when the Coastal Arab Association was invited to London to
represent Arab views on a political union of the three East African territories
which had been suggested by the Hilton Young Commission in 1927-28. The
Coastal Arab Association expressed reservations about the possible domi-
nance of the Kenyan settlers in any future inter-territorial arrangement, a
view forcefully articulated by Asian groups. The Afro-Asian Association did
not recognize the right of the Coastal Arab Association to negotiate Muslim
interests, and "approached the leaders of the settlers' delegation and
entrusted them with the job of presenting their grievances" (Salim,
1976, 191). Neither association, however, played a major role in the politics
of the inter-war period. The European and the Indian were on the coast, as
elsewhere in the colony, "the principal actors on the political stage" (Salim,
1976,184).
Preparation for Independence

The Annual Report for the Coast Province issued at the end of the Second
World War indicated that of the almost 17,000 African children of school
age in Mombasa, the most educationally advanced coastal district, a little
more than two thousand (2,211) were in school. Interestingly, 1,426 of these
children, the great majority, were attending Koranic schools. The others
were enrolled in government and missionary schools which had by then a
long history of very limited success (Mambo, 1980,224). The number of
African children enrolled in primary school districts, including Mombasa,
was reported to be about 10,000 (11,098) in 1952 for an estimated population
of 460,000, of which perhaps half were of school age (Mambo, 1980,
264^-65).
A notable development at this time was the establishment of the Mombasa
Institute of Muslim Education for East African Muslims, with an endow-
ment from the Aga Khan and the blessings of the colonial government and
the Sultan of Zanzibar. The Institute taught technical and vocational
subjects in addition to Islamic studies. Conceived as an inter-racial territorial
school, it admitted Arabs and Africans, but Indian Muslims who had greater
access to primary schooling predominated.
Educational expansion was particularly slow in the Lamu and Kwale
districts where resistance from the Arab population was strongest. The
colonial educational officer in Lamu, for instance, drew attention in 1951 to
the "apathetic population who are not enthusiastic about education" in a
report on an Arab school, whose principal, he felt, "requires some assistance
working as he does among fisherfolk..." (Mambo, 1980, 266). His col-
leagues in Kwale attributed low school participation to the opposition of the
local sharifs (Mambo, 1980, 266). Kwale district was as late as 1948 served
by fifteen primary schools managed by missionary societies whose facilities
were in the judgement of colonial authorities "really appalling" (Mambo,
1980, 268). The number of primary schools in the district increased to
thirty-three just before independence (1959), from twenty-one in 1948. Most
of the new schools were operated by the Local Native Council.
More significant progress was made in expanding opportunities for
primary schooling for Africans in the other coastal districts at Kilifi,
Taita-Taveta, and Tana River. These districts were wealthier and had
proportionately larger numbers of Africans from reserves up-country which
had more educational facilities. The Local Native Councils in the three
districts opened many new schools after the war, but expansion was limited
not only by lack of interest, but by financial penury among the Muslim
population. The colonial government still preferred expansion of missionary
institutions or those which it operated to encouragement of the educational
efforts of the Local Native Councils. The Councils in the reserves in the
Central Province continued to tax and invest heavily in school expansion,
while those on the coast could not afford to do the same and, thus, fell
further and further behind other districts in the country in the provision of
formal schooling.
The colonial government had become, in the years immediately after the
war, increasingly concerned about the political implications of primary
school expansion which was undirected either by government or by the
missionary societies. In 1949, the Education Department commented on the
low standards, poor facilities and high wastage of the unaided primary
schools (Sheffield, 1973,32). The government's response was to appoint a
Committee on African Education headed by Leonard Beecher, a minister of
the Church Missionary Society who represented African interests on the
Legislative Council. The Committee's report released later that year pro-
posed a reorganization of the primary cycle into two four-year stages, to be
followed by four years of secondary education. Insofar as improving
standards of instruction was concerned, the Breecher report placed emphasis
on greater inspection and supervision of schools, reinforced by more
government control of school finances. The report's intent, at least as many
Africans perceived it, was to slow educational expansion and bring the
independent African schools under greater government scrutiny. Not sur-
prisingly, Breecher's recommendations were denounced by Jomo Kenyatta,
who played a major role in the independent school movement in a speech
he gave just three months before the colonial government declared a state
of emergency in 1952 (Sheffield, 1976,44).
The formation of a new Legislative Council earlier that year was the result
of acrimonious consultations begun after the war, and pleased none of
Kenya's racial communities. Settlers were made to accept increased Asian
and African political representation, although the government provided
assurances that it would protect their vital interests. The Asian electorate
was to be split along communal lines, much to the displeasure of the Hindus.
Africans obtained better representation, but were obliged to accept pro-
cedures involving indirect election which protected the "traditional" political
institutions that colonial rule had brought into being. Kenyatta's Kenya
African National Union rejected these concessions and advised that it would
not recognize the African representatives so elected. The Kenyan National
Congress, representing mainly Hindus among the Asians, advised its mem-
bers not to participate in a communal election. Only Asian Muslims and the
Arab community, which now included for electoral registration most of the
Swahili population, professed satisfaction with the government's racial
compromise. It gained an additional seat.
The coastal population was largely unaffected by the political agitation
that led to the imposition of the State of Emergency, and by the repressive
measures which were carried out to suppress an insurrection that soon
degenerated into a government-instigated inter-tribal war. The Indian
Communist Makhan Singh, who allied himself with Kikuyu labour and
political interests, organized strikes in Mombasa in 1949. But nationalist
sentiments were not awakened by this event. Kwale district, because of its
significant population of up-country settlers, was visited by Kenyatta in 1952
when a branch of the Kenya African Union was organized there. Attempts
were made to politicize the indigenous population on the issue of land
alienation, which transformed many Digo into squatters on land acquired
for the East African Estates Company (Salim, 1976, 216). The branch was
proscribed in 1953, three of its leaders detained, and the district remained
quiet for the remainder of the Emergency.
By 1955 the security situation in the country had improved to the extent
that the colonial government permitted Africans to form "loyal" political
organizations and to elect its members of the Legislative Council a year later.
The Council's African members, led by the inspirational Tom Mboya,
demanded ministerial representation and in the next elections, an end to
racial apportionment and a common electoral role. The colonial govern-
ment, which during the Emergency became conspicuously less responsive to
the concerns of the settler community on whose behalf British troops had
been sent to Kenya, was now willing to make meaningful concessions. The
British government had just announced its intention to prepare Ghana for
self-government and began cautiously to disassociate itself from its previous
support for settler paramountcy. The 1958 elections gave political parity
to the African community, but was boycotted by Africans on Mboya's
recommendation. A year later the British government agreed in principle to
the transfer of political power to Africans, revoked the State of Emergency
and convened a constitutional conference at Lancaster House in London to
which European, African, and Asian representatives were invited to make
plans for Kenya's political future as an independent country.
The implications of these events for the Coastal Province were soon
recognized. Proposals to transfer political power to up-country Africans
who had been settling on the coast in greater numbers after the end of the
Second World War caused much concern. The political rights of the Muslim
community in Kenya had been protected in the colonial period through the
device of Arab representation, and the fiction of British protection of
Mombasa and the coastal strip. In a sense, the coastal Muslims had more
to lose politically by the adoption of equal representation than the European
settlers, whose interests would be looked after by the British government,
or the Asian community, which had been a participant in the independence
struggle and controlled important sectors of the colonial economy. Up-
country Africans could be expected to have little sympathy for other
Africans, who still thought of themselves as Arabs and based their moral
claim to special protection on historical associations that had rather different
meanings to non-Muslims.
Showing more concern than tact, the coastal Arabs clung "to the 1895
Treaty, not as a bargaining card, but as a legal basis for coast autonomy
which would grant them a haven from the troubles and tribulations of the
rest of the country" (Salim, 1976, 226). They made common cause with the
Zanzibar Arabs hoping that the British government could be persuaded to
return at least the coastal regions of Kenya and Tanganyika to the political
situation existing more than a half a century earlier. Arab expression of
separatist sentiments was not only out of step with African nationalism, but
had divisive effects in many coastal districts. In Kilifi and Kwale, for
instance, Arab demands for protected status in any future political arrange-
ment were exploited by party workers for the Kenya African Union who
aroused resentment among the Giriama and the Digo against Arab and
Swahili landowners (Salim, 1976,224).
The Arabs enjoyed modest initial success in pressing their claims for
special protection and/or political autonomy with the colonial and British
governments. In 1958, the colonial governor indicated that "the 1895
agreement between Britain and the Sultan would remain the basis of the
administration of the protectorate" (Salim, 1976,228). This was welcomed
by the Central Arab Association and encouraged the Arab representatives
of the Legislative Council to "seek declaration of the coastal strip as a
separate entity" (Salim, 1976,229). The British government's constitutional
advisor was sent to Kenya to solicit the views of the Arab community on
the upcoming Lancaster Conference. Arabs representing the Afro-Arab
Youth League favoured political autonomy. Pragmatists among the mem-
bers of the Central Arab Association desired increased racial representation
for the Arab community in the colonial Legislative Council. Neither view
could be seriously considered by colonial authorities as the basis of a
political settlement and all that was accomplished was that the Arab
community gave further offense to African nationalists who wished to
present a common front to the British government at Lancaster.
The Lancaster agreement gave Africans majority representation in the
Legislative Council and although a common electoral role was introduced,
there were electoral protections for minority communities. Several political
parties were formed soon afterwards on the coast to espouse sectarian and
racial interests. Arabs continued their agitation for a separate status for the
coastal strip through the Coast African Peoples Union and Coast Peoples
Party, notwithstanding the British government's announcement in 1960 that
it would not negotiate the matter with the Sultan of Zanzibar until the
country achieved independence. The Kenya Protectorate Peoples National
Party, representing Muslims in the northern coastal district, also endorsed
the notion of autonomy. The Shungwaya Freedom Party and the Coast
Peoples Party, which generally articulated views of non-Arabs, opposed
separation and favoured expanded political protection. These parties ex-
pressed the concern common to all coastal peoples that the region would be
submerged politically in an independent Kenya, and coastal lands opened
to up-country settlement.
African immigration had become a pressing issue since the late 1940s,
when the colonial government established settlement schemes at Gede near
Malindi and at the Shimba Hills in Kwale district to encourage African
agricultural development of the coast. Coastal Africans showed no inclina-
tion either to do plantation work for Europeans, or to expand cash crop
production on their small landholdings. Kamba, Kikuyu, and other up-
country agriculturalists had learned techniques of modern agricultural
production from Europeans, but lacked sufficient land to utilize their skills
fully. The transplantation of these enterprising Africans to the somnolent
coast seemed a wise and far-sighted policy.
When independence was obtained in 1963, control of the coastal strip was
ceded to the government of Kenya. A revolution overthrew the Sultanate in
Zanzibar that year, and the island was forcibly integrated with Tanzania to
the relief of the new Kenyan government led by Jomo Kenyatta. Arabs
and coastal Muslims had to reconcile themselves to a political future in
Kenya, which they had unsuccessfully resisted, and for which they were
educationally unprepared.
Education for National Development

That the structure of the colonial educational system was considered
unsuitable for an independent country was signalled by Tom Mboya in a
speech he gave in 1961, in which he outlined a new educational system
"aimed at instilling in the minds of our boys and girls the pride that they
are Africans" (Sheffield, 1973, 65). Attention would be given in the first years
of independence to changing three fundamental features of the colonial
system: its separation of races for educational purposes, the reliance on
missionary societiesespecially to provide primary schooling to African
childrenand the "practical" emphasis in the school curriculum. Even
before independence, Kenyatta's party, the Kenya African National Union,
requested a report on ways to make schooling more relevant to rural
development from Professor V. L. Griffiths of Cambridge University.
Griffiths took note of the country's urgent need for trained Africans and
proposed expansion of technical and vocational education to remedy the
situation (Scheffield, 1973,73). One of the first acts of the new Kenyan
government was to appoint a national commission to study the need for
educational reform. Griffiths served as a consultant to this commission
which was headed by Dr. Simeon Ominde. Its 1964 report recommended
expansion of secondary and higher education to ensure that the country
would be able to satisfy its high level and technical manpower requirements.
The length of the primary cycle, eight years after the implementation of the
Beecher report, would remain unchanged, but English would become the
compulsory medium of instruction and examination. The missionary empha-
sis on vernacular and agricultural instruction was rejected in favour of more
academic preparation leading, in exceptional cases, to entry into secondary
schools. Ominde recommended that the government undertake financial
responsibility for primary education, allowing the missionary societies to
sponsor but not to manage schools. This would permit standardization of
primary school curricular, monitoring of school construction and in-
structional conditions, as well as uniformity in teacher training and remun-
eration. Finally, the racial organization of education at the primary and
secondary levels was to be abolished and the European, Asian and Arab
schools opened to Africans. Ominde's recommendations were adopted by
the government and implemented in stages in the late 1960s. They continue
to guide educational policy at the primary and secondary levels, the most
significant departures from the recommendations of the 1964 report being

the reduction of the primary cycle to seven years in 1976, and its subsequent
lengthening and vocationalization in 1984.
Education in the Coast Province Koranic School System

The Ominde Commission drew attention to the large variations in
primary school participation between the agricultural Central and Western
Provinces, and other areas of the country, especially those with pastoral
populations. Its report recommended that "the main effort of the Govern-
ment should be directed towards raising the level of enrolment in those areas
in which the percentage of primary school participation falls seriously short
of the national average" (Government of Kenya, 1965, 9). Lower school
fees, more boarding schools, and in the case of pastoralists a more
imaginative use of teachers, involving organizing instruction in conformity
with nomadic life, were suggested as remedial measures. Table 3 below,
reproduced from the Ominde report, compares school participation rates in
various provinces in 1964.
TABLE 3
Primary School Enrolments by Province in 1964
School age Enrolment
Province population (000) (000) %
Central 265.9 250.0 94.0
Coast 120.3 55.1 45.8
Eastern 337.4 166.9 49.5
Nairobi 29.0 39.8 137.3f
Nyanza 354.1 193.7 54.7
North Eastern 44.8 0.9 2.1
Rift Valley 373.7 144.2 38.6
Western 232.5 164.2 70.6
Total 1,757.7 1,014.8 57.7
Source: Government of Kenya, Kenya Education Report II
(Nairobi: Government Printers, 1965,9)
fThe school participation rate exceeds 100% due to the transfer of
students from other parts of the country into Nairobi schools.
Pastoral populations were then, and remain today, among the most edu-
cationally disadvantaged in the country, the predominently Muslim pastoral
societies of northern Kenya having the lowest rate of primary school
enrolment. Among the provinces without significant pastoral populations,
the Coast Province ranked last in school participation (46%), below the
national average (58%), and much below that of the densely populated
Central (94%) and Western (71%) Provinces. Although no official estimates
of the school-age population in coastal districts were available for this year,
the wide variations in school participation are evident from Table 4.
TABLE 4
Primary School Enrolment and Population
Estimates for Coastal Districts
in 1965
Enrolment Population Estimate
District: (000) (000)
Kilifi 13.2 247.8

Kwale 7.6 157.8
Lamu 0.4 23.0
Mombasa 20.1 179.6
Taita 14.3 90.2
Tana River 1.6 42.7
Coast Total 57.5 741.1
National Total 1,010.8 8,636.3
Source: Government of Kenya (Central Bureau of
Statistics), Statistical Abstract, 1967, 125 and 15.
Assuming that about 20% of the total population was between the ages of
7 and 13 (a national estimate derived from the 1962 census), the school
participation rate in the Arab settlement of Lamu was less than 10% while
in Mombasa the rate (55%) was only slightly below the national average for
the previous year. In Kwale district, about a fourth (23%) of the school age
children were in school.
By 1974, primary school participation had increased at the national level
to about 90%, and dramatic gains had occurred in coastal districts. Still,
districts such as Kwale lagged far behind. In that year, it was estimated that
60% of the district's children were enrolled in primary schools (Ministry of
Education, 1984). Ten years later, despite a doubling of Kwale primary
school enrolment (from 31,258 to 62,227), the proportion of school-age
children in school was about the same (64%) (Ministry of Education, 1984).
However these enrolment data do not take account of the participation
of Muslim children in Koranic schooling, which is almost universal. Koranic
schools comprise a large parallel school system which government edu-
cational authorities, and before them colonial officials and missionaries,
regarded as a cause of the slow progress in increasing school participation
in coastal districts (Mambo, 1980, 118). Although the government schools
established for Arabs provided for instruction in Arabic and religious
subjects from 1924, this did not have much impact on school enrolments
outside Mombasa and Malindi in the colonial period. Since independence,
religious studies, including provision for Islamic studies, have been compul-
sory in Kenyan primary schools and were in 1984 made examinable subjects.
Summary
Coastal Kenya, notwithstanding its longer exposure to western cultures
and the early establishment of missionary schooling, was marginalized
economically, politically and educationally by the processes which, on one
hand, destroyed the slave-based plantation economy and, on the other,
transformed the interior of the colony into the locus of colonial devel-
opment. The Muslim population, or rather those deemed by colonial
authorities to be Arabs, derived a measure of autonomy from the coast's
protectorate status. This fostered the hope of obtaining political autonomy
at independence. Western schooling and wage labour were considered
activities suitable for freed slaves and "Africans". Coastal Muslims dis-
tanced themselves from these associations, and colonial racial policies
encouraged them to do so by maintaining the social position of the Arab
plantocracy long after its economic and political raison d'tre had dis-
appeared. This had three effects of lasting significance: first, it accelerated
Islamicization of the indigenous Mijikenda population; second, it under-
mined missionary and government efforts to increase school participation
and, finally, it left development initiatives to Europeans, Asians, and to other
Africans who were encouraged to settle on the coast.
CHAPTER 4
Religious Education in a Secular Society
In his influential writings on the social functions of education, Max Weber

drew a distinction between the 'charismatic' and 'bureaucratic' purposes of
schooling (Weber, 1947). The former reflects concern with the cultivation
of those qualities of mind and behaviour which a society considers to be
most admirable in individual members, and which has its origins in religious
thought and in notions of a righteous life. Character development, Weber
emphasized, guides the education that ritual practices afford. These may be
institutionalized as schooling, especially when affirmation of membership in
the religious community supposes prerequisite knowledge of sacred texts in
their written form.
Secular schooling is guided by more narrow purposes connected to the
needs of the modern state and of the complex social organizations which
industrialization has brought into being. It is skill oriented, and concerned
with imparting knowledge that is relevant to work and to functioning in
relation to secular institutions of governance and production. Character
development may be given importance in secular schooling; in the context
of instruction about citizenship and social responsibility, for example. But
the resulting formulations of correct behaviour, except perhaps in some
socialist societies, do not constitute a holistic elaboration of the proper way
of life. Similarly, bureaucratic purposes may be embedded in religious
education where institutions of secular and religious authority are combined,
as was the case in many Muslim states prior to the ascendancy of the West
in the Islamic world in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Although the Quran was not compiled into a written text in the Prophet's
lifetime, the link between belief and literacy was firmly established: the
Prophet made the "quest for learning incumbent upon every Muslim, male
or female" (Tibawi, 1972, 24). It is significant that the illiterate Muhammad
is said to have been commanded by an angel-messenger in an early revelation
to read (Ikraa!) the word of God (Tibawi, 1972, 23). The mosque became
the locus of Islamic education whose purpose from the outset has been to
impart sacred knowledge in the language in which it was revealed to
Muhammad, Arabic. The institutionalization of religious education facili-
tated the rapid conversion of peoples conquered by the Arabs as well as the
social and political integration of the Islamic world.
54
Religious Education in a Secular Society 55
At the base of the Islamic educational system is the Kitab, or Koranic
school, which in Kenya is known as the madrassa. It is universal and
supported by fees collected from parents according to their financial
situation. Traditionally, children entered Koranic school at about five or six
years of age and remained until their study of the Quran was completed. This
required several years, depending on the eagerness of the child, the breadth
of instruction, and the patience of parents and the teacher. Normally, school
was attended on a daily basis except on Fridays when the children
accompanied their parents at prayers at the mosque.
More advanced instruction was offered at madrassas where the most pious
and gifted graduates of the Koranic schools continued their studies of
Islamic theology, jurisprudence and Arabic, as well as took up mathematics,
astronomy, and other subjects under the direction of a renowned teacher.
The most well-known madrassa is the one at the Al Azhar mosque in Cairo,
founded in the 12th century. Unlike the Koranic schools, the madrassas
were in most cases created or patronized by the state and the more famous
among them attracted scholars from other Islamic countries. Such institu-
tions were not, however, conceived as academies preparing individuals for
administrative service although many government administrators graduated
from these schools. Instead they were intended to foster Islamic learning
and, through the educational work of former students, to diffuse sacred
knowledge more widely.
Islamic theology, Tibawi has noted, offers no prescriptions to guide
religious instruction, though there is a rich tradition of educational commen-
tary in Islamic thought (Tibawi, 1972, 35-47). The Sufi mystic Al-Ghazali
emphasized the connection between learning and inspiration, the need to
apply the "efforts of mind and body on the one hand and a light from God
on the other" (Tibawi, 1972,41). Understanding occurs when these are
combined, not by reason or exertion alone. But this may not take place
concurrently. A student may know religious scripture without understanding
it, that is without deriving the inspirational meaning of what he has learned.
Religious knowledge only provides the context for scriptural understanding.
Similar views are expressed by later Muslim scholars, including the great
historian Ibn Khaldun who advised students "to seek God's guidance which
had illuminated the way of learners before you and taught them that which
they knew not" (Tibawi, 1972,43). While a child's capacity for under-
standing scripture may be limited by the inspiration which he possesses or
is encouraged by his teacher to develop, the child's readiness to assimiliate
scriptural knowledge is assumed. Consequently, instruction must begin with
Arabic learned through memorization of passages from the Quran, which
will be understood at some later time.
The importance of the teacher as an inspirational figure is a recurrent
theme in Muslim educational thought. Al Ghazali, for example, commented
on the parental responsibilities of the teacher who must set an example
of moral rectitude to his students and be free of worldly vices and con-
cerns (Tibawi, 1972,40). The responsibilities of the Koranic teacher are
discussed in Taha Hussein's autobiography, An Egyptian Childhood. Though
Hussein's teacher may not have measured up to the high moral standards
which Al-Ghazali set for the vocation, he was a figure of spiritual authority
held in respect by parents, and looked upon with a mixture of humor, terror,
and affection by his students:
O u r Master' sat on a small, wooden dias that was neither particularly high nor
particularly low; it stood on the right of the door as you came in, so that everyone
who entered passed O u r Master.' As soon as O u r Master' entered the school,
it was his custom to take off his cloak, or more accurately his overcoat, and
having rolled it up into the shape of a cushion he put it on his right side. Then
he would take off his shoes and, sitting cross-legged on his dias, light a cigarette
and begin to call the roll.
N o w O u r Master' never discarded his shoes until it was absolutely necessary.
He used to patch them on the right side and on the left and on the top and the
bottom. Whenever one of his shoes needed patching he would call one of the boys
of the school, and taking the shoe in his hand say to him, "You will go to the
cobbler who lives nearby and say to him, 'Our Master says that this shoe needs
a patch on the right side. Look, do you see? Here where I put my finger.' The
cobbler will reply, 'Yes, I will patch it'. Then you will say to him, O u r Master
says that you must choose a strong, coarse, new piece of leather, that you must
put it neatly so that it is invisible or nearly so.' He will reply, 'Yes I will do that.'
Then you will say to him, 'Our Master says that he is an old customer of yours,
so please take that into account,' and whatever he says to you don't agree to pay
more than a piastre. N o w go and come back again in the twingling of an eye."
So the boy would depart and 'Our Master' would forget all about him. By the
time that he did return, 'Our Master' would have twinkled his eyes times without
number (Hussein, 1932, 27-29).
Hussein's parents closely monitored their child's education, often examining

him on chapters (suras) from the Quran which he was supposed to recite
without error. The task of learning the Quran was not completed until his
parents and the Master were satisfied that the young Hussein could recite
the important chapters from memory. Failing one such examination,
Hussein wondered "whether to blame himself because he had forgotten the
Quran, or O u r Master' for neglecting him or his father because he had
examined him" (Hussein, 1932,41).
The routine of the Koranic school is described by another modern
Egyptian writer, the historian Ahmad Amin, whose autobiography recounts
a typical school day:
We went to it in the morning and sat cross legged near each other on this mat.
Each of us took his tablet from the box. My tablet was new since I was a beginner.
Our master had a monitor to help him write the tablets for the children and to
replace him when he was absent. He also helped him to stretch out a child's food
in the falaqa if need be. Every pupil read his tablet according to the degree of
learning: one read the alphabet, another the Opening Sura of the Quran, a third
the Sura of Blessed, and so on. When we finished reading a new lesson, we recited
the old ones. When lunch time arrived our master took a piaster, half a piaster,
or a millime from the boys, each according to his capability, and he sent the
monitor to bring two gree, one of which had green beans in sauce, the other
pickels in s a u c e . . . . It did not matter that there might be some sick and some
healthy, some clean and some dirty, some polluted and some unpolluted among
the boys. For there was trust in G o d , and His blessing prevented contagion.
When we read we had to rock and shout. He who did not, got the stick and so
he shouted as he read and wept. We continued to do this until about the middle
of the afternoon. Then we went home (Boullata, 1975,97-8).
The seriousness of scriptural learning is suggested by the vivid recollections

which Hussein and Amin have of the minute details of school life, especially
of the frequent punishment which they received. "I even remember," Amin
remarked, "that I was once at home eating with my mother and my brothers,
and could not help wincing involuntarily as I imagined our master's stick
falling upon me because I was not rocking" (Boullata, 1975,98). Koranic
schooling provided no opportunity for spontaneity.
What little has been written about Koranic schools has often tended to
stress the limiting influence of these institutions on an individual's intel-
lectual development (Colonna, 1984). Teaching is characterized as author-
itarian, the teacher's authority being derived from his status as an adult as
well as from his knowledge and understanding of the sacred texts he will
reveal to his students. The objectives of instruction are agreed upon by
teachers, parents and students: the basics of the Quran. Its prayers and
obligations are to be learned well enough to be recited from memory, and
the most efficacious technique for bringing this about is believed to be
prompting and choral response, especially through the chanting of verses in
unison. It is well known that instructional experiences which have a
heightened "effect" are long remembered, i.e. those requiring some emo-
tional involvement on the part of the learner. Chanting in unison gives an
emotional and other worldly quality to religious instruction in Islam and in
other revealed religions (for example, in the Christian teaching of the Lord's
Prayer). It expresses the inspirational content of the religious teachings and
is fundamental to creating the spirit of a religious community. Enhancing
the individual's intellectual development is peripheral to this form of
religious instruction or any other which makes faith necessary for
understanding.
"On admission to a Koranic school," the Nigerian Muslim Bashiru
Tukur writes, "a child is first taught the letters of the Arabic alphabet purely
and simply" (Tukur, 1963, 149). When this is committed to memory, the
first sura (chapter) of the Quran is read aloud and recited verse by verse
in the order they appear, "each w o r d . . . spelt out letter by letter with its
vowel until the whole chapter can be read fluently" (Tukur, 1963, 150). The
student copies the day's lesson on a slate and reads it aloud when this is
requested by the teacher. Arabic is learned by oral repetition and written
exercise. No illustrations or examples are provided, nor is spoken Arabic
taught in Koranic schools in Nigeria or perhaps elsewhere in Sub-Saharan
BBE
Africa. The learning of Arabic is incidental to the understanding of the
Quran, much as the mastery of Christian liturgical rites was not seen by
many Catholic educators as requiring a knowledge of Latin. Understanding
the meaning of the sacred language is, thus, divorced from the act of
comprehension.
When the student has achieved elementary literacy in Arabic, Tukur
writes, "the letter by letter perusal of each word is abandoned and he is
encouraged to read as much as possible" (Tukur, 1963, 150). His studies will
focus on the first four chapters of the Quran and other short suras compiled
into the Fiqhi. These chapters comprise much of the material from which the
daily prayers are taken, and state the fundamental obligations of all
Muslims: prayer absolution and observance of the sabbath; the giving of
alms; fasting during the month of Ramadan; the pilgrimage to the Sacred
Mosque at Mecca; and jihad, (following in the way of God). This material
is especially well suited to oral recitation as the earlier chapters of the Quran
are recorded in what Gibb has described as "oracular system of short
rhymed phrases, often obscure and sometimes preceded by one or more
formal oaths" (Gibb, 1962,36). Many of these passages in their chanted
form, according to Gibb, produce a great "range of emotional effect." The
narrative structure of the texts is unfamiliar and in the case of non-Arabs
the scriptural language is as well. That may enhance their sacredness,
producing a variant of literacy which does not involve comprehension in the
usual sense.
It is for this reason that when the cognitive skills developed through
Koranic instruction have been examined, it has been with reference to
assessing facility in rote memorization. Cole and Scribner, whose Liberian
studies have been reviewed earlier, designed three incremental recall tasks to
investigate the memorization strategies of students in Koranic schools:
recalling in any order, ordered recall and recalling in perfect order sign cards
that were presented serially. Arabic literates and monoliterates excelled in
serial recall tasks in comparison to nonliterates, Vai literates and individuals
who became literate at school. Their performance on the prefect serial recall
task, for example, was much better than that of other groups (Scribner and
Cole, 1981,228). The researchers conclude that "that amount of time
studying the Koran improves performance (on each measure), demonstrating
that very careful specification of original practice may be necessary to show
cognitive consequences" (Scribner and Cole, 1981,230). Here original
practice refers to the "1-1-1" characteristics of letter learning, and of verse
memorization more generally. Children are introduced to letters and verses
one at a time, memorization being cumulative and production ascertained
by serial recall of the memorized text. Serial memorization is not a unique
feature of religious learning. But since the learning of sacred verse is at the
core of Koranic instruction, an increased capacity to recall information in
serial order is a likely outcome.
While rote memorization may be a distinctive feature of Koranic in-
struction, it does not adequately summarize the educational experience.
The texts which are memorized for recitation are given meaning in the
context of devotional acts, prayer being the most important. Performance
of devotional acts will have various meanings depending on an individual's
capacity to integrate them into a framework of religious knowledge and
understanding which Koranic instruction seeks to develop. At the most
elementary level of instruction, the framework consists of the monotheistic
tenets of the faith as well as the social obligations enjoined on believers in
the Quran.
Literacy as a Devotional Act

Reference has been made above to the Angel Gabriel's commandment to
Mohammad, Ikraa (Read!), which has the additional meanings to proclaim
and to recite. A. Yusuf Ali's influential commentary to his English trans-
lation of the Quran begins with these verses describing how the Prophet
became literate:
The unlettered Apostle was puzzled;
He could not read. The Angel seemed
To press him to his breast in a close embrace,
And the cry rang clear "Iqraa!"
And so it happened three times; until
The first overpowering sensation yielded
T o a collective grasp of the words which made clear
His Mission, its Author, G o d the Creator,
Its subject, Man, God's wonderous handiwork . . .
(A. Yusuf Ali, The Holy Qur'an, n.d. 9).
The verses provide several insights into the role of literacy in Islamic
education and in the Islamic faith. First, becoming literate is not a
discretionary act but a universal obligation of those who accept God's
instructions. Ikraa is stated in the imperative. Second, those who seek
literacy will have God's assistance and they will be rewarded for their
devotion with understanding. Literacy is, thus, not predicated upon individ-
ual ability nor for that matter is it explicitly associated with instruction.
Anyone can become literate if he possesses sufficient devotion, if he is willing
to heed the revealed word. Conversely, literacy is not valued as a cognitive
skill of general application; it is bound to an understanding of the Quran.
Literacy is acquired incidental to the main task which is to learn the Quran.
Third, the Quran, properly understood, allows for a single universalistic
interpretation. It is not meant as a statement of principles allowing varying
individual interpretations, especially those which might use the Quran as an
allegorical text denying it the status of the revealed word. This is crucial to
an understanding not only of sectarianism within Islam but also to an
appreciation of the importance of Arabic instruction in Muslim countries
where Arabic is not spoken. Socially, the use of Arabic gives unity to Islam
much in the same way that the Latin rites catholicized Christianity until the
Protestant Reformation, or as Hebrew served to foster Jewish identity until
the modern creation of the Jewish state, except that Latin and Hebrew were
priestly languages.
Moreover, the compilation of sacred texts in Christianity and Judaism
occurred over long periods of time, and in Christianity this involved
translation of texts at an early stage, giving rise to divergent interpretations
based on their authenticity. All Muslims accept the authenticity of the Quran
and its spiritual authority. Schisms developed initially along political rather
than along doctrinal lines, although doctrinal interpretations have emerged
to perpetuate sectarianism (Gibb, 1964, 120-22). The principal doctrinal
schism within Islam between adherents to Sunni and Shia theology has to
do with the institution of the Immamate and the authority of religious
leadership in matters of the doctrinal interpretation. Shias, to summarize
perhaps too simply, accept the theological guidance of a divinely inspired
Imam; Sunnis generally reject interpretative understandings of the faith.
Except for splinter Shia sects, among the most important of which are the
Ismaili followers of the Aga Khan, there is agreement that the Quran in
Arabic is the sole source of theological authority and that its meaning is
timeless and not illustrative or metaphorical.
Finally, attention is drawn in Ali's verses to the words orally revealed to
the Prophet, and set down in the Quran for the recitation of believers: Ikraa!
"Whether the Quran was written... in full during Mohammed's lifetime,"
Gibb remarks, "is a question on which there are conflicting traditions." He
adds that the "generally received account describes its first compilation a few
years after his death from 'scraps of parchment and leather, tablets of stone,
ribs of palm branches, camels' shoulder-blades and ribs, pieces of wood and
the breasts of men To this, probably, is to be ascribed much of the
unevenness and the rough joining which characterize the present com-
position of the longer suras" (Gibbs, 1964, 39). The Quran, which relates the
divine words revealed to the Prophet and preached to skeptics at Mecca and
to the new Muslim community at Medina, derives its poetry as well as its
persuasiveness from being read aloud from memory. This is the mechanism
by which the Prophet's preachings were retained by his companions until
they could be recorded, and then transmitted from one generation to the
next. It is significant that in Muslim thought, the Prophet is credited with
acquiring literacy, but it is unlikely that this also involved the capacity for
written expression.
Literacy is thought to diminish an individual's reliance on memory for
the storage and retrieval of information, and to bring about fundamental
changes in cognition which elevate reasoning over facility in recalling
information. The cognitive features of socially egalitarian, technologically
unsophisticated societies which transmit culture orally have been the subject
of intense controversy for many years, prompted by the publication of

Radin's The World of Primitive Man in 1952. Radin judged the intellectual
products of such societiesfolk tales, geneologies, myths, songs, and other
specimens of oral traditionto be primitive in their narrative structure
which involved establishing a "mechanical, non-causal relation between a
series of events" (Radin, 1952,39). This thinking epitomized Radin's
prototypical Man of Action, "satisfied that the world exists and that things
happen" (Radin, 1952,39).
Inferential, explanatory reasoning is, of course, employed in much of what
constitutes oral tradition, especially in the preaching of religious beliefs.
Creation myths, songs, proverbs and parables are a very different kind of
religious literature whose main purpose is not persuasive. They serve,
instead, to relate shared experience and to guide individual actions. Islamic,
Jewish and Christian sacred literature contains many examples of this type;
among those they share are the stories of Noah, Abraham, Cain and Abel,
and David and Goliath. Despite their transformation into written text, these
stories preserve the chronological narrative structure that is characteristic of
folk tales recited from memory. Although the stories might stimulate
reflection about, for example, in the story of Cain and Abel, the origins of
divisions among the People of the Book, their social purpose is more
straightforward. In this example, the purpose is to warn of the consequences
of jealousy and envy. The warning must be heeded as it is sanctioned by
God. It is to be remembered and acted upon in what was probably intended
to be a mechanical fashion.
Preachings have the dual and apparently contradictory purpose of
stimulating reflection and instilling obedience. This literature is intended to
have meaning for unbelievers, for doubters and skeptics among the believers,
as well as for the already persuaded. The result is a much more complex text
in which religious principles are stated, elaborated, illustrated and reconciled
with other beliefs and practices; in brief, argued with an audience who
listened to the original text. The preachings of Mohammad (and Christ) were
directed to assemblies of illiterates unfamiliar with the rhetorical con-
ventions of written text. While subsequent generations of believers have
acquired literacy in order to read sacred texts and contemplate them in
solitude, its importance as oral literature has been preserved in Islamic
rituals, including the communal recitation of prayers drawn from the
passages in the Quran. Prayers are, of course, recited from memory and are
learned for recitation. Individual segments of these texts have no ritual
importance. They are to be recited in toto and, for this reason, are expressed
in poetic form. It is a difficult task to recite any prayer or poem without
beginning with the first verse, however well the text may have been learned.
It is also difficult to extract words or phrases and discuss their meaning as
it is the entire passage that has meaning for someone who recites a prayer.
A prayer is usually learned from repetition of the act of praying which in
societies possessing sacred learning in the form of written texts, may involve
oral reading to facilitate memorization. Reading is used in such situations
as a pedagogical tool, and literacy becomes an incidental outcome of
religious education.
The understanding of religious texts learned by repetition may not be as
cursory as the ritual act of recitation may suggest. The call to prayer, or even
listening to verses from a familiar text, prompts an almost involuntary
recitation response. Yet embedded within the recited text are the tenets that
constitute religious belief, which are not learned through the simple act of
recitation, and which require understanding if they are to motivate religious
acts. Especially important to the Islamic faith are the doctrines relating to
the unity of God, the Day of Judgement, and to the mercy that will be shown
those who follow God's guidance that are concisely expressed in the first sura
of the Quran. Principles of the faith have little meaning as items of religious
information, or facts. Their centrality to the faith derive from their import-
ance for understanding other religious texts (concerning moral instruction,
for instance), rituals and observances connected with the practice of the
religion, and to the belief system of Islam, generally. The capacity to recall
chapters of the Quran that present expositions of these principles is not the
object of Islamic religious instruction, despite the fact that recitation would
appear to be the learning outcome which is most often assessed and to be
the raison d'tre for the choice of methods and sequencing of instruction.
In the temporal order of Koranic schooling, fostering factual knowledge
of sacred texts precedes instruction about their meaning and, at least
ostensibly, much more attention is given to the former. Many years may
be spent in learning to recite passages from the Quran in a language that a
child is never formally taught and which in many parts of the world is not
his mother tongue. The Arabic alphabet and phonetics are learned for
reading, and that skill, in turn, is acquired for memorization. Study of the
meaning of the Arabic text takes place very late in the instructional cycle.
It is the culmination of Koranic schooling.
The separation of knowledge from understanding has two theological
justifications. First, the precise meaning of sacred text has perhaps much
greater importance for Muslims than for other "peoples of the book"
because of the universally accepted authority of the Quran, the role of Arabic
as the universal language of the religion, and, equally significant, the
development of Islam as a faith which rejected previous misinterpretations
of the sacred word in other monotheistic faiths. The errors of Christianity
and Judaism preoccupied Mohammad almost as much as the moral laxity
of the idolatrous Arabs. A Muslim, if he is to avoid error, must have a
correct understanding of the faith. While Islam may be highly tolerant of
variations in religious practices, this is not the case in matters of scriptural
interpretation. Orthodox Islam has persecuted those professing heretical
Islamic beliefs, the splinter Shia communities, for instance, with persistence
and severity on the grounds that such doctrinal divergence results not simply
from error but from repudiation of the faith, and weakens its universality.
Thus, interpretation of the meaning of the scriptures must be closely
monitored and instruction institutionalized as a community function.
Second, Islam has no priestly class, unlike Judaism or Christianity, and
therefore no formal mechanisms for arbitrating among different doctrinal
interpretations (apart from the institution of the Imamate in Shia Islam).
This feature of Islam places responsibility for ensuring concensus in
doctrinal matters in the hands of educators, who derive their authority and
financial support directly from the religious community. The high level of
public accountability of Koranic teachers encourages conservatism in re-
ligious interpretation and in instruction, specifically an emphasis on teaching
that which most Muslims would agree that every Muslim should know, such
as the first suras in the Quran and the Hadith (sayings of the Prophet), and
it is the meaning of these texts that will be taught to Muslim children who
have already mastered, i.e. memorized, them. In non-Arabic speaking
Muslim countries, the texts may be taught in translation into the child's
mother tongue only in the final stages of his education and then only under
close supervision of his teacher. Such instruction is, interestingly, a novelty
of this century and is a subject of contention in many parts of the Muslim
world. Translations of the Quran are historically recent and controversial.
Islam did not, like Christianity, consider translation to be important for
conversion, or necessary for the sacred text to be understood. The first
widely disseminated translations of the Quran appeared in this century in
countries where Christian missionary societies were most active and the
practice of Islam most nominal. Reservations about the use of translations
of the Quran were put aside in recognition of the potential threat of Christian
teachings, as well as of the expansion of secular schooling which missionary
education unintentionally fostered in many colonial states. Yet the teaching
of the Quran in translation has not been accepted in any Muslim country,
nor is it accepted that the learning of Arabic should be divorced from the
study of the Quran. The concessions made to promoting understanding of
the Arabic text in the mother tongue have been undertaken reluctantly. How
is it possible then for a child to develop an understanding of the Islamic faith
in a language which he is taught partly to comprehend only upon completion
of instruction?
Explaining the meaning of Koranic text is mainly the responsibility of
parents rather than the task of Koranic teachers. In the home it is the
responsibility of fathers for both boys and girls. An interested father will
discuss the meaning of the suras with his children who have learned them
by rote. The Koranic school imparts the basic knowledge of the sacred text,
and caution in interpreting its meaning. Parents supplement this instruction
if they are able to do so. In addition, children will attend Friday darassas
at the community mosque and listen to recitations of the Quran and
commentaries on individual verses and suras. Such experiences and the
insight that may result from observance of communal rituals, Ramadan
being the most important among them, gives meaning to formal instruction
that instills a compendium of textural knowledge from which belief may
develop.
To recapitulate, Koranic schooling fosters "restricted" literacy, the ability
to read sacred texts in Arabic. Koranic instruction can be considered a
continuation of preliterate traditions emphasizing the student's facility in
orally reproducing sacred knowledge. The devotional act of recitation is the
product of instruction. The Quran is recited in Arabic and translated for
instruction into the mother tongue only after the child is able to read the
full text in Arabic and recite the most important chapters. The narrow,
functional literacy which Koranic instruction affords is the basis for
acquiring an understanding of the principles of the faith. This is a lifelong
endeavour.
Tradition and Change in Koranic Schooling

Throughout the Muslim world, Koranic schools having the "traditional"
features we have just described are under pressure to become more like
secular schools, even in so-called modern "Islamic states" like Iran and
Pakistan which propose to purge schooling of secular influences. Secular
schooling, in the sense that term is used here, has little to do with state
sponsorship or with the incorporation of scientific and technical subjects into
instruction. What makes secular schools different from religious schools
has to do, more profoundly, with the purposes and the organization of
instruction.
Secular schooling developed in western countries mainly in the 19th
century in response to the emergence of complex forms of social organiz-
ation associated with machine-based forms of production. Public school
systems in the early 19th century were sometimes established alongside
systems of religious education providing instruction from the elementary to
the tertiary level, as was the case in revolutionary France and in the United
States. Elsewhere religious institutions were used to create state systems
through the device of state support for secular instruction. In one situation,
secular schooling soon supplanted religious education as an instrument for
promoting widespread literacy which the emergence of capitalism now
required. In the other, religious instruction usually became a secondary
function of state-supported religious schools. In either case, schooling no
longer served to initiate the mass of the population into religious life. Its
purpose was to prepare students for wage/salary employment. The attrac-
tiveness of scriptural teaching diminished in consequence. Although
religious schooling has persisted and in some parts of contemporary western
Europe and North America even expanded at the expense of public
education, it did so by providing an education that was comparable in scope
and content, and perceived to be "better" at imparting the knowledge and
skills that facilitated social and economic mobility. The proposition that
education should be pursued to enable a man to raise his station in this life,
which is closely associated with the growth of public education, has become
central to many forms of religious schooling as well.
The participation of the state in public education also led to new ways of
organizing and imparting instruction. Most religious schooling could be
characterized as locally and spontaneously organized until relatively re-
cently, despite the fact that education of the laity has been a responsibility
of the established church for many centuries. More accurately, it was in most
Christian faiths a clerical responsibility exercised at the parish level. In the
Catholic church, the content of instruction leading to confirmation was
prescribed in the catechism and other Latin rites. In Protestant Christianity,
there was greater variation in what was taught, and even greater variation
in methods of instruction. Ecclesiastical centralization occurred mainly in
matters relating to priestly training, the formulation and observance of
dogma, and the distribution of money collected from the faithful.
Public, secular education and state support for religious education
changed this dramatically. Religious schools soon organized into confes-
sional boards where the state recognized certain religious authorities for
public instruction, as in Canada, which has maintained confessional school-
ing since its instrument of self-governance was adopted by the British
Parliament in 1867. In the United States, whose constitution mandated the
separation of church and state, religious authorities organized "private
school systems" a century later, largely in response to the desegregation of
public schools and the promise of federal support to children attending
religious schools.
State support in western countries has been made conditional on the
inspection of religious schools to determine whether they meet certain
minimum requirements of good educational practice. This has had many
implications, from following a state-prescribed curriculum of studies and
hiring teachers certified to be competent by the state, to conformity to
regulations pertaining to the size of school buildings, the provision of
lavatory facilities, and so forth. Religious instruction has been relegated as
a result to an extracurricular program of studies, and religiosity to an
"ethos" that pervades classroom teaching, especially insofar as it concerns
an orderly, teacher-centered learning environment.
Secular, state-supported schooling was implanted in the Muslim world by
European colonial authorities or by a westernized Muslim intelligentsia who
often regarded religious orthodoxy as the source of their society's scientific
and technological backwardness. Predictably, many of the first institutions
established by the state to carry out secular scientific instruction taught civil
and military engineering, in 19th century Egypt and Turkey, for example.
The importance of mass public education for scientific and technological
development was recognized in most Muslim countries after the collapse of
the Ottoman Empire and abolition of the Caliphate at the end of the First
World War put an end to the illusion of Muslim self-sufficiency vis--vis the
nations of western Europe. The shortcomings of Koranic schooling were
evident to several generations of Muslim modernizers and brought into focus
during the regime of Kernel Ataturk in Turkey, who, in rejecting Islamic
religious organization and its tradition, created a constituency for secular
reform among the products of public education. The recent recreation of
"Islamic states" has not, from what can be determined, set back the
development of schooling organized along secular lines and oriented to
employment, except in superficial respects. Restrictions have been intro-
duced on co-education (which is, ironically, a feature of Koranic schooling
in many Muslim countries). And in some countries such as Saudi Arabia and
Iran, religious authorities have been made nominally responsible for public
education. (This confers religious control only if it is accepted that an Islamic
state makes no distinction between those who exercise sacred and secular
authority.) But the school systems of Muslim countries are more like those
in western countries in their organization, structure, curricula and methods
of teaching and in their articulation with secular authority than they are the
Koranic schools with which they co-exist.
In most Muslim countries, public education was not grafted onto Koranic
schooling but established as a parallel system of education. Nor were
Koranic schools co-opted to provide secular instruction with pledges of
financial assistance.This made them especially vulnerable to the modernizing
influence of the secular state, and casualties of the social disruption which
colonialism and westernization brought about in the Islamic world. Because
Koranic education is universally unorganized, there is no data, reliable or
otherwise, that would provide insight into whether the number of Koranic
schools and the pupils attending them for the full cycle of instruction has
declined in recent years. However, this is the conclusion of a recent
international study of Koranic schooling, which describes traditional edu-
cation as being in "crisis" (Colonna, 1984). Universal, compulsory primary
education has undermined the traditional centrality of the Koranic school
in Muslim communities, and the impact of this on the philosophy and
practice of Koranic education has been highly varied.
Organizing instruction to complement secular schooling is one accommo-
dation many Koranic schools have made to their diminished role. Most
Koranic schools offered instruction for the full day, every day except Friday.
While children of pre-school age attend Koranic schools full time, older
children now go to after-school classes and day-long classes during public
school holidays. Another accommodation involves grading instruction
according to a child's chronological age. Traditionally, instructional dis-
tinctions made among children had to do with a child's sex, girls and boys
sat in different places, as well as with the student's ability to recite the Quran.
A child's age was unimportant. But secular schooling has had a powerful
influence on this aspect of Koranic instruction because older children,
familiar with age grouping in school and the resulting social distinctions, find
it awkward to be instructed along with younger children. Some Koranic
schools have beginning, intermediate and advanced classes, and others
group students by their school standard.
There are pressures to formalize Koranic schooling in more substantive
ways. Before the involvement of the state in schooling, Koranic schools
taught mathematics, history, and other secular subjects. A few still do.
However, many confine instruction to scriptural teachings. This has had the
effect of transforming Koranic schools which once provided "an education
for life" into institutions with the more narrow purpose of imparting the
knowledge needed for religious participation. The role of Arabic instruction
is changing also. Modern, secular approaches to language learning favour
the teaching of Arabic as a subject learned for language skills rather than
as a tool for understanding Koranic text. In addition, modern language
teaching emphasizes comprehension of foreign languages in the child's
mother tongue through translation. Though there is much debate about the
effects of early immersion in a second language, few language educators
would endorse the Koranic practice of recitation in Arabic for children who
are not taught to understand the language. The fact that European
languages are taught in translation in schools in many developing countries,
at least during the primary stage, has prompted a number of Koranic schools
in Kenya and elsewhere to expand Arabic instruction beyond the traditional
teaching of the alphabet, and give increased attention to explaining the
meaning of Arabic text in the child's mother tongue at an earlier age. In
other words, the restricted conception of Arabic literacy associated with
Koranic schooling is changing as the schools become more "modern". This,
of course, has important theological implications as well.
Finally, Islam is often taught in state-supported schools in Muslim
countries and in countries with large Muslim populations by trained
teachers. Such instruction presents a major challenge to traditional Koranic
schooling and to Koranic teachers in particular. The tolba, or Koranic
teachers as Unesco recently described them, are "independent entrepreneurs
of knowledge and religion" (Colonna, 1984, 2). In other words, they are
unsalaried, self-supporting teachers whose livelihood depends on the esteem
in which they are held by the religious community. In a social order that
increasingly allocates esteem to individuals possessing formal education,
Koranic teachers, many of whom have taken up teaching as a family
vocation passed from the father to his eldest son, find themselves lacking
what has become an essential attribute of learned menprofessional
qualifications. In several countries, Kenya among them, institutions have
been established to "train" Koranic teachers and certify them as competent
for instruction on the basis of completing a prescribed program of studies,
entry to which is usually dependent on formal schooling. In earlier and
perhaps simpler times, a Koranic teacher or product of a Koranic school
who wished to further his education studied under a sheik at a place such
as Lamu on the East African coast that is respected as a centre of Islamic
learning.
Conclusion
In sum, Koranic schools in Kenya and elsewhere are under increasing
pressure to reconcile traditional practices with the modern pedagogy prop-
agated in state-supported school systems. But the extent to which Koranic
schools can reform what are now considered anachronistic practices and
preserve the philosophy of instruction that is associated with them is clearly
limited. The "informality" of Koranic education, for instance, is character-
istic of the Islamic faith which rejects the institutionalization of theology and
mass religious education. Similarly, no provision is made in Islam for
treating scriptures as anything other than sacred text. Public schools can
teach Islam as a religion, as another subject of instruction. Koranic schools
cannot without fundamental changes that would alienate many believers
who value the schools for their resistance to secular influences eminating
from the Christian West.
In Kenya in the colonial period, Koranic schools proliferated initially in
response to missionary activities in coastal areas, then later in an effort to
contain the expansion of secular schooling for the Arab population. For
many years these schools were largely unaffected by colonialism. This,
however, had more to do with the ambiguous status of the coastal
Protectorate and its underdevelopment in relation to areas of the colony
favoured for European settlement than with the inherent strengths of the
Koranic schools as instruments of cultural resistance. When independence
came and the Coast Province was fully integrated into the national political
system and economy, their situation changed unalterably. The modern
state's preoccupation with asserting authority at the local level at the expense
of traditional political structures and the implications of internal migration
are of particular importance to the future of Koranic schooling.
The government of Kenya, like many newly independent African States,
set out to dismantle the elaborate system of native administration and
"protection" of the ancestral homelands of aboriginal peoples which
colonialism had developed. Although the institution of the chieftainship that
the British transplanted to East Africa was retained, other instruments of
tribal administration such as the Local Native Councils were abolished by
the early 1970s when local political structures based on universal suffrage
were created. Significantly, educational requirements for office holders were
introduced at the local and national levels, effectively limiting the par-
ticipation of traditional political elites in the new structures (Ole Sena, 1986).
The subsequent growth of primary schooling was instrumental not only for
demonstrating the capacity of the modern state to bring benefits to the
population in the form of increased access to wage/salary employment, but
as a means of integrating local communities into the political system.
More recently (1979) the government has promoted the establishment of
pre-schools by providing assistance for the construction of buildings, and
through its agents at the local level, chiefs and district officers, coercing
communities to raise Harambee funds to employ trained teachers. Educating
the pre-school population became a major function of the Koranic schools
in the 1970s as their full-time school age enrolment declined. Today the
ostensibly voluntary government supported pre-school education program
threatens the importance of Koranic schooling for this age group. By 1984
more than one hundred (142) pre-schools had been constructed in Kwale
district, for instance, an indication of how seriously the government has
promoted pre-school education in Muslim areas and elsewhere in the
country (Personal communication, Ministry of Education, 1985).
The implications of internal migration for the Koranic schools are perhaps
even more serious, though its impact is not as direct. When the government
opened the tribal reserves to settlement in the early 1970s, educationally
backward communities were adversely affected. They lost land to their more
prosperous countrymen who had schooling, jobs in the modern economy
and were attracted to areas where land could be obtained cheaply. To remain
a majority in their homelands, backward communities had to advance
educationally, and enter the modern economy. Internal migration created a
powerful incentive for school expansion in coastal districts and other
backward areas. Koranic schools were increasingly considered an impedi-
ment to "development" and, paradoxically, their protective functions have
been taken over by secular schooling.
CHAPTER 5
Literacy and Cognition
The cognitive outcomes of literacy acquisition in Muslim madrassas and

in government schools are the subject of this chapter. The development of
skills in text comprehension is central to both kinds of instruction, although
their methods differ greatly. Briefly, in Koranic schools literacy has de-
votional and ritual purposes and instruction is focused on the teaching of
the Quran, which is to be learned in Arabic by rote. In government schools,
literacy is acquired as a tool for comprehending secular knowledge in
English and in Kiswahili. It is considered to enable, through the course of
increasingly more self-directed forms of instruction, progressively more
complex forms of cognition. The effects of the two different approaches to
learning emanating from contrasting cultural traditions are examined with
reference to the comprehension of religious and scientific texts under con-
ditions which replicate the variations in the languages of instruction.
Comprehension implies more than storing facts, segments of discourse or
a narrative structure of events in memory for later retrieval. It involves
making "sense" of disparate information; that is, attaching meaning to what
is read, heard, or observed, organizing data for subsequent use, forming
judgements, making inferences, and integrating new information into prior
knowledge. Until very recently, most research on comprehension of written
text was concerned with individual differences, on the assumption that
comprehension tasks can be made nominally equivalent for individuals of
similar age and educational experience. This provides few insights into how
different kinds of written information are processed or used and, more
importantly, does not recognize that comprehension may be affected by the
meaningfulness of the written material, of the tasks presented to subjects and
the test situation constructed to examine comprehension.
These limitations are particularly serious insofar as evaluating the acqui-
sition and retention of literacy in developing countries is concerned. The
kinds of written texts to which individuals are exposed in school or in
school-like situations, such as adult literacy programs, often have little
relevance to daily life, substantively, or in terms of the way in which
necessary information is usually communicated. Instructional texts have a
distinctive, narrative form that is influenced by their use in classrooms for
70
Literacy and Cognition 71
directed study. Information is segmented, reiterated to facilitate identifi-
cation of what is significant, and sequenced to foster comprehension.
Learning from instructional text is a self-conscious process, interrupted by
continual monitoring. This is accomplished by the arrangement of textbook
information into units with introductory reviews and culminating exercises,
and by the articulation of reading with oral instruction, drills and exercises.
At more advanced levels of instruction, students are exposed to formal
discourse whose didactic purposes are made less explicit; story books, for
example. These are usually intended to reinforce or to expand upon
classroom instruction and are not necessarily structured into the lesson
format familiar from the first years of schooling. By then, reading has been
transformed from the subject of instruction to an ancillary skill.
In urban, industrial societies, the performance of many activities in daily
life is based upon knowledge and skills acquired from formal instruction
and/or written texts. This is most apparent in work activities involving
machine technologiessecretarial and clerical work, for instanceand in
most forms of employment associated with complex organizations of
production, entry to which is dependent upon completion of various levels
of schooling. It is also evident in the importance of instructional texts,
even for acquiring skills like cooking, child rearing, and facility in other
languages, that only recently have been thought to necessitate literacy or
considered to be appropriate for formal instruction. In sum, the comprehen-
sion of instructional text in school-like learning situations is central to
literacy in a modern society.
In peasant societies, literacy has more restricted uses. Few written texts
are available, apart from the literature produced by the state for internal
administration and for governance. Much of this literature is published in
a language which is not indigenous to the country and has been retained
from the colonial period, not only for administration and governance, but
also for schooling. This is the situation in Kenya and many African
countries. English is the language of the modern sector, of national and
international commerce, of national political institutions, including the
judiciary and secondary schools and national institutions of higher learning,
as well as of instruction in the upper stage of the primary cycle. The
connections between English literacy and peasant life are, however, very
oblique. The most widely circulated English texts are the English instructions
which accompany manufactured goods.
Among the indigenous languages, Kiswahili, the country's official lan-
guage after independence, is the most widely spoken and has the most
developed printed literature. Kiswahili texts are used in all standards of the
primary school. Still, the most widely available Kiswahili texts are trans-
lations of government documents and political discourse that appears in
newspapers and in commercial advertisements and instructions. Other local
languagesthere are more than thirty recognized languages and major
dialectsdo not have a significant printed literature, with the possible
exceptions of Kikuyu and Somali. Thus, English literacy provides access to
participation in the modern sector and to the material benefits which modern
technology affords. Kiswahili links the thin, fragile modern sector in urban
areas to the countryside where most of the population lives. While literacy
in English or Kiswahili permeates urban life, in rural areas the functional
uses of literacy are twofold: first, for important communications with
government, including the purchase of land and obtaining credit, and,
second, for utilizing a wide range of consumer goods and government
services. Literacy has little to do with subsistence agriculture or with much
of peasant agriculture generally.
Students in rural areas have limited exposure to textbooks, which are
supplied by the national government to district centres in limited quantities
and from there to individual schools. The lack of textbooks has a profound
influence on teaching. In classrooms, information presented in printed texts
is communicated orally through dictation or class recitation, usually for
transcription into exercise books. Although the textbooks used in Kenyan
schools presume opportunities for self-study, this seldom occurs. Moreover,
school reading is circumscribed by the content of lessons which are
prescribed in the syllabus of studies and taught for the national
examinations.
In Muslim societies in Kenya, literacy has an importance that has little
to do with examinations, government or the modern sector. Arabic literacy
is essential for participation in religious and communal activities. In contrast
to school-acquired literacy in English or a vernacular language, Arabic
literacy, though it is disconnected from many ordinary events, is continually
reinforced by religious observance. Arabic text is read, studied and recited
on a daily basis.
Literacy in Arabic and in school languages can be considered to be
functionally separate and appropriate to different domains of daily life. The
secular knowledge that is transmitted through school instruction is thought
to influence a wide range of behaviours that improve human welfare. An
example might be better nutrition. School instruction on the relationship of
diet to health may be retained in the form of an understanding of principles
of nutrition (such as the need for a diet that is balanced in terms of the
consumption of vegetables, cereals and animal products) which, in turn,
guide food preparation in the home. School texts in this example impart the
knowledge necessary to change nutritional practices. Oral instruction,
especially reviews, drills and exercises, facilitates the storing of text-based
knowledge in memory. Teacher questioning, project work, examinations and
other evaluative activities ensure that appropriate inferences are drawn. The
actual application of these inferences is, of course, beyond the scrutiny of
the school. Thus, the performance of students on tasks requiring a written
or oral production must be assumed to measure how well they have
comprehended instruction, and whether they have learned what is necessary

for a better life.
In Muslim education, the Quran defines the scope of instruction. Children
are taught Arabic so that they will be able to read the entire text.
Unlike school texts in which secular knowledge is presented in a narrative
expository style, the theology, ethics, and early history of Islam is expressed
in the Quran as poetry. Since the Quran relates the word of God as revealed
to Mohammad, who preached this sacred knowledge to skeptics and
believers, much of the text is rhetorical. The intent of Mohammad's
preachings was to persuade the Arab population to receive the word of God
and, for this reason, an understanding of the Quran involves, in the most
basic sense, acceptance of the spiritual authority of the text. The Quran
elaborates the principles of the faith and draws the appropriate implications
for daily life; the believer must accept them in order to lead a religious life.
That is why recitation of the Quran is fundamental to Muslim education, and
why the ostensible object of instruction is to commit the Arabic text to
memory.
To summarize, secular and religious education differ in many important
respects: in the language in which literacy is acquired, in the role and
construction of written texts, in the communication of knowledge and
learning tasks, as well as in the uses of literacy. In this chapter, the
implications of these differences are studied with regard to the comprehen-
sion of secular and religious texts. More specifically, four propositions
arising from the preceding characterization of secular and religious edu-
cation are tested: (1) Koranic instruction fosters performance in recall tasks;
(2) secular schooling promotes the development of inferential processes;
(3) facility in comprehension is enhanced by the correspondence between the
language of the text and the language of instruction; and (4) the skills in
comprehending religious or secular text are not transferrable to the other
domain.
Becoming Literate at School and at the Madrassa

(In Arabic): Oh Lord of Suleiman (A.S.) give us knowledge and inspiration that
will enable us to live a correct life. Show us the way you showed the prophet Musa
(A.S.) and your last prophet Mohammad; God who gives us the necessary food,
knowledge (Morning Dua, Madrassa Bomani).
Instruction in Koranic schools usually begins with the recitation of a

prayer such as the one given above. The prayer reminds the children of
sacred purposes of learning, and it orients them to the process of instruction.
Like most things a child will learn at the madrassa, the prayer will be chanted
to facilitate memorization of the text. Its meaning will not be interpreted by
the child's Mwalim, nor will it be translated into the child's mother tongue
for comprehension. Still, the child is to reflect on the content of the prayer,
BBEF
and to understand the importance of Koranic knowledge to the practice
of Islam.
Observations were carried out in the madrassas serving the six villages in
the Vengujini sublocation around the coastal town of Msambweni in Kwale
district. There are five madrassas in the sublocation: Mwaembe, Bomani,
Chiuriro, Kinondo, and Sawasawa, which enroll children from unilineal
clans in two adjacent villages who attended the same mosque. The oldest of
the madrassas is the one at Mwaembe, established at the beginning of this
century by a relative of the present Mwalim (teacher), near the site later
chosen for the district hospital and government offices. Religious instruction
began as a family activity and the madrassa slowly evolved into a community
school. Instruction still takes place in the home of the Mwalim. The other
madrassas in the Vengujini location have permanent or semipermanent
buildings, typically made of mud, coral and wattle. Most are constructed in
the rectangular, Swahili style with pitched overhanging thatched roofs and
dirt floors upon which mats are spread for the students to sit on. Children
are crowded together into classrooms; boys at the front of the room nearest
the teacher and his assistants. Girls, dressed in bui-bui, sit in groups along
the walls and by the entrance to the classroom. The latter is cluttered with
sandals and shoes, which are not to be worn in places meant for prayer and
instruction. A blackboard is suspended from one of the walls, and children
often work from slate boards which they hold on their laps. The Mwalim's
Quran is placed on a lectern on his mat at the front of the classroom, along
with printed copies of individual suras and other religious texts that are
distributed to the children. The only other instructional resource is the
switch resting against a wall within reach of Mwalim or brandished by an
assistant, an older child who has finished the basic course of instruction, in
this case, a son of the Mwalim who will take over from his father.
Three of the madrassas have the appearance of government schools.
The madrassa at Sawasawa, for instance, one of the largest of the madrassas
in the Vengujini location, with more than one hundred and fifty children
attending, has four classrooms connected to form one long, rectangular
building with cement walls and floors and a galvanized tin roof. The building
could be easily mistaken for one of the better constructed government
primary schools in the district, except that it is situated beside a mosque. The
resemblance is probably intentional.
Almost all school-age children in Msambweni are enrolled in government
schools and attend madrassas before they enter school at about the age
of six, after school, and during school holidays. According to madrassa
teachers, the majority terminate their Koranic schooling before completing
the second standard in the government school. Such children attend
madrassa with older siblings for a couple of years, long enough to learn the
daily prayers that they must recite as adults to become involved in the
religious life of the community. Many of them will not undertake any formal
religious instruction. They are simply present at the instruction of others,
attending madrassa on an irregular basis, and participating only in the
context of choral recitation. They will not be taught to read Arabic text. The
madrassa has a custodial function for these children. Their parents, Mwalim
complain, are often delinquent in making a financial contribution to the
costs of religious instruction, which seldom exceeds more than two or three
shillings per child per month.
The madrassas in Msambweni have responded to this situation in the ways
that religious schools in many parts of the world have tried to cope with the
expansion of public, secular schooling. They have sought to "modernize"
religious instruction by adopting some features of secular schooling in an
effort, presumably, to make such instruction more relevant to the aspirations
of children and their parents for an education that will have some value
insofar as a child's eventual employment is concerned. Increasingly, what
distinguishes religious and secular learning are the purposes rather than
the organization and processes of instruction. Until the early 1970s the
madrassas in Msambweni offered a full day of instruction to all children.
The Quran was taught, as were subjects such as elementary mathematics and
Islamic history. Studies are now organized to occupy the free time of
children who attend primary school.
The program of studies has been compressed as well. Mathematics (up to
long division) and history are no longer subjects of instruction in most
madrassas, although children are taught Arabic numbers up to one hundred,
and some Islamic history is learned incidental to the study of the Quran.
More significantly, some madrassas are beginning to teach Arabic as a
subject, which is a major departure from the previous practice of teaching
only enough Arabic to read the Quran, usually just the Arabic script without
explication of the language's grammatical or semantic structures. This is
significant for the philosophy of instruction it implies, and for what it reveals
about the challenges the madrassas are responding to. A better knowledge
of Arabic will enable a child to draw interpretations from Koranic text,
which Muslim schools in Msambweni and elsewhere have hitherto been
reluctant to encourage on the grounds that this requires translation and may
give rise to misinterpretation of sacred knowledge. Better teaching of Arabic
has become important, if for no other reason than because religion is being
taught in government schools to children who also study in the madrassa,
and it is taught as other secular subjects are taught in the child's mother
tongue for the first three years, and in English afterwards.
The pre-Islamic history of Arabia, events during the prophet's life, and
modern Islamic history are covered in the school syllabus as, of course, is
mathematics. These subjects are no longer taught in madrassas. But both
teach the Quran and provide moral instruction. Children in the first two
standards of government school are supposed to be able to read and recite
prayers and portions of the Quran and to perform absolutions, for example:
Standard One
1. Reading and Writing: The child should be taught to read and write
Koranic script.
2. Memorization: The child should be made to learn by heart the following
suras and understand the meaning (not translation) of their verses: Al
Fatihah; AI Ikhalas and Kalimah.
3. The History of Islam: (a) Prophet Mohammad's family members...
4. Moral Teaching: (a) When to say Bismillahi...
5. Fiqhi: (a) How to perform absolution . . .
(from Islamic Religious Education Syllabus for Primary Schools, Kenya
Institute of Education, n.d.)
Since most primary school teachers do not know Arabic well enough to
teach it, and since many children enter school with a knowledge of the key
suras, there is less likelihood of duplication than the syllabus suggests. A
more serious concern to those who have traditionally been responsible for
religious instruction is that the meaning of the scriptures will be explained
in the vernacular to children too young to understand Arabic, diminishing
the importance of Arabic as a sacred language and the need to attend the
Madrassa in order to acquire it. Consequently, instruction in the madrassas
must emphasize the centrality of Arabic to religious learning by making it
a tool for understanding the correct meaning of Koranic text.
The teaching of Islam in government schools is largely responsible for
formalizing language learning in the madrassas and also for formalizing
other aspects of instruction. The madrassa in the village of Bomani illustrates
the extent to which some have self-consciously imitated government primary
schools in the Msambweni area. Almost two hundred children attend the
madrassa, which since 1985 has introduced a "kindergarten" and organized
instruction into levels corresponding to the children's chronological age and
placement in government schools. The period of instruction has been divided
into six-month terms, at the end of which the children will take a written
and an oral examination to determine whether they should be promoted to
the next standard. A syllabus for six years of instruction is being prepared.
This will culminate in an examination and successful performance will earn
a certificate. Arabic will be taught as a language and a trained Arabic teacher
has been engaged for this purpose. In kindergarten, children will learn the
Arabic alphabet and the basic prayers (dua) in both Arabic and Kiswahili.
In the following term, suras will be taught; the longer, more difficult, more
theologically complex suras in the final terms of the instructional cycle. The
timetable developed for Standard II level classes is given below:
Saturday
7:30-8:45 a.m. Recitation of Prayers from the Quran
8:45-9:15 a.m. Lugha (Arabic grammar and translation from Arabic
to Kiswahili)
9:15-10:30 a.m. Break
10:30-11:00 a.m. Hadith (Sayings of the Prophet)
11:00-12:00 p.m. Revision
2:00-3:45 p.m. Fiqhi
3:45-4:00 p.m. Moral Education
The structure of the timetable and even the organization of subject matter
is similar to what a school-age child would experience in school in religious
education classes.
The curricula of the traditional madrassa is compelling in its simplicity.
There are four stages of instruction: (1) the Arabic alphabet; (2) instruction
in the first four suras from Sura Al Fathiha and in the shorter suras to Sura
Amma, (3) Sura Fatha to the last sura, and (4) Ilmu, instruction by question
and answers, mainly on the meaning of the first four suras in Arabic and
Kiswahili, as in the Roman catechism. Ethics, Islamic genealogy, and
history, are embedded in these subjects and dealt with whenever the Mwalim
feels that such instruction will be useful. A child progresses from one stage
of instruction to the next if his Mwalim has determined that he is ready.
Children are grouped into beginning, intermediate and advanced levels,
often within a classroom, irrespective of their chronological age. A child's
studies are monitored through individual recitation. When a child is unable
to recite a passage from the Quran, he is invited to join the class in reciting
the text. He is seldom admonished for poor performance. Use of the switch
is reserved for lack of attentiveness and behaviour which distracts other
children. Instances of misbehaviour are very rare, despite the large number
of childrenmore than seventy in some madrassas in Msambweniand the
presence of many pre-school children. Indeed, the contrast between the
orderly instruction of children in madrassas and chaotic behaviour of
the same children in primary schools is striking.
The Mwalim, sitting at the front of the classroom, acts more like a choral
director than a school teacher in organizing learning activities. Groups of
children read aloud passages they have been asked to study. The entire class
is often asked to change verses which the Mwalim feels have been imperfectly
mastered or are important to emphasize. The changing of Koranic verses in
unison is mesmerizing, transporting children (and their Mwalim) into an
almost trance-like condition.
All instruction involves chanting to facilitate learning, starting with the
learning of the Arabic alphabet, which is read from the blackboard not as
individual letters but as parts of words and phrases from the Quran:
Assistant: (in Arabic, pointing to a verse written on the blackboard):

LLAMSAKN ALL (All praise)
Children: LLAMSAKN ALL
Assistant: HAFATHA HA (be)
Children: HAFATHA HA
Assistant: MIM SAKKNAH ALL HAM (Praise be)
Children: MIM SAKKNAH ALL HAM
Assistant: DALL DHUMMA DUU (for or to)
Assistant: ALL HAM DUU (All praise be to)
Children: ALL HAM DUU
Assistant: LAM KASRI LE
Children: LAM KASRI LE
Assistant: LAM SHADA FFATTAALIF LLA
Children: LAM SHADA FFATTAALIF LLA
Assistant: YE KASRI YE
Children: YE KASRI YE
Assistant: ALL HAM DU LELLAYE (All praise be to Allah)
(Madrassa Sawasawa)
Here the teacher spells out consonants, connects them to vowels to make
syllables and eventually forms a word. The Arabic words are assembled into
sequential verses. Then the couplet is read from the blackboard. When
children are able to read the couplet without difficulty another verse is intro
duced. Children will proceed this way until they have learned to read a sura,
dua or a passage from the Hadith. As soon as they master the Arabic script
and have developed a rudimentary vocabulary, the children will be given
more lengthy passages to read and recite from the first verse. Instruction
follows a similar pattern. A verse is read aloud, chanted, another is intro-
duced and the children are directed to combine them in recitation. New
vocabulary and grammatical structures are not explained. Children do not
seek the Mwalim 's assistance in understanding Koranic text. Only the Hadith,
which are the core of moral instruction, are discussed in the sense that their
meaning may be summarized, though the sayings are seldom translated.
When sacred knowledge is taught in translation, a word for word
translation is provided, as in this example taken from a lesson in moral
education on the pillars of Islam:
Mwalim: (Arabic) KAM ARRKANNUL ISLAM? (How many pillars

of Islam do we have?)
Children: KAM ARRKANNUL ISLAM?
Mwalim: (Kiswahili) NIGAPI NGUZO ZA ISLAM?
Children: NIGAPI NGUZO ZA ISLAM?
Mwalim: (Arabic) ARRKANNUL ISLAM KHAMSSATUN. (There
are five pillars of Islam.)
Children: ARRKANNUL ISLAM KHAMSSATUN.
Mwalim: (Kiswahili) NGUZO ZA KIISLAMU NI TANO.
Children: NGUZO ZA KIISLAMU NI TANO.
Mwalim: (Arabic) ALLAH AWAL? (The first pillar?)
Children: ALLAH AWAL?
Mwalim: (Kiswahili) YA KWANZA?
Children: YA KWANZA?
Mwalim: (Arabic) ANNLLAILLAHA ILLALAHU. (That there is no
deity to be worshipped except Allah.)
(Madrassa Sawasawa)
The children attending this lesson were in an intermediate stage of

instruction and had previously learned the pillars of Islam in Arabic. The
Kiswahili translation is to be memorized and recited, as with any other text
a child is taught in the madrassa. The child learns the meaning of the passage
in his mother tongue but he is not instructed in how to translate it. He is
simply presented with the literal meaning of the text. Nothing more. This
is also the case with the introductory suras of the Quran that are taught to
children who are completing their instruction in the madrassa. Again, the
Kiswahili translation is not given as a starting point for language learning,
nor is it the subject matter for theological discourse. Textual interpretation
is not the task of religious instruction. Traditionally, the madrassas have
imparted knowledge of sacred text in the belief that understanding would
develop from maturity and inspiration.
Secular Instruction
(In English) If you do good, you do it for yourself, if you do bad you do
it to yourself. Amen. (Prayer recited by school children in Msambweni.)
This prayer, like the ones recited before instruction begins in the madras-
sas, will remind school children that learning is an opportunity rather than
a moral obligation, and that it is an individual enterprise not a communal
activity. The child is made completely responsible for his performance at
school. If he finds himself among the more than 70% of the primary school
age pupils who do not successfully complete school, it is because he has not
done enough for himself.
There are three government primary schools in Msambweni, the oldest
being the one in the village of Mwaembe established in the early 1930s for
the children of government officials and hospital workers from up-country.
In 1985, the school had an enrolment of about 750 students and a staff of
16 teachers. Although the school had eighteen streams of instruction, there
is only one Standard VIII stream with 55 students who will take the new
Kenya Certificate of Primary Education examination later this year (1985).
In 1983, 33 students took the Certificate of Primary Education examination
that was given to Standard VII students; almost half (17) passed, seven of
them earning a place in government secondary schools. Weak candidates are
not encouraged to take the school leaving examination, and they are
counselled to drop out of the upper standards to which the trained teachers
are assigned. Many students also drop out on their own initiative.
The drop out rate is particularly high among girls. While the ratio of girls
to boys is nearly 1:1 in the lower standards, it declines to 1:2 in the final
three standards at this and other primary schools in Msambweni. Marriage
and pregnancy seem to be the chief causes of female attrition. Girls enroll
in primary school in Msambweni at a somewhat later age in comparison to
girls elsewhere in the country and are marriageable before they enter
Standards VII and VIII. Payment of bride-price is a deterrent to marriage
and female attrition. However, Digo custom makes provision for adolescent
couples to live together if a girl is found to be pregnant. In such instances,
the young man's father pays a fine for the girl's violation, and promises to
pay the full bride-price at a later date. The children from such a union belong
to the girl's family until a marriage contract is agreed upon. Consequently,
impregnating a schoolgirl is often the first step toward an eventual marriage.
School teachers are sometimes responsible. They are only a few years older
than many girls of primary school age, having completed four years of
post-primary education before entering teaching, and as salaried govern-
ment employees teachers enjoy high status in rural areas.
Jomo Kenyatta Primary School, the newest school in the Msambweni
area, was erected in memory of the country's first president who died there
in 1978. Construction of the present tile-roofed buildings was made possible
by a foreign donor, and the school was opened by President Moi in 1981.
Its facilities are comparable to those of the best primary schools in Nairobi.
The school compound comprises several bungalows for the families of staff,
playing fields and assembly areas, and the grounds are landscaped with
jacaranda in the style of some of the government-maintained secondary
schools. The new school was built on the site of Bomani Primary School
which was established in 1972. Jomo Kenyatta Primary School recruits
students from the Msambweni area, especially from families of government
workers living in the village of Mwaembe, who used to send their children
to Msambweni Primary School. A proposal is being considered by the
Ministry of Education to transform the institution into a residential national
school. This would increase enrolment from the more educationally advan-
taged districts.
About eight hundred students were attending the school in 1985. It is
among the best schools in Kwale district in terms of student performance
on the school leaving examinations. Almost three quarters (74%) of the 43
students taking the 1983 Certificate of Primary Education examination
achieved a mark high enough to enable them to go on to secondary school.
The examination results are posted on a bulletin board in the headmistress's
office for perusal by visitors.
Yet despite its modern facilities and the high proportion of trained
teachers (three quarters of the staff of sixteen), Jomo Kenyatta Primary
School is like many rural schools in important respects. Class sizes in the
lower standards exceed fifty per stream, 20% above the Ministry of
Education norm. This situation has worsened in the past year due to the
addition of Standard VIII classes and the lack of funds to replace staff on
pregnancy leave. Moreover, there is a chronic shortage of textbooks and
only a few parents, mainly those in government employment, can afford to
purchase books for their children.
Vengujini Primary School is the smallest school in Msambweni. Estab-
lished in 1978, it has about four hundred students and twelve teachers, all
but four of them lacking teacher training credentials. The school's buildings
are made of mud and wattle except for the Standard VIII classrooms and
workshops which have a stone foundation and will have concrete floors and
tin roofs if funds can be found to complete construction, which was halted
several months ago. Alongside the school is a plot of land used to
demonstrate modern agricultural practices, chiefly row planting of maize,
and separation of crops to facilitate frequent weeding.
Uniform-clad children arrive at school before 8:00 a.m. and assemble
around a flagpole in the school yard. Many teachers do not arrive until
much later, some travelling by matatus (minibuses) to the vicinity of
school and others, including the headmaster, walking from distant villages.
Teacher absences are especially high after weekends and school holidays
when teachers visit their families. On such occasions, the children are
often sent out of class to play so that the staff can meet with the headmaster
to discuss how instructional responsibilities can be reallocated to adjust
for teacher absences. This is a contentious issue among the staff who
sometimes are responsible for more than forty-five thirty-minute periods
of instruction per week, and, in addition, have to mark student exercise
books.
Teachers sit at student desks in the small staff room outside the head-
master's office, between stacks of textbooks discarded from previous years
which are still used in class preparations. Students have no desks and for
most subjects in most classes they have to share the only textbook. For some
subjects, such as Home Science, the teacher does not even have the text
which is currently adopted for use by the Ministry of Education, nor has the
school received copies of the present syllabus for this subject. The shortage
of syllabi and textbooks is a serious concern this year as students enrolled
in the new Standard VIII program will be examined in all subjects of
instruction. Although instructional conditions are more impoverished at
Vengujini Primary School than at other schools in Msambweni, its students
do no worse on the school leaving examinations. Fifteen of the 35 students
taking the Certificate of Primary Education examination passed it and eight
secured places in government secondary schools.
Classroom Life
Teacher: Good morning class.

Students: Good morning, madam.
Teacher: How are you?
Students: We are very very good. Thank you, madam.
Teacher: Okay, sit down.
Students: Thank you madam.
Teacher: Good boys and girls. Sasa nataka muwe tayari.
English is used whenever formalities must be observed in this Standard I

language arts class at Msambweni Primary School and at other primary
schools in the area. It will become the medium of instruction from Standard
IV. Literacy is first acquired in Kiswahili which is very closely related to the
Kedigo dialect spoken in Msambweni. Methods of instruction are quite
different from those used in the madrassas.
Teacher: (In Kiswahili) Now I want you to be prepared. It is writing

time. Do you hear? Put your papers and pencils in order. I
want you to do exactly what I do. Do you hear? Okay. Put
your papers down, you must all begin writing now. Everyone,
which hand is for writing? Put up your right hand. Write any
letter of the alphabet that you like. Okay. Stop. (Pointing to
a student) Can you tell me which letter it is that you wrote?
Student: "M."
Teacher: Very good. Everyone pronounce.
Students: "M."
Generating letters of the alphabet for writing practice is probably intended

to involve students in the day's lesson. Students volunteer instructional text
and in doing so are presumably made to feel that what and how they learn
is negotiated between themselves and their teacher. There is very little
ambiguity in the madrassa, no searching for what is important to learn.
Sacred text is not manipulated for instructional purposes. The Mwalim
determines which passages are to be studied and how often the children are
to be drilled.
In becoming literate in school a child will start sight-reading with letters
and pronouncing letter sounds. Later he will be taught phonetics, new
vocabulary and sentence construction. Reading and writing are taught
concurrently. Comprehension and production skills will be developed by
practice with different kinds of text, so that a child can perform literacy
tasks independently. In traditional madrassas, literacy instruction is text
dependent. The only instructional activity that is disconnected from the
teaching of sacred text is the learning of Arabic consonants and vowels. But
the child will practise on text he is eventually to memorize. Arabic literacy
is incidental to the object of Koranic instruction, whereas in school the
instrumental purposes of literacy are more transparent:
Teacher: (In Kiswahili) Which word do we write with the letter "M?"
Students: Mwalimu (Teacher).
Teacher: Thank you. When you write Mwalimu you must use " M "
(writing the word on the blackboard). Do you see Mwalimu?
Are you looking?... Then there is "W". It must touch the
line. Who can say this word?
Student: Mwalimu.
Teacher: Let's all say it.
In the upper standards the content of lessons is determined by what is

given in the school syllabus, is contained in the prescribed textbooks if these
are available and is thought to be necessary to learn for the Kenya Certificate
of Primary Education examination. The Kenya National Examinations
Council, which supervises the examinations, publishes an annual newsletter
and a booklet containing sample papers to guide teacher preparations.
Commercial publishers also produce examination guides which are pur-
chased by parents. These are preferred for school use because they contain
a large number of questions from previous years and are usually prepared
by individuals who claim to have some connection with setting and marking
examination papers. The sample questions contained in these guides are
crudely constructed in comparison to those which the Examinations Council
describe as typical, but they elicit similar information, usually of a factual
nature. For example:
26. During a nature walk, pupils passed through a swamp near the school.
Which one of the following diseases are they most likely to contract?
A. Bilharzia B. Rickets
C. Kwashiorkor D. Smallpox
(KNEC, Sample Papers, 63).
44. Name a waterborne disease.

A. Malaria B. Sleeping sickness
C. Headache D. Cholera
(R. S. Bath, Gateway to Form One, 38)
The British author of this commercial examination guide, who possesses

an honours degree in economics, is a fellow of the Royal Geographical
Society (London). While these might not seem to be pertinent qualifications,
they suggest familiarity with Kenyan examination practices by virtue of the
historical connection to overseas examination and the Council's previous
reliance on expatriate expertise for guidance in matters relating to test
construction.
Students will be drilled in class on the information needed to answer
such questions. The drills are often taken from student texts in the
teacher's possession, and involve transforming a narrative passage into an
examination-like exercise. This begins with the student transcribing a short
passage into his exercise book which is read to him by the teacher and
copying from the blackboard any illustrations which may accompany the
text, especially if these are in a form likely to be encountered in the
school-leaving examination; diagrams of the human respiratory, excretory
and reproductive systems, for instance. Passages presenting lists of factual
information are often selected by teachers. A science textbook lesson on
movement, for example, introduces the subject of levers and provides
information that is likely to be examined. For this reason it will be entered
in the student's exercise book:
Helping Things to Move
A lever is a simple machine which helps things to move. It is used in

our everyday lives. (Levers) are in use all around us all the time. There
are several examples: Soda opening (sic); human arm; pliers; shears;
etc. All those shows (sic) an example of a simple machine...
(Standard VII Science Student Exercise Book, Jomo Kenyatta Primary
School.)
Much may be lost between dictation and transcription, and there is much
scope for confusing descriptive with explanatory information when the
teacher summarizes the main points of the passage and the accompanying
illustrations, which are also to be entered in the exercise book:
Main Points
1. The lever is a simple machine.

2. The lever works best when the fulcrum is near to the load and far from
the effort.
3. There are many examples of the lever all around us as well as in our
bodies.
The summaries are used to construct fill-in-the-blank drills, e.g. The lever
is ; The lever works best when the is near to the load and
far from the effort, etc. Unfortunately, these exercises are unlikely to prepare
a student to answer successfully the lever question from the KCPE Science
Sample Paper, in which students must estimate the movement of two blocks
of equal weight balanced on a fulcrum, one hung from a rope passing
through inverse pulleys from which a bucket of water will be suspended.
Fill-in-the-blank exercises provide little opportunity for the student to
develop an understanding of the principles that an answer to this question
requires.
Recent examination papers have included more questions requiring
candidates to "reason and apply the knowledge that they have gained", and
fewer that test "the mere ability to recall the facts memorized in school"
(KNEC, 1983, 1). These questions pose special difficulties for students in
schools like those in Msambweni.
Characteristics of the Study Population

To study the effects of religious and secular instruction on comprehension
of different kinds of text, data were collected from thirty-six children
between the ages of twelve and eighteen (see Table 5) who were attending
Madrassa Chiuriro, the most traditional of the madrassas in Msambweni,
or were enrolled in Standard VII at Vengujini Primary School. Eighteen of
these children had completed or were completing the course of study in
Madrassa Chiuriro, meaning that they were able to read and recite the Quran
and were being taught (or had been taught) the first four suras, the dua and
some parts of the Hadith in Kiswahili translation. They were all enrolled in
primary schools in the Msambweni area in Standards V-VIII. The others
were enrolled in Standard VII at Vengujini Primary School and had attended
madrassa previously.
Eighteen of the thirty-nine students in Standard VII at Vengujini Primary
School had gone to a madrassa for less than two years, and were compared
to those having a minimum of four years of Koranic education. All students
in Standard VII had been to a madrassa. The eighteen with less than two
years of Koranic education had accompanied older school-age siblings to the
madrassa and did not continue religious studies when they entered Standard
I. Students enrolled in Standard VII in this primary school are at least
thirteen years of age, by which time most children who are attending
madrassa are finishing their Koranic studies. Standard VII students were
selected for another reason as well. At Vengujini Primary School and at
other primary schools only students showing an aptitude for their studies are
encouraged to enter the last year of the primary cycle, at which time they
will take the school leaving examination.
The majority (61%) of the thirty-six children were boys. Thirteen of the
eighteen who had finished or were finishing madrassa were boys, although
girls account for almost half of the children at Madrassa Chiuriro and at
other madrassas in Msambweni.
TABLE 5
Characteristics of Study Population
N = %
1. Age
1.1 12-14 years 15 0.42
1.2 15-16 years 18 0.50
1.3 17-18 years 3 0.18
36 Too
2. Sex
2.1 Males 22 0.61
2.2 Females 14 0.39
36 1.00
3. School Standard
3.1 Std. V 1 0.13
3.2 Std. VI 5 0.14
3.3 Std. VII 24 0.78
3.4 Std. VIII 2 0.15
36 1.00
4. Number of years in Madrassa
4.1 Less than two years 18 0.50
4.2 Four or more years 18 0.50
36 1.00
Study Design
An experiment was designed to examine not only the possible effects of
Koranic education, but also the influence of the language and type of text
on comprehension. Children with four or more years of instruction at
Madrassa Chiuriro were randomly assigned to two groups, each consisting
of six children (see Table 6). The first group received religious texts in Arabic
and were asked questions in their mother tongue, Kiswahili, which elicited
information on their ability to recall and make inferences from the material.
The second group was given the same text and questions in Kiswahili. In
addition, a third group of children in Standard VII at Vengujini Primary
School who had completed Koranic education received religious texts in
English and Kiswahili, and science texts in these languages as well. This
group was composed of three subgroups with two members. Each subgroup
received religious and science texts under one of three language conditions:
English texts and English questions, English texts and Kiswahili questions,
and Kiswahili texts with Kiswahili questions. The three language conditions
replicate the uses of these languages in classrooms. In the first three
standards children study in Kiswahili. From Standard IV they read English
texts and English is the medium of instruction, with Kiswahili often used for
clarification and explanation.
Eighteen Standard VII students with less than two years of experience
of Koranic education were randomly assigned to the three groups of six
subjects receiving English and Kiswahili texts under the conditions described
above. Unfortunately, it was not possible to compare Standard VII children
at this school who had finished or were finishing their Koranic education
with those with minimal exposure to such education. Again, only six children
in Standard VII had obtained a Koranic education in any meaningful
sense.
TABLE 6
Number of Madrassa and School Test Administrations by Language
of Texts
Texts
Number of Administrations: Religious Science
Language of texts/questions
Arabic/Kiswahili 6 (0) None
Kiswahili/Kiswahili 6 (8)* 0 (8)*
English/Kiswahili 0 (8)* 0 (8)*
English/English 0 (8)* 0 (8)*
Note: Figures in parentheses indicate number of administrations to
Standard VII students.
Including two Standard VII students who completed four or more
years of madrassa.
Instrumentation
Two sets of texts were administered under the various language con-
ditions. The first set of religious texts consisted of suras Fatiha and Humazah
from the Quran. Sura Fatiha, the first sura in the Quran, has seven verses
and is learned by all Muslims. It summarizes the principles of the faith and
is used in daily prayers:
SURA FATIHA
1. In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
2. All praise be to you, Allah, Lord of the World.
3. Most Gracious and Most Merciful.
4. Master of the Day of Judgement.
5. You alone do we worship, and you alone do we ask for help.
6. Show us the straight way.
7. The way of those you have favoured, and not the way of those who
have gone out of the right way.
Sura Humazah presents moral teachings applying the principles of the faith
to everyday life. The text of this sura is slightly longer in its complete form
than Sura Fatiha. A shorter version of Sura Humazah was used to make the
two suras comparable in length and coherence:
SURA HUMAZAH
1. Severe punishment will go the backbiter and teller of lies.
2. Who piles up his wealth just for himself without using it in the right
way.
3. And he thinks being rich would make him live for ever.
4. No! He will be thrown into a blazing flame called Hutama.
5. And what will make you know what that blazing fire is?
6. It is the blazing fire from Allah.
Sura Humazah, like many other suras in the Quran which deal with ethical
matters, may be interpreted narrowly in terms of what behaviours are
inconsistent with the way of life God has prescribed for believers, or it may
be given more subtle, broader meanings. The sura not only advises, for
instance, that backbiting and wealth may be morally corrupting, but also
that any behaviours which have their origins in selfishness and enviousness
will be punished by a vigilant God on the Day of Judgement.
Sura Humazah is familiar to most Muslims as verses from it are popular
subject matter for the Friday darassa, and children in the madrassas learn
to read and recite the sura in Arabic. However, Sura Humazah is not taught
in Kiswahili, as is the case of the first four suras. Suras Fatiha and Humazah
were chosen to contrast comprehension of religious texts differing in their
familiarity from religious instruction. They are, in addition, mentioned in the
Islamic religion syllabus used for teaching this subject in government
primary schools, Sura Fatiha for Standard I and Sura Humazah in Standard
V (K.I.E., n.d., 2 and 8). At the Standard V level an English oral translation
of the suras would be used for instructional purposes while Kiswahili
explanations are given in Standards IIII.
Children attending Madrassa Chiuriro received Arabic and Kiswahili
translations of the two suras while the Standard VII students were given
Kiswahili and English versions.
Children enrolled in Standard VII at Vengujini Primary School also
received a set of science texts dealing with the filtration of water. Water
filtration is considered in Science and in Home Science instruction. Water-
borne diseases are a serious health problem in Msambweni and elsewhere
in Kenya. At the Msambweni District Hospital, for example, more than two
thousand cases (2,285) of diarrhoeal diseases were reported in 1984, and
more than six hundred (626) cases of diagnosed schistosomiasis. Such
diseases rank behind malaria (20,435) as the most common illnesses in
Msambweni (District Hospital Annual Report, 1984). Most water in the
area is brackish or stagnant and bilharzia infested. The government,
recognizing the seriousness of the situation, has with Japanese assistance
constructed safe water wells along the south coast. One is located at
Vengujini Primary School. But a pump could not be installed because
children had thrown rocks in the bore hole.
The subject of filtration is treated in the Standard VI syllabus in a context
of investigating "substances which do not dissolve in water". Students are
to perform an experiment in which a water filter of several layers is used to
trap sedimentation (FE Modern Science Activity Book V, 18). The prin-
ciples of water filtration are considered in Standards V, VI and VII, and the
necessity of clean water in the Health Science text, which is used in Standards
VII and VIII and begins with this serious note: "Lack of knowledge of the
rules of health can bring death to your family" (Threadgold and Wellborn,
Health in the Home, p. vii). Moreover, knowledge of water filtration is tested
in the Certificate of Primary Education examination. The 1982 Mock CPE
General paper, for instance, contains the question, "One can use soil to
make dirty water clean. Which diagram below shows how soil should be
arranged in cut bottles placed upside down to make a good filter?" Layers
of pebbles, coarse and fine sand, and cotton are varied in the diagrams
(Ministry of Basic Education, 1983, p. 15). This example was used to
compose two texts on water filtration which were similar to narrative
passages about water filtration in school textbooks and to descriptions of
procedures to carry out related classroom experiments. The two experi-
mental texts are given below:
FILTRATION OF WATER
1. Water often contains impurities.
2. These impurities are particles in the water that cause disease.
3. But they can be removed.
4. Passing water containing particles through layers of rock, sand and
cotton removes most of the particles.
5. These layers are called a filter.
6. Different sized particles are removed by different layers.
7. Larger particles are removed by larger stones and small particles by
sand and cotton.
8. It is good to remove particles in stages; first the larger particles are
removed and then the smaller ones.
9. Water passed through such a filter becomes cleaner.
10. After boiling, the water will be safe to drink.
and
HOW TO CONSTRUCT A FILTER

1. A filter can be used to clean unsafe water.
2. Filtered water can be boiled and made safe for cooking and drinking.
3. A filter can be constructed by following these steps.
BBEG
4. Take a large plastic jug such as those used to store cooking oil.
5. Wash it well.
6. Then cut off the bottom of the jug and remove the cap from the top.
7. Turn the jug upside down.
8. Place a handful of cotton in the mouth of the jug at the bottom.
9. Take fine sand from the beach and pour 5 cm over the cotton that you
placed in the bottom of the jug.
10. Next find coarse sand and spread 5 cm of it on top of the fine sand
in the jug.
11. Finally, take small pebbles or crushed stones and pour 5 cm in a layer
over the coarse sand.
12. Now you have made a filter with four layers.
These science texts are analogous to the religious texts discussed above in
two respects. First, each set contains one text presenting explanatory
principles and another which shows how they may be applied. Second,
although the subject matter of the texts was familiar to students, each set
included a text that was somewhat less familiar, Sura Humazah and How
to Construct a Filter being the least familiar of the texts. Standard VII
students at Vengujini Primary School had been instructed about water
filtration, but had not performed the sedimentation experiment. Similarly,
a lesson on Sura Humazah had not been taught in religious education classes.
English and Kiswahili versions of the science texts were prepared and
administered to the twenty-four students in Standard VII at Vengujini
Primary School. Thus, three groups of six students received religious and
science texts in English with English questions, in English with Kiswahili
questions, or in Kiswahili with Kiswahili questions. A fourth group who had
attended the madrassa for four or more years were administered both sets
of texts under the three language conditions. The two groups of students
from Madrassa Chiuriro received only the Arabic and Kiswahili versions of
the religious texts, although all were enrolled in a government primary
school. Science texts were not administered to these children because it was
not known whether they had been instructed on the subject of water
filtration.
Four types of questions were used to elicit information on text compre-
hension: questions requiring: 1. Recall of factual information with the text
present; 2. Recall of such information without the text; 3. Inferences from
propositions within the text; and 4. Inferences from a related text. The
experimenter, a woman who formerly lived in the area and attended school
there, carried out the test administration from a script beginning with a series
of questions obtaining biographic information from the subject. Children
were asked to read the texts aloud before answering questions about them.
They could respond in any language, even if questions were put to them in
English and no time limitations were placed on their answers. The test
instruments were administered either at Madrassa Chiuriro or at Vengujini
Primary School when instruction normally takes place, to minimize the
artificiality of the experimental situation. Administrations usually required
from 10 to 15 minutes to complete.
Comprehension of Religion and Science Texts

Students' protocols were scored for the correctness of responses by a
Muslim Kiswahili speaker who was not involved in the administration of the
texts. Fifteen questions requiring recall and inferences from the two suras
were selected for analysis, and scores derived for the responses to each and
to both texts. For example, the first question asked, "In which verse (of Sura
Fatiha) does it say that we should seek God's help?" The correct answer,
verse No. 5, received a score of 10. Another question asked, "What does this
sura say about the proper way to live?" To answer this question the child
would have to make an inference from at least three verses in the text. The
question was phrased in such a way that a child could not answer it by
reciting one or more verses. The correctness of the child's response was
judged in terms of the verses of the sura implicated in his answer.
Comprehension scores for students who had completed or were completing
Madrassa Chiuriro are compared to those for Standard VII students with
less than two years of Koranic education who were attending Vengujini
Primary School, in Table 7 below. Data is presented for the five groups of
six students who received Arabic, Kiswahili and English versions of the
religious texts.
The highest mean scores (8.7) were obtained by children at Madrassa
Chiuriro who were administered the Arabic versions of the suras and were
asked questions in Kiswahili. Standard VII students who were administered
the English translations and were questioned in English scored the lowest
(3.3). Standard VII students and children in Madrassa Chiuriro who were
given Kiswahili translations and were questioned in Kiswahili obtained
almost identical scores (7.3 versus 7.2). The performance of children
receiving English translations of the suras but who were questioned in
Kiswahili was much higher than students given the English texts with
English questions (6.3 compared to 3.3). These findings are consistent across
the three sets of data and differences in group scores are statistically
significant.
Table 8 compares the comprehension of science texts among Standard VII
students under the three language conditions. Again, text comprehension
scores decrease when the language of administration replicates instructional
language use at the Standard VII level. The group receiving the English texts
on water filtration scored the lowest.
Comprehension scores under the English/Kiswahili language conditions
for both texts were much greater than those for the English/English but still
TABLE 7
Rated Comprehension of Religious Texts by Students' Education and Language of
Administration
TEXT
Sura Fatiha Sura Humazah Both
Education and N o . of items: 8 N o . of items: 7 N o . of items: 15
Language of
Administration M = SD = M = SD = M = SD =
1. Madrassa Chiuriro
1.1 Arabic/Kiswahili 8.7 0.5 8.7 1.2 8.7 0.8
( N = 6)
1.2 Kiswahili/Kiswahili 6.5 1.9 8.0 1.5 7.2 1.5
( N = 6)
2. Standard VII Students
( N = 6)
2.2 English/Kiswahili 6.2 0.9 6.4 1.4 6.3 0.8
( N = 6)
2.3 English/English 3.2 0.7 3.5 1.8 3.3 0.7
( N = 6)
3. One-way Anova F = 16.4* 9.9*** 20.3***
*p < 0.05
**p<0.01
* * * p < 0.001
Note: 10 equals perfect score.
TABLE 8
Rated Comprehension of Science Texts by Language of Administration
TEXT
Principles of H o w to Construct
Filtration a Filter Both
N o . of N o . of N o . of
items: 8 items: 8 items: 16
Language of
Administration M SD M SD SD
1. Kiswahili/Kiswahili 7.8 1.3 8.4 1.0 8.1 1.1
( N = 6)
2. English/Kiswahili 5.7 1.1 4.0 1.0 4.8 0.8
( N = 6)
3. English/English 3.3 1.5 2.5 0.5 2.9 0.9
( N = 6)
4. One-way Anova F = 16.0* ** 68.*s*** 41.6***
*p < 0.05.
**p<0.01.
* * * p < 0.001.
well below the Kiswahili/Kiswahili condition. Responses to inferential

questions pertaining to the suras and to the science texts are presented in
Table 9 below.
Scores for the science texts were not obtained for children attending
Madrassa Chiuriro. A slightly different pattern is revealed when text
TABLE 9
1
Inference Scores by Subjects' Education and Language of Administration
Religious texts Science texts Both
Number of Number of Number of
Education and items: 7 items: 8 items: 15
Language of
Administration M SD M SD M SD
1. Completed or completing
madrassa
1.1 Arabic/Kiswahili 7.0 1.6 N.A. N.A.
( N = 6)
1.2 Kiswahili/Kiswahili 8.9 0.7 N.A. N.A.
( N = 6)
2. Standard VII Students
(N-6)
(N-6)
2.2 English/Kiswahili 5.1 1.8 4.1 1.5 4.6 1.2
( N = 6)
2.3 English/English 2.6 0.6 2.3 0.7 2.4 0.6
( N = 6)
3. One-way Anova F = 15.6* ** 15.9*** 24.7***
*p<0.05.
**p<0.01.
* * * p < 0.001.
recall questions are deleted from the comprehension scores for the suras (see
Table 9). Children attending Madrassa Chiuriro still score the highest (8.9),
but those receiving Kiswahili translations of the suras do better on inference
tasks than those given the Arabic texts (8.9 versus 7.0). The higher score of
the Arabic/Kiswahili group, reported in Table 7, is due to their superior
performance on recall questions. However, madrassa children still do well
in making inferences from Arabic texts which they are taught to memorize,
and in the case of Sura Humazah, do not translate.
Among Standard VII students the ability to make inferences from religion
and science texts decreases significantly with the transition to English text
and English questions, particularly from English/Kiswahili to English/
English, even though, to reiterate, these are the conditions under which such
texts are to be comprehended in the classroom.
Six students who were enrolled in Standard VII at Vengujini Primary
School had completed Koranic education, enabling a comparison of stu-
dents with similar school experiences that differ in their exposure to religious
instruction (See Table 10). Because of the small number of subjects for each
language condition mean scores cannot be compared statistically. Never-
theless, the scores may provide some interesting insights into the effects of
Koranic learning.
T A B L E 10
Rated Comprehension of Standard VII Students Completing Madrassa by
Type and Language of Text
Standard VII Students
Completing Madrassa
Text and Language of = 6
Administration: M
Religious Texts
1.1 Kiswahili/Kiswahili (N = 2) 8.7
1.2 English/Kiswahili ( N = 2) 8.1
1.3 English/English ( N = 2) 5.8
1.4 All Administrations (N = 6) 7.5
1.5 Inference Items ( N = 6) 7.3
Science Texts
2.1 Kiswahili/Kiswahili (N = 2) 7.8
2.2 English/Kiswahili ( N = 2) 7.1
2.3 English/English ( N = 2) 5.0
2.4 All Administrations ( N = 6) 6.6
2.5 Inference Items ( N = 6) 5.9
Both Texts
3.1 All items (N = 6) 7.1
3.2 Inference only (N = 6) 6.6
Comprehension scores for the religion and science texts are almost as high
or higher than those for any other group under all language conditions. They
are especially high in comparison to comprehension scores of students with
less than two years of Koranic education under the English/English con-
dition (5.8 compared to 3.3 for religious texts, for instance, see Table 10).
T A B L E 11
Rated Comprehension of Texts by Subjects' Education
Four or more years Less than 2 years
in Madrassa in Madrassa
M SD M SD F =
N = 18 N = 18
Texts:
1. Religious
1.1 All Items 7.8 1.6 5.6 1.9 13.3***
1.2 Inference Items 7.7 1.8 4.6 2.1 21.8***
Only
N = 6 N = 18
2. Science
2.1 All Items 6.6 2.4 5.3 2.3 N.A.
2.2 Inference Items 5.9 2.2 4.5 2.4 N.A.
Only
*p<0.05.
**p<0.01.
* * * p < 0.001.
The total scores of students completing madrassa on the science texts are also
higher except under the Kiswahili/Kiswahili condition where the difference
is very small (7.8 versus 8.1, see Table 7). The study of Arabic text may
accelerate the language development of children, preparing them for the
transition from Kiswahili to English in school. In addition, skills developed
in comprehending Koranic text in the madrassa may be transferred to an
understanding of secular scientific school texts.
The data reported in Table 11 compares children with four or more years
of Koranic education with those spending less than two years in a madrassa.
The results for the Arabic, English and Kiswahili administrations have been
combined. Children who completed or are in the process of completing
Koranic studies scored higher on both sets of texts, and did much better at
answering the questions requiring inferences from and between texts.
The differences between these groups in comprehension scores is as large
for the science as it is for the religious texts, although the science results
cannot be compared statistically.
Discussion
Three findings that can be drawn from these data are of special im-
portance: first, that children who have undergone a traditional course of
instruction in a madrassa develop an understanding of the meaning of
religious texts which they have learned in Arabic by recitation; second, that
such children may acquire from a disciplined study of the Quran skills in
comprehending other kinds of written texts in another language and, third,
that comprehension declines when children are presented with texts and
questions in a language used orily for school instruction and examination.
These findings which will be discussed below require serious qualification.
Only a small number of subjects were studied to control for the variability
of secular and religious education in Msambweni. Moreover, all subjects
received some religious instruction in a madrassa; all Muslim children in
Msambweni attend such institutions before they enter government schools,
although few stay to complete the course of instruction. Thus, it was not
possible to select Muslim children without a madrassa education or who
attended madrassa but were not enrolled in school, which would have
strengthened the experimental design and the findings relating to the effects
of religious instruction. Nor was it possible to obtain a large enough number
of Standard VII students at Vengujini Primary School who had completed
their Koranic education, better to study the comprehension of religious and
scientific texts under various language conditions.
Children who receive a lengthy Koranic education are increasingly
exceptional. Their families are similar to others in Msambweni in terms of
ownership of land and livestock, participation in the market economy, and
in matters of religious observance. They are not more "traditional" in any
obvious sense. However, they may well place more value on Koranic
learning and give more encouragement to their children to finish studies in
the madrassa. Since Koranic teachers do not formally evaluate a child's
performance for the purpose of deciding whether instruction should be
continued, it is difficult to determine what is special about those who
complete their studies. It is unlikely that they have a greater aptitude for
learning than children who leave the madrassa when they enroll in school.
There are many factors which influence whether a child will continue
Koranic education that have little to do with his performance, including the
ability of his family to make even the modest financial contributions which
madrassas require; e.g. parental satisfaction with the methods of instruction,
especially concerns about the use of corporal punishment and parental
beliefs about the importance of such instruction for the child's future.
Memory and Understanding

Previous research on Koranic literacy has shown that madrassa in-
struction with its emphasis on text memorization fosters the ability to recall
information in serial order, perhaps at the expense of the development of
skills in verbal reasoning which are, in turn, thought to be associated with
school-acquired literacy (Cole et al., 1983). This is, in addition, a conclusion
that can be drawn from autobiographical and other descriptive accounts of
traditional Koranic studies. Koranic education does not self-consciously
facilitate the development of critical thinking in a conventional sense.
The corollary assumption that the Quran is learned by rote without com-
prehension is not supported by the findings presented above. Children who
have undergone a lengthy course of instruction in the madrassa, who have
become proficient in reciting Arabic suras, can not only recall information
contained in verses of the suras they have learned, but also they can make
inferences from memorized Arabic texts which they have not studied in their
mother tongue. Portions of a protocol taken from one of the six adminis-
trations of the Arabic suras to children at Madrassa Chiuriro is reproduced
below to illustrate how these texts were comprehended. Again, the children
were questioned in Kiswahili and were allowed to answer in any language.
Hamisi Sulieman is 12 years old and began Koranic studies at the age of
four. He has finished his Koranic studies though he continues to attend
Madrassa Vangujini and is enrolled in Standard VII at Msambweni Primary
School.
Interviewer: (In Kiswahili) Now I give you Sura al Fatiha to read aloud.
Please read it to me.
Hamisi: (Reads Sura al Fatiha in Arabic)
Interviewer: Now I want you to look at Sura al Fatiha and tell me which
lines give the answer to some questions. Each line has a
number. In which verse does it say that we should seek
God's help?
Hamisi: Verse 5. (You alone do we worship, and you alone do we
ask for help.)
Interviewer: . . . In which verse does it say God will decide whether we
are good or bad?
Hamisi: Verse 7. (The way of those you favoured, and not the way
of those who have gone out of the right way.)
Many children identified Verse 4 which refers to Allah as Master of the Day
of Judgement in answering this question. But Verse 7 is also correct, and is
a more subtle interpretation of the question. God will decide on the Day
of Judgement to favour those who have followed the straight path.
Interviewer: Now let's put Sura Fatiha away for the moment so that I
can ask you some questions to answer from memory...
According to this sura, what do we ask God to show us?
Hamisi: We ask him to show us the straight path. (Hamisi's answer
paraphrases verse 6: Show us the straightway.)
Interviewer: . . . Now I'm going to give back to you the Sura al
Fatiha... you may look at the text to answer the ques-
tions . . . Why do we ask for God's help?
Hamisi: Because it is he whom we worship. (Hamisi spontaneously
recites verse 5; You alone do we worship, and you alone do
we ask for help.)
This question can be answered by making an inference from several of the

verses in the sura. God's assistance can be sought on the basis of mercy
(verses 1 and 3), his omnipotence (verse 2), fear of divine justice (verse 4),
for guidance (verse 6), or as in this case it is implied in devotional acts. Here
Hamisi is making a sophisticated inference from the two clauses of verse 5.
Interviewer: What does this sura say about God's judgement?

Hamisi: That God's judgement is strong as it says in verse 7.
The seventh verse of Sura Fatiha makes no reference to God's judgement,

it simply invokes his guidance. In fact, the Day of Judgement is mentioned
only in passing in an earlier verse. But an understanding of this sura requires
the reader to connect a righteous life with God's guidance, improper acts
with irreverence, and both with eternal justice which is evidence of God's
power. That is the principal meaning of Sura Fatiha and Hamisi has clearly
understood it.
The questions relating to Suras Fatiha and Humazah were followed
with a request to translate some Arabic verses into Kiswahili. A Kiswahili
translation of Sura Fatiha is learned by most children in Madrassa Chiuriro.
However, Sura Humazah is studied only in Arabic at Madrassa Chiuriro.
Hamisi and other children in the madrassa produced Kiswahili translations
with little difficulty, indicating that they understood the Arabic text well
enough to recast it in their mother tongue.
While Koranic learning may foster recitation from memory, it also
produces an understanding of religious texts. Understanding is an important
though a latent feature of the instructional process. Its purpose, after all, is
to implant the theological doctrines which are the core beliefs of the Islamic
faith and the foundation of a righteous life.
The Disciplined Study of Text

Hamisi, like many other children who have a lengthy Koranic education,
does well in government school. He ranks second or third in his Standard
VII class in Msambweni Primary School in mathematics, English and
science. The headmaster of this school and the headmasters of the two other
primary schools in Msambweni express the opinion that students who stay
in the madrassa are the most likely to pass the school leaving examination.
The majority (10) of the fifteen students at Vengujini Primary School who
passed the 1983 Certificate of Primary Education Examination, for instance,
completed four or more years of education in a madrassa. Yet, very few
children in the final years of the primary cycle have received this much
instruction in a madrassa.
Mwanamisi Omari, a fifteen-year-old, is one of the oldest students in the
Standard VII class at Vengujini Primary School. She is also attending a
madrassa and has begun translation of the first four suras into Kiswahili.
She received the English/Kiswahili versions of the religious and science texts
and her comprehension scores for both sets of texts were well above the
average for the other school children who had attended madrassa for less
than two years
Interviewer: . . . Now I'm going to give you Filtration of Water to read

a l o u d . . . and tell me which line gives the answer to some
questions . . . Where in the text does it say that stones, sand
and cotton can be used to clean water?
Mwanamisi: Number 7 (Large particles are removed by larger stones
and small particles by sand and cotton.)
Interviewer: . . . (The subject is asked questions to answer from
memory.) After filtering what needs to be done to water to
make it safe to drink?
Mwanamisi: You boil i t . . .
Later Mwanamisi is given the second science text, How to Construct a Filter,
and at the end of the interview is asked the following question:
Interviewer: The last question is related to both How to Construct a

Filter and Filtration of Water which you read first. Here is
the first text. Look it o v e r . . . why do filters have layers?
Mwanamisi: Because it is necessary that the jug has layers of stone, sand
and cotton to catch the (different) kinds of dirt which cause
disease.
The final question requires Mwanamisi to apply information presented in the

first text on principles of filtration to the description of the components of
a water filter. Her answer links a knowledge of processes of filtration to the
construction, purpose and use of water filters. In other words, she has
integrated the information presented in the two texts.
Many Standard VII students, particularly those who received the set of
science texts in English, found this question and a similar one relating to the
religious texts to be very difficult. Their scores were generally lower on
questions which could not be answered by identifying lines in the text. This
may well be a reflection of the kind of instruction they receive at school.
After the science texts were administered to the Standard VIII students, a
Standard VII teacher at Vengujini Primary School taught a review lesson on
water filtration for students who in a few months would be taking the Kenya
Certificate of Primary Education examination.
Teacher: . . . (In English) Now there are many ways one can make
drinking water pure. Is it clear?
Students: Yes.
Teacher: And when it comes for the time to use it (water) you add lime
or other chemicals to make it clean from germs. Is it clear?
Students: Yes.
Teacher: Kill the germs, then drink it. So let's take the second way,
filtration . . . We can purify water through filtration . . . We are
going to perform one simple experiment (to show) how we can
purify water for drinking... Now this water is very clean as
you can see i t . . . This is sand, I'm going to mix this sand with
this water. This is how water sometimes behaves when it is
laying on the ground. Now I'm going to make a filter to purify
this water. Is it clear?
Students: Yes.
Teacher: Now this (holding up a piece of paper) is a filter... see how
I am going to purify this water . . . (pours sandy water through
the filter). Now inside the filter paper what remains is a soily
substance... what remains in the filter paper is known as
residue, say residue.
Students: Residue.
Teacher: Again.
Students: Residue!
Teacher: Now water has passed through the filter paper to the container
and you can see the water is very pure. If you want to take
this water to make it safe for drinking you just add lime. Lime?
Students: Lime!
Teacher: Or you can add bleaching powder (Chlorine).
Students: Bleaching powder!
At the end of the class the students were given this exercise to complete:
The filtered water you can make clean by putting or to
kill . The "correct" answers are bleaching powder, lime and
germs. This sufficed for instruction in principles of filtration. What is taught,
instead, is English vocabulary loosely connected to the topic of the lesson
and presented as discrete items of information. That students in this class
would probably find it difficult to relate water filtration to the use of lime
and chlorine is fortunate, as an application of what they have been taught
might be harmful.
Having dealt with filtration in a general way the teacher drew a diagram
of a water filter on the blackboard which was taken from an old CPE sample
paper. The layers of the water filter were similar to the ones described in how
to construct a filter except that a fine wire gauze was mentioned as a
substitute for cotton.
Teacher: (In English). You take a drum . . . (and make a hole in the
bottom). Put a wire gauze or cotton (pointing to the hole at
the bottom of the drum). Then you add gravel, coarse and fine
sand and then you put water. When water goes through that
hole it will be clear. Is it clear?
Students: Yes.
Teacher: When we get the water there, that water is very safe for
drinking...
The teacher confused the order of layers in a water filter as a result of

copying the wrong diagram from the science sample paper. What L
considers important for students to learn is not how filters work or how
water can be made safe for drinking, but what a filter is made of. That is
the information which he feels students will need to answer the examination
question.
Koranic education, which is focused mainly on the learning of a single text
and a coherent set of beliefs, provides a sharp contrast to the seemingly
random ordering of knowledge in many school lessons. School teachers are
often not nearly as well trained in the subjects of instruction, or in the case
of those having classes in the upper stages of the primary cycle, as proficient
in English as Mwalim are with the Quran and with Arabic. The use of a
national school leaving examination to assess learning combined with the
prevalence of untrained teachers and shortage of instructional texts con-
tributes to the often unfocused characteristics of school instruction. Teachers
must anticipate what national educational authorities consider important for
students to know without usually having the guidance, training or materials
necessary to develop in their students a knowledge of more than mere facts.
Language and Comprehension

Comprehension of the religion and science texts seriously declined when
the texts were presented to the children in English and they were also
questioned in English, despite the fact that all children received instruction
in English for at least three years and were being prepared to take the school
leaving examination in English. Standard VII students often stumbled over
the English words when reading the text aloud, mispronouncing words
which sound somewhat alike but have different meanings. For example, the
second verse in Sura Humazah begins with the words, "who piles up his
wealth . . . " This was frequently mistaken for the word peals. Presented with
an English text, even the English version of Sura Fatiha whose content was
certainly familiar to the children, many had difficulty rendering a complete
English translation of the fifth verse. (You alone do we worship and you
alone do we ask for help.)
Questions that only required identification of lines in the English text were
a source of difficulty:
Interviewer: (In English) Now I want you to look at Sura Fatiha... now
tell m e . . . in which verse does it say that we should seek
God's help (silence, question repeated).
Mohammed: Number 3.
The third verse simply refers to God as most gracious and most merciful.
Slightly more difficult questions sometimes could not be answered at all.
Interviewer: You can look at the text to help you answer the ques-
tion . . . why do we ask for God's help?
(Question repeated.)
Mohammad: Beg your pardon.
Interviewer: Why do we ask for God's help?
Mohammad: I don't know.
Interviewer: What will happen to us if we do bad things? (Question
repeated.)
Mohammad: I don't know.
Interviewer: What does this sura say about God's judgement?
Mohammad: Number 4.
Mohammad answers the last question by matching the word judgement with
the fourth verse, (Master of the Day of Judgement) rather than by providing
the explanation requested. This was a common strategy employed by the
children who received English texts with English questions.
It must be remembered that school children rarely have an opportunity
to read English texts apart from what they copy down from the blackboard
into their exercise books. There are few English textbooks available for class
use in any subject at Vengujini Primary School or at other primary schools
in Msambweni. While children in the madrassa constantly read the Quran
in Arabic, at school they mainly listen to English. That comprehension
improves with Kiswahili questions suggests that the high wastage in primary
schools and the high failure rate on the school leaving examination which
is administered in English may not accurately assess knowledge that is
acquired at school. But it also points to the need to rethink the use of English
for instruction in the upper standards, where importance is placed on
science, agriculture, mathematics and other academic subjects that, pre-
sumably, prepare children for adulthood.
International studies of educational achievement show the average student
from a developing country scoring at a level that falls at the bottom 5 to
10% of students from a high income country (Heyneman et al, 1983,16).
Financial constraints exacerbated by educational expansion have deleterious
implications for mastery of the skills and knowledge which have been
presumed to cause changes in individuals and to result in significant social
benefits. Yet instructional conditions may be less important in accounting
for the performance of Third World students than factors related to the
organization of available resources effecting what happens to children in
rural schools.
Instruction in the madrassa occurs under circumstances that are even less
favourable to learning. According to current standards of good educational
practice, most Mwalim are unqualified and unsupervised. Class sizes are too
large, facilities are poor, teaching methods are anachronistic, curriculum is
too rigid and assessment of student performance is not norm referenced. If
Koranic education were placed under state supervision, these deficiencies
would be the subject of qualitative intervention. However, it is unlikely that
the quality of Koranic education would improve in consequence.
The strength of Koranic education is its informality, simplicity and, most
of all, in its purposiveness: the preparation of children to become members
of the Muslim community. What this implies by way of attitudinal, cognitive
and behavioural outcomes is clear. So are the methods of achieving them.

This cannot be said of secular schooling, which does not have a coherent
purpose, despite several formulations of national goals for the educational
system. What basic knowledge and skills should children acquire? How
should these be developed? It is not that educators in Kenya and elsewhere
lack answers to these questions. It is just that the answers are invariably
grounded in speculation about the uses of school knowledge and skills in
daily life.
CHAPTER 6
The Uses of Literacy in Daily Life
In a recent review of literacy research, historian Carl Kaestle remarked that

while much is known about how literacy developed in western countries,
much less is known about the uses of literacy that may facilitate the
transformation of societies (Kaestle, 1985,45). Instead, debate has neces-
sarily focused on associations between individual literacy and gross changes
in the organization of production, 19th and early 20th century Europe and
North America serving to illustrate what may be achieved in Third World
countries by expanding access to primary schooling and eradicating illiteracy
through adult education programs. The lessons that can be drawn from the
western experience are ambiguous. Economic growth seems to have pre-
ceded rather than to have coincided with the expansion of literacy (Stone,
1969). In fact, some historians have suggested that industrialization, which
is usually associated with literacy, actually depressed literacy rates and
slowed the development of primary education because it required child
labour (Sanderson, 1972). The contribution of literacy to an agricultural
revolution in the late 18th century and to an industrial revolution in the mid
19th century is of course difficult to assess in the absence of better evidence
of literacy than signature studies can provide. Whether literacy and the social
and cognitive skills acquired incidental to learning to read and write
enhanced the capacity of individuals to utilize machine-based technologies
of production cannot be determined retrospectively. What is clear, though,
is that an increasing proportion of the populations of Europe and North
America were becoming literate through schooling at the time that im-
portant, lasting changes were taking place in methods of production, which
accelerated capital accumulation and stratified societies, internally and
internationally.
Almost twenty-five years ago (1963) Bowman and Anderson postu-
lated that a 40% literacy rate might be a threshold level for high rates of
economic growth in developing countries (Bowman and Anderson, 1963).
It is often forgotten that this prescription, which was invoked in support of
the universalization of primary education and the organization of literacy
campaigns in developing countries in the 1960s, was accompanied by a
warning that these measures were no panacea for economic growth, that
104
The Uses of Literacy in Daily Life 105
public education, literacy and the introduction of new technologies of
production formed a complex ecology.
Today levels of educational attainment in many Third World countries are
approaching the historical position of western Europe in the 1950s attesting
to the enormous expansion of primary and secondary education, especially
in Asia and Latin America (Patel, 1985). Yet with the exception of some of
the so-called newly industrialized countries, for example Singapore, Taiwan,
Korea and Hong Kong, this has not been accompanied by a proportional
increase in living standards. The historical connection between literacy and
the satisfaction of basic material needs that is assumed in the rhetoric of
educational expansion in developing countries in Africa is increasingly less
convincing in the light of significant school-leaver unemployment, declining
per capita agricultural production, stagnant industrial growth and endemic
poverty.
Contemporary evidence is, however, no more informative than the
inferences that have been made from the historical experience of developed
countries in the absence of better knowledge of the uses individuals make
of literacy acquired in school and from other sources. In most educational
research, literacy has been considered to be quite simply the ability to recall
factual information from written text that a school child should be capable
of understanding. This may have little to do with the performance of tasks
that require literacy and are meaningful to most people living in peasant
societies. In such societies, the uses of literacy are confined to four domains
related to the comprehension of: (1) inspirational texts; (2) postal commu-
nications; (3) transactions involving purchasing, ordering, credit and record
keeping of various kinds; and (4) obtaining instructional information on the
use of manufactured products and equipment.
Literacy is integral to devotional activity in Christianity as well as in
Islam, but is probably more important as a form of religious expression for
Muslims. Reading and recitation of the Quran is a recurrent activity, being
part of the daily prayers and the substance of the Friday darassas. Ordinary
speech is replete with quotations from the Quran and the Hadith which are
used to strengthen claims, elaborate ideas and resolve disputes. Bible reading
is also important to African Christians, particularly to members of the
Protestant denominations that have a wide following in Eastern Africa. The
differences between Christianity and Islam in this respect have to do with
the authority of religious text and the role of religion in daily life more
generally. The Arabic Quran is universally acknowledged by Muslims to be
the product of divine revelation and the source of religious knowledge. It
is not, like the Bible, the subject of sectarian disputes as to its authenticity
and, thus, is not the focus of controversies arising from literal and allegorical
interpretations. Moreover, with the exception of some forms of funda-
mentalist Christianity, Islam is the only African religion which requires
literacy for religious practice.
BBEH
Correspondence is another domain of literate activity in rural Africa.
Postal systems in Kenya and many other African countries are well
developed and efficient, even in comparison to systems in some western
countries. High levels of internal migration, the expansion of the market
economy and the popularity of postal banking schemes have increased the
importance of postal communication despite the recent growth of tele-
communications networks. Most of the rural population in Kenya makes use
of postal communication at least occasionally. However, literacy is not
necessary for this purpose. Illiterates may rely upon literates to use the postal
system. It is quite common for illiterate or barely literate adults, for example,
to rely upon a school leaver who is a family member to read or write letters
or to negotiate their financial affairs.
Literacy is involved in many work activities apart from those associated
with formal employment and urban life. Producers of cash crops obtain
seeds, fertilizers, credit and other inputs from co-operative societies that may
purchase, process and market their crops as well. Transactions with these
societies frequently involve use of printed texts and may require, in addition,
the ability to produce text. Few subsistence producers do not have access
to the network of institutions and services which has been developed in rural
areas to increase production by making information about modern agricul-
tural technologies more widely available. Agricultural extension programs in
Kenya, for instance, provide assistance to subsistence producers and culti-
vators of cash crops in all rural districts.
At the village level, information about new techniques of production is
disseminated by example and exhortation. The "contact farmer" is the key
figure in the agricultural extension system. He is the principal recipient of
agricultural advice and modern inputs. His plot serves to demonstrate what
the introduction of new varieties, better techniques of planting and weeding,
etc., can produce. If the contact farmer is a school leaver, as is often the case
in the most educationally advanced areas of the country, he is likely to
receive more technical advice about which crops to plant, how to control
diseases in plants and animals and to improve soil fertility. He will be
shown government circulars and relevant commercial literature on these
subjects. Literacy and school-acquired knowledge of modern agriculture
may enhance the utilization of agricultural extension services despite the fact
that information is communicated mainly through oral instruction. Un-
fortunately, contact farmers and extension agents are usually men who have
been to school, and most African cultivators are women who have limited
or no schooling, which may in large part explain why extension services in
most African countries have had so little impact on changing agricultural
practices (Woods, 1984).
A small but increasingly significant proportion of the rural population is
engaged in various forms of non-formal, non-agricultural employment. The
non-formal sector in rural areas comprises a wide range of activities, most
of them involving trading, petty production and providing services anal-
ogous to those which have become important in the informal sector in urban
areas, such as retailing food and clothing, producing and distributing
alcoholic products, and transporting goods by handcarts and similar means.
In some rural districts in Kenya as much as a third of the adult population
may be engaged in these activities as self-employed entrepreneurs, employees
or apprentices (Shiundu, 1986). The size and growth of the rural informal
sector is closely connected with the prosperity of cash-crop production. A
recent study of self-employed school leavers in rural South Nyanza indicates
that literacy, numeracy and other school-based knowledge and skills are
used in informal sector occupations, especially in many retail trades in which
goods are obtained through correspondence, inventories must be main-
tained, receipts provided and customers served in vernacular languages
(Shiundu, 1986).
Fourth, literacy is used in comprehending many kinds of instructional
materials that are distributed with commercial products. A wide variety of
packaged products are available in rural areas, ranging from soaps and
toiletries to agricultural chemicals and pharmaceuticals. Most can be used
without reading instructional materials. However, certain products require
the consumer to follow the instructions printed on a box or packet or at least
to be familiar with how similar products should be used. Agricultural
chemicals and pharmaceuticals are examples of products whose safe and
effective use varies with the consumer's ability to comprehend instructions
and follow them. This, in turn, assumes more than the ability to read text
and recall information when necessary. It implies, as well, the ability to make
appropriate inferences from instructional text and from relevant prior
knowledge of agricultural chemistry and human biology.
In Western countries where literacy is virtually universal, a great deal of
knowledge relating to the use of these products is transmitted through
commercial advertising. For instance, advertisements for pain relievers stress
the speed with which different products are absorbed into the blood steam
through the stomach. Advertising is important in communicating informa-
tion about how pharmaceutical chemicals work to control fever symptoms,
headaches, etc. It provides a rudimentary explanation of biochemical
processes necessary for consumer acceptance of pills as a treatment modal-
ity. Science and health instruction in schools rarely touches on such topics
as these, which are believed to be in the realm of common knowledge. In
many developing countries with high rates of adult illiteracy this knowledge
cannot be presumed. Much importance is placed upon schooling for the
transmission of scientific information needed to improve health and to adopt
more efficient methods of production. School-acquired literacy is, con-
sequently, more involved in the use of products generated by modern
technology in developing countries which lack a large commercial culture
created by printed and other media.
English and Kiswahili are the principal commercial languages of Kenya,
English being the language of office work and printed communication and
Kiswahili used for market transactions as well as for product advertising.
Since independence, the Kenyan government has been reluctant to enact
language legislation that would affect the modern sector, although it has
declared Kiswahili to be the country's "official language" on several
occasions. The status of other indigenous languages is rather ambiguous.
The preponderance of English and Kiswahili in Kenya's commercial culture
perpetuates this situation.
It has been suggested that the effects of schooling occur through the
formation of competencies such as literacy and numeracy, and the
transmission of new information (Bowman, 1976). Efforts to show how
social and economic effects result have usually entailed correlation of, say
agricultural knowledge and literacy, with improvements in production that
have some intuitive relationship to school acquired knowledge and literacy;
use of new varieties, for example (Jamison and Lau, 1982). In this chapter,
a different approach is taken to assess the use of school knowledge and skills
in daily life. Attention is focused on activities that require processing of
information pertinent to the performance of a familiar task associated
with literacy as well as with the application of school knowledge. The
"effects" of schooling are studied with respect to the way in which text
related to a task is understood using prior knowledge. The language of
the text is assumed to be an important mediating variable, affecting
what school knowledge is accessed in processing information that involves
making inferences from prior knowledge. While literacy is developed in a
vernacular and a foreign language, much of the content of primary schooling
that is supposedly relevant to daily lifeespecially science and agriculture
is taught in English in the final five standards of the primary level. The use
of many products of modern technology which improve life and contribute
to societal prosperity, effects that schooling is intended to foster, pre-
supposes both literacy and prior knowledge of science, which may not be
obtained from common knowledge and which school leavers are likely to
possess in a language of instruction that many poorly comprehend. This
was the subject of experiments carried out in Mswambweni and in Kisii
where the studies of the cognitive outcomes of primary schooling were
begun.
Processing Instructions About Pharmaceutical Products

The first experiment examined the comprehension of information related
to the use of malaria pills for prophylactic and curative purposes among
adult literates in Msambweni. Malaria is epidemic in Msambweni and in
other coastal areas. In 1984, for instance, more than twenty thousand
(20,425) people were treated for malaria at Msambweni District Hospital on
an outpatient basis. The number of malaria cases exceeded the total for all
other diseases (Personal Communication, Msambweni District Hospital,
1984). These data may overstate the incidence of malaria as blood samples
are not routinely obtained from patients who express complaints diagnosed
as malaria (high fever, nausea and chills) unless cerebral malaria is suspected
or the patient shows no sign of improvement after being administered
a chloraquine injection. However, there is little doubt that malaria is
widespread and is a leading cause of the high infant mortality, lower life
expectancy and the generally poor health of coastal people (The Daily
Nation, 1985,12-13).
According to the Health Officer at the Msambweni District Hospital,
out-patients seek assistance from the hospital either after traditional reme-
dies have failed or in conjunction with traditional treatment. Malaria and
similarly serious diseases are sometimes believed to be caused by pepo or
spirits that reside in caves near the beach and whose powers may be invoked
by a curse.
Two kinds of ritual acts may be required for recovery to occur. One
usually involves the cutting of flesh and smearing of a substance such as
charcoal that is thought to have medicinal properties into the wound, to be
released into the blood stream. The second presumes a more critical situation
and a need to pacify spirits, not simply to alleviate the symptoms of illness.
Among the Digo in Msambweni, removing a curse may require the services
of a traditional healer who will perform a sacrifice at a kaya (an abode of
spirits and the locus of many ritual activities). In brief, traditional beliefs
about illness involve some notion of supernatural causation, although these
are not necessarily connected to intent, except when the spirits have been
invoked or provoked by an individual's actions. Treatment modalities vary
to fit both the symptoms and the causes of disease.
Three observations pertinent to our research can be made in this
connection. First, traditional medicine is predicated on the belief that the
incidence and seriousness of illnesses are subject to control. Second, that
control arises from an understanding of the causation of illness. And, third,
that the remediation of illness, whether it requires the application of
medication or the performance of other ritual acts, derives from an
understanding of the process by which treatment leads to recovery. In the
case of traditional "scratching and rubbing", a belief in the efficacy of the
properties of certain medicines is combined with a technology for supposedly
ensuring that they enter and circulate through the body.
From the standpoint of traditional and indeed of modern medical practice
in Msambweni, malaria is a generic disease indentified by its many symp-
toms. It is considered by patients, healers and health workers as a condition
that is in most cases self-diagnosed. When patients seek assistance from a
traditional healer or from a health worker at the government hospital
they go to be cured of malaria. At the government hospital patients may
have their body temperature taken to establish that they have fever
symptoms and they may be asked about the length of time that they have
had these symptoms. Most patients with malaria are not seen by a physician.
Instead they are screened by paramedical staff, clinical officers, who at the
Msambweni District Hospital will sometimes interview as many as forty
patients an hour.
When the hospital opens its out-patient facilities for three hours early
every morning, except on Sunday, hundreds of patients crowd into the
hospital, many of them travelling from a great distance by foot, bus and
other forms of public transport from villages along the south coast of Kwale
district. Often patients will return the following day because they have been
unable to obtain medical assistance or the medicines which have been
prescribed for them. The diagnosis of illnesses is necessarily rudimentary.
The hospital lacks the staff, facilities, and equipment for most laboratory-
based diagnostic work. To collect data on the incidence of bilharzia and on
the outcomes of promising experimental treatments on the affected popu-
lation in Msambweni, for instance, a recent WHO/Ministry of Health
project has made almost no use of the resources of the local district hospital.
Blood specimens have been collected from a household survey and analysed
in hospitals in urban areas, and treatment is administered by project staff
who make home visits.
Modern medical treatment for malaria involves the administration of
chloroquine by injection or chloroquine phosphate and similar compounds
which are taken orally. These chemicals are effective against the parasite
which produces malaria, the Plasmodium, that is transmitted to humans by
the anopheles mosquito. Sporozoites of the Plasmodium enter the blood
stream and pass into the liver where they stay for about a week before they
invade the red corpuscles, starting the cycle of growth and reproduction.
Chloroquine and chemically similar products destroy the parasites while
they are reproducing asexually in the red blood corpuscles. A measure of
immunity is conferred because the chemicals interfere with the passage of the
parasite into the liver. But because the parasite is dormant in the liver for
a period of time, continuous use of the drugs is necessary even after a person
has left a malarial area. Higher dosages of chloroquine are used to control
the spread of infection and, thus, to reduce fever symptoms. Although pills
and injections are both effective for this purpose, injections are preferred by
most patients suffering from malaria despite the risk of contracting hepatitis
(and, recently, AIDS) from unsterilized hypodermic needles. (The district
hospital in Msambweni, like many other rural hospitals, often lacks essential
supplies, including hypodermic needles, bandages and even sufficient
paraffin to operate the generators providing electricity for the operating
theatre and wards where two or three patients share a bed.)
The injection method has important historical and cultural associations.
Western medicine was introduced to Africans in the colonial period through
The Uses of Literacy in Daily Life
campaigns to control communicable diseases such as smallpox and yellow
fever. Dramatic declines in mortality resulted from mass immunization
programs which generated confidence in injections and in western medicine
generally. Colonial health authorities seldom encountered resistance in
popularizing the use of injections for immunization. The injection method
is, after all, not unfamiliar to many Africans. The administration of an
injection is somewhat like traditional "scratching and rubbing". Moreover,
an understanding of how drugs might act to immunize a patient is no more
central to a belief in the efficacy of such treatment than an explanation of
the curative properties of, say, charcoal is to confidence in traditional
medicine. Injections do not require acceptance of a theory of illness that is
drawn from a knowledge of human biology and chemistry. The safe and
effective use of pills, however, is predicated upon some understanding, albeit
rudimentary, of the properties of modern medicines, and of how drugs work
in the body, as well as of the biochemical and environmental causes of
illness.
Health workers in Msambweni report that misuse of drugs is prevalent,
especially among unschooled adults (Personal communication, Msambweni
District Hospital, 1985). Overdosage and underdosage are common, as is the
use of drugs for purposes other than those for which the drug was intended.
(For example, the administration of large doses of chloroquine to induce
abortion, a practice that has been noted in Msambweni and elsewhere in
Kenya.)
In rural areas, drugs are obtained mainly from two sources: from hospital,
dispensaries which dispense drugs without charge to the patient, and from
dukas (shops) that stock pharmaceutical and other products. District
hospitals obtain drugs in bulk and dispense them to patients in small
envelopes on which instructions may be written. Observations carried out
at the Msambweni District Hospital indicate that most out-patients are not
given a diagnosis of their illness, an explanation of treatment modalities, nor
do they receive any oral instruction on the use of prescribed medicines from
the clinical staff, though this is sometimes given by the pharmacist. Most
patients do not ask for such information out of deference, even many
well-educated patients who speak both English and Kiswahili. Patients seem
satisfied when told that they have, for instance, a fever and will obtain some
medicine, particularly if they receive an injection. Because intravenous drugs
and needles are often unavailable, the patient will receive pills instead.
Because of difficulties in stocking pharmaceuticals, district hospitals like the
one in Msambweni will often dispense aspirin when stocks of scarce products
have been exhausted. (This happened on several occasions during the period
of observation. The shortage of drugs in government hospitals has been
commented upon in the National Parliament, most recently in the summer
of 1985 when the Minister of Health was criticized for conditions at the
Kenyatta Hospital in Nairobi.)
Some medicines can be purchased at small shops known as dukas, which
are usually owned and operated by African Kenyans and have largely
replaced the Asian dukas that opened the economy of the interior of the
country to the sale of manufactured products. Dukas stock a limited
inventory of pharmaceutical products; typically, aspirins, malaria pills and
drugs to control intestinal worms. These drugs are available for purchase in
small quantities, in foil packets containing one or more pills. They are, with
the exception of aspirin that is sometimes repackaged where it is sold,
accompanied by written instructions indicating what the drug is to be used
for, how often it is to be taken and whether any precautions are necessary.
Patients obtaining drugs at the hospital dispensary are simply told how
many pills to take daily. This information may be handwritten on the
envelope containing the medicine for consultation at a later time if the oral
instructions are forgotten.
It is no wonder that health-care workers have so little confidence in pills
as a treatment modality and prefer injections for control of conditions
ranging from malaria to fertility. This is to some extent a reflection on the
impoverished circumstances of rural medical practice, the overcrowding of
hospital facilities, the shortage of medical supplies, the inability to followup
on the progress of patients after treatment, etc. Hospital staff are unable to
educate patients about other, safer treatment modalities.
Health is taught in primary schools in the context of science and home
science instruction. The use and chemistry of drugs is mentioned in the
syllabi and instructional texts in various connections. In the text Health in
the Home, which is recommended for upper cycle home science instruction
but unavailable in many rural schools, future parents are advised to make
up a first aid box for their homes consisting of "essentials" such as bandages,
razor blades, clean boiled water as well as mepacrine or camoquin for
malaria (Threadgold and Welbourn, 1977,36). The dosages for these
commercial products are given in the text along with this warning: "ANY
medicine may be POISONOUS if eaten by a child. ALL MEDICINES
MUST BE KEPT SAFELY OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN" (Thread-
gold and Welbourn, 1977,37). The pathology of many communicable
diseases are also described in this text in a simplified fashion, from which
often impractical conclusions are drawn about the prevention of disease. For
example, about malaria the text notes that "an insect may bite a healthy
person after having bitten an infected person, gives the disease to a healthy
person," and then advises that homes should be made mosquito-proof,
gardens drained of stagnant water, holes in the ground filled, old pots and
tins destroyed and all mosquitoes killed (Threadgold and Welbourn,
1977, 10 and 22). Health education officers attached to district hospitals,
there is one at Msambweni, visit schools and speak to children about disease
prevention, the importance of personal and public hygiene, etc., to reinforce
what is taught in home science classes.
The chemistry of some common pharmaceutical products is one of the
subjects that has been introduced in the new syllabus for Standards VII and
VIII. In learning about acidity, for instance, an experiment is suggested
involving the neutralization of acids derived from lemons and oranges with
Actal tablets to stimulate acid-based reactions in the digestive system (Jomo
Kenyatta Foundation, 1984, 342). This activity is the most directly related
to developing an understanding of the biochemistry of pharmaceuticals. In
the three schools studied in Msambweni the experiment had not been
performed prior to or during fieldwork, nor did science teachers plan to use
the experiment in teaching about acidity, either because they did not
understand the purpose of the experiment or because some laboratory
materials such as litmus paper were unavailable.
Literacy acquired in school is also involved in the proper use of pills to
control malaria and other diseases. Many firms manufacture malaria pills
for sale in Kenya. Almost all have instructions in English with Kiswahili
translations. Only one product combines visual with written instructions.
The rest must be read to be comprehended. Information about these
products is transmitted by sellers who read and summarize orally the
instructions for illiterate customers, usually only those having to do with
the dosage recommended for curative treatment as use of chloroquine for
prophylactic purposes is expensive and uncommon. (As well, it often has
unpleasant side effects, including impaired vision.) Much misinformation is
communicated in this way. Customers are frequently advised to take the
adult dosage of approximately 500 milligrams (four tablets), although the
pills may be purchased for children, and to repeat this dosage if the fever
symptoms do not disappear. In addition, sellers frequently confuse the
dosage to be taken for different products which vary with respect to the
amount of chloroquine contained in each tablet and, consequently, in
the regimen of administrations. A customer who is literate in English and
Kiswahili can at least determine the correct dosage for himself. The ability
to read and understand such instructional materials is presumably what is
meant by functional literacy which has been formulated as an objective of
primary education in Kenya (Jomo Kenyatta Foundation, 1984, xiii).
Literacy skills, health science instruction and knowledge of chemistry and
human biology all contribute to the development of competency in using
pharmaceutical products. Literacy facilitates access to relevant information
taught in school about the pathology of illness and the biochemical basis of
pharmaceutical treatment. This information constitutes prerequisite knowl-
edge, and may be expressed in terms of lay principles applicable to the use
of many pharmaceutical products, namely, that:
1. Pills are absorbed into the blood stream through the stomach, or
intestines;
2. Once in the bloodstream, the drugs stimulate immunological reactions,
thereby suppressing infections which produce the symptoms associated
with a disease;
3. Symptoms may disappear before the disease is cured;
4. The dosage required is related to the stage of the disease and to the size,
weight and age of an individual; and that
5. Correct use of any drug will produce a wide range of physiological
responses, some harmful, especially if drugs are used in combination.
These biochemical principles of drug use imply some knowledge of the

causes of diseases as well, i.e. that diseases are produced by living organisms.
Thus, comprehension of instructions on, for example, the use of malaria pills
involves, besides the ability to read, the capacity to draw inferences from
general principles and specific knowledge. It is a complex task, much more
complex than the notion of reading and following instructions about correct
dosage suggests.
Instruments and Study Population

Twenty adult school-leavers in Msambweni were tested on their compre-
hension of the printed instructions in Kiswahili and in English which are
given on the foil packets of two popular brands of malaria pills. The
experimental design was similar to the one described in the previous chapter
for examining comprehension among school children, with the difference
that the adults were administered only one text. Again the language of the
texts administered and of the questions asked was varied to assess its effects
on comprehension. The interview protocols were similar as well. Questions
asked required recall of information with the text present and absent, and
inferences from instructions and from prior knowledge. Subjects were
advised to respond in the language of their choice.
Subjects were selected if they obtained at least six years of primary
schooling, meaning that they were instructed in Kiswahili and English for
a minimum of three years. Thirteen of the twenty subjects had completed
Form I before leaving school and four had finished primary schooling.
More than half (60%) were men. Subjects ranged in age from eighteen to
thirty-six with most (90%) being less than twenty years old and out of school
for one to eight years. All were residents of Vengujini village where the
previous fieldwork was carried out.
Subjects were randomly assigned to four groups. The first group of five
subjects received instructions in English that appear on packets containing
Paludrine. These were copied on a separate sheet of paper and each sentence
numbered:
1. The standard dose is one tablet of 100 mg. daily.

2. In areas where malaria breaks out, this dose may be safely increased to
two tablets daily.
3. The daily dose is best taken with water after food.
4. Non-immune subjects entering a malarial region are advised to begin
treatment with Paludrine 24 hours before arrival.
5. A daily dose of Paludrine should be continued one month after leaving
the area.
Children:
under 1 y e a r . . . \ tablet (25 mg.) daily
1-4 years . . . \ tablet (50 mg.) daily
5-8 years . . . \ tablet (75 mg.) daily
9-12 years . . . 1 tablet (100 mg.) daily
over 12 years . . . adult dose daily
6. Provided the tablet fragment gives the minimum amount specified, precise
accuracy in children's dosage is not essential since the drug possesses a
wide safety margin.
7. It is important to ensure regularity of administration by taking the daily
dose at a precise time, after food, every day.
The instructions were not simplified or summarized for administration to

subjects. Five questions were asked necessitating subjects to recall or to
make inferences from the instructions which were to read aloud. Two
questions involved recalling information with the text present (e.g. Where in
the instructions does it tell you what dosage to give to children 5-8 years?),
and one from memory (How many tablets should an adult take at one
time?). The two others required inferences from the text or from prior
knowledge (How can malaria be prevented? and Do malaria pills and
injections work differently in curing malaria? How?). Questions about the
English text were put in Kiswahili.
The second group of five subjects was administered the printed Kiswahili
translation of the English instructions and questioned in Kiswahili.
Two other groups of subjects received instructions in English and
Kiswahili for a second product, Nivaquine:
1. To prevent malaria. Dose to be taken every seven days:

1.1 adults 2 tablets
1.2 children 2-3 years . . . \ tablet
1.3 3-9 y e a r s . . . 1 tablet
1.4 10-14 y e a r s . . . 1 tablet
2. To cure malaria. To be taken as a single dose:
2.2 children 2-3 years . . . 1 tablet
2.3 3-9 years . . . 2 tablets
2.4 10-14 years . . . 3 tablets
3. In severe attacks and for non-immunes follow with:
a. six hours later
3.2 children 2-3 years. 5 tablet
3.3 3-9 years. 1 tablet
3.4 10-14 years. 1 \ tablets
b. following day
3.6 children 2-3 years. \ tablet
3.7 3-9 years. 1 tablet
3.8 10-14 years. 1 \ tablets
c. following day
3.10 children 2-3 years. . \ tablet
3.11 3-9 years. . 1 tablet
3.12 10-14 years. . 1 \ tablets
Similar questions were asked about these instructions (e.g. Where in the
instructions does it tell you what dosage to give to children 3-9 years of
age to prevent malaria? or How can malaria be prevented?). Responses
to questions were scored according to the correctness of the information
recalled or inferred; results for the comparison of responses to the questions
about the two products are presented below.
T A B L E 11
Comprehension of Instructions on the Use of Paludrine and Nivaquine
- M SD F
1. Text:
1.1 Paludrine 5.6 1.4 0.0114 N S
1.2 Nivaquine 10 5.7 1.0
2. Language of Administration:
2.1 English/Kiswahili 10 5.6 1.3 0.0013 N S
2.2 Kiswahili/Kiswahili 10 5.6 1.1
Although the instructions for Nivaquine seem to be more difficult to

follow than those for Paludrine, the combined scores for performance on
recall and inference tasks are almost indentical. More surprisingly, there
were no significant differences when responses to the English texts were
compared to the comprehension of instructions in Kiswahili. The absence
of text differences may be attributable in part to the fact that the recall
questions elicited similar information pertinent to adults and young children
living in malarial areas. The instructions for Paludrine provide a great deal
of additional contextual information such as the weight of each tablet, the
importance of taking pills with food and water, the necessity of regular
administration, etc., and seem intended for individuals entering rather than
living in malarial areas. The instructions for Nivaquine merely list pre-
ventative and curative dosages. The scores presented do not, in other words,
adequately assess the difficulty of the text; simply, the subject's ability to
recall relevant information as well as to understand how these products
work.
That comprehension scores did not vary significantly with the language
of instruction is somewhat puzzling in light of the previous findings relating
to the comprehension of school texts. It was expected that the Kiswahili
instructions would be comprehended more easily than the instructions in
English, especially since the subjects were Kiswahili speakers. It is unlikely,
however, that Kiswahili literates with a knowledge of English rely solely
upon the Kiswahili instructions given for pharmaceutical and many other
products. The Kiswahili instructions for the two products studied are direct
translations of the English text. But many products with bilingual in-
structions have either ambiguous Kiswahili translations and/or more com-
plete English instructions. In daily life, school literates in Msambweni tend
to read both sets of instructions, making comparisons between them to
facilitate comprehension. Thus, their performance with Kiswahili and
English texts may not differ appreciably.
Detailed analysis of the interview protocols indicate that while
subjects often made mistakes in ascertaining the correct dosage, they
have some understanding of how chloroquine works to suppress the
symptoms of malaria. Most of the mistakes in identifying the correct
dosage involved difficulties in locating information: For example,
Werna Salim, an 18-year-old primary school leaver, when asked where
in the instructions for Nivaquine does it indicate what dosage to give
children 3 to 9 years of age to prevent malaria, identified the third
line containing information about dosage to be taken in the event of a
severe attack. Later in the interview, she was asked how many tablets must
a child between the ages of 10 and 14 be given to cure malaria, which
required her to recall the information presented in the text from memory.
Three tablets is the correct dosage, except in severe attacks. Werna answered
1 \, which is partly correct. Again she drew upon the information given for
severe cases without understanding that this was part of a regimen for 10
to 14-year-olds that is preceded by taking three tablets and the three
administrations of 1 \ tablets each day for a period of three days. Another
subject, Suleiman Kibwebwe, also an 18-year-old school leaver who read
the instructions for Paludrine in English had some difficulty in locating
the line in the instructions where the appropriate information was to be
found:
Interviewer: (in Kiswahili): "Where in the instructions does it say how
often you should take Paludrine?"
Suleiman: "The third line." (The daily dosage is best taken with water
after food.)
But when asked how many pills he should take to prevent malaria, he
indicated that two should be taken everyday. One tablet is also correct.
Two is a better answer given the prevalence of malaria in Msambweni (see
line 2).
Two questions concerned the characteristics of injections and pills, and the
prevention of malaria. These were designed to elicit prior knowledge of
human biology and chemistry as well as of certain principles relating to the
use of pharmaceutical products. Almost all of the subjects (nineteen of
the twenty) felt that pills were as effective as injections in curing malaria.
Typically, subjects said that since both "cured" malaria, they worked in
a similar way ("They both go in your body"). Some answers showed
knowledge of the body's circulatory system. For instance:
Interviewer: (in Kiswahili) Do the malaria tablets and the injections

work differently?
Subject: No they are the same.
Interviewer: How?
Subject: They get rid of the disease and they circulate in the whole
body.
The idea that chloroquine whether in the form of an injection or pills "mixes
together in the blood in the body" was expressed or implied as an antecedent
of prevention and cure of malaria. What is important about this is the
articulation of knowledge of the properties of medicines with an explanation
of how they work.
Responses to the question pertaining to the prevention of malaria usually
produced simple inferences from the texts administered to subjects. How can
malaria be prevented? Everyone answered "by taking pills", though no
subject actually took malaria pills for prophylactic purposes, nor are
residents advised to do so by health authorities in Msambweni. Medicine is
taken when a person is sick. Understanding of the immunological properties
of chloroquine derivatives, however, is significant, as it suggests an under-
lying understanding of the pathology of malaria, specifically, of the fact that
malaria is a disease in the bloodstream and that if chloroquine is present
when malaria enters the body, illness is less likely. One subject, in his early
twenties, expressed this quite succinctly. "(By taking the medicine) you will
decrease the chances of getting the disease." A few expanded upon the
notion of prevention, citing public health measures that were effective
against malaria, including this Form II leaver who recapitulated the advice
on malaria prevention given in Home Science lessons:
Interviewer: (in Kiswahili): How can malaria be prevented?

Subject: . . . You can protect yourself from malaria, for example at
bed time with nets (Mosquito nets). And you can protect
yourself from malaria, by making sure areas which have
water are cleared, tin cans that can hold water are buried
or covered in order that mosquitos do not have breeding
grounds.
Two of the subjects did not identify mosquitos as the vector responsible for
the transmission of malaria when probed about malaria prevention. Both
indicated that "drinking dirty water or eating bad food" were causes of
malaria. Boiling water and building latrines were proposed as preventative
measures. While these measures may have little to do with the epidemiology
of malaria, they are logically linked to the presumed pathology of the disease
and also suggest that prior knowledge obtained from formal instruction
the importance of boiling water and building latrines is stressed in school
as well as in adult education programsis involved in comprehending
instructions.
Using Agricultural Chemicals

Woman: (in Kisii): I want that medicine which you put on tomatoes when
the leaves are starting to dry up. Do you have it?
Clerk: Dithane M-45?
Woman: Do you think I know it, me, an old lady?
Clerk: The one for tomatoes when they have been attacked by cater-
pillars?
Woman: Yes, when they (the plants) have just started bearing fruit, the
caterpillars come. (I want) the one you spray.
Clerk: It is the (same) one. When you spray the caterpillars don't come,
and when there is much rain (the plants) aren't spoiled.
Woman: . . . The one you spray twice?
Clerk: (Yes) You spray twice to kill those caterpillars. When the
caterpillars come you spray so that the caterpillars die and the
tomato (plants) continue to grow, and you go on using
( i t ) . . . Instructions are there. So you go mix with some water and
then you spray.
(from an exchange at a Kenya Grain Growers Co-operative Union Store).

Reading instructions for applying agricultural chemicals is another use of
literacy in rural areas. Unfortunately, this could not be studied in Msamb-
weni as Digo agriculturalists make almost no use of agricultural chemicals.
They are only marginally involved in cash crop production and the crops
they plant for subsistance, mainly maize, rice and cassava, grow in quantities
sufficient for domestic consumption without modern inputs such as fertil-
izers, and without recourse to "modern" methods of cultivation: mono-
cropping, row planting and frequent weeding, for example. Agricultural
extension work in Msambweni is more successful with Kamba and Kikuyu
migrants who have larger land holdings, are involved in cash crop pro-
duction, are better educated than the indigenous population and are the
principal consumers of the agricultural chemicals sold in Msambweni. To
study the influence of school-acquired literacy on the use of agricultural
chemicals, we returned to Kisii where formal schooling and cash crop
production are well established.
The Kisii study investigated the comprehension of information involved
in the use of agricultural insecticides and fungicides. It was begun with
extended observation of the communication of information about pesticides
used by small-scale cultivators. These observations established that most
cultivators obtained information about agricultural chemicals not from
extension officers or "contact farmers", but from stores which market
agricultural supplies and implements. Exchanges between sellers of these
products and purchasers, like the one that appears above, were observed,
recorded and analysed with respect to information in the form of a set of
procedures to follow that is typically sought and obtained by cultivators.
The safe and effective use of agricultural chemicals depends upon the
ability to understand instructions derived directly or indirectly from written
texts. Observational data suggested that sellers and purchasers of agricul-
tural chemicals cannot easily comprehend the instructional texts that
accompany many products, and that this may be related to the high incidence
of chemical poisoning reported by the Kisii District Hospital and also to the
large variation in yields from peasant plots (Personal communications, Kisii
District Hospital and Agricultural Extension Office, 1984 and 1985).
The misuse of agricultural chemicals is a national problem. During the
course of field work the researchers observed or learned of several particu-
larly serious instances of misuse. One farmer in Kisii who owned several
cattle, for instance, was advised by a shop owner to spray his cows with
copper oxachloride, a chemical used to prevent coffee berry disease and leaf
rust. All seven of his cows died from copper poisoning. The potential harm
of many chemicals to humans is not widely understood. Small children were
observed playing with packets of pesticides containing DDT during data
collection. The containers in which some agricultural chemicals are sold are
often used for other purposes. Two popular fungicide-insecticides containing
DDT are sold in small plastic containers which are cleaned with dirt and
used for storing salt by some cultivators. Informed of the danger of
consuming chemical residue, such individuals often wondered how some-
thing used for growing food for human consumption can be harmful.
National attention was focused on the incidence of chemical poisoning in
the summer of 1985 when it was disclosed that relief shipments of American
maize contaminated with fungicide were being packaged and sold in the
country causing diarrhoea and potentially more serious diseases. National
data on the incidence of chemical poisoning in Kenya are not available, but
press reports are replete with stories of misuse of agricultural insecticides and
herbicides. A recent article in the Daily Nation reported that at Kenyatta
National Hospital in Nairobi one to two people were treated for chemical
poisoning daily and that in 1981 221 people were hospitalized for agrano-
phosphate poisoning, 13 of whom died. The article also reported that the
Pesticide Chemical Association (Kenya) has now adopted "a code of ethics
aimed at regulating the purchase and distribution of pesticide" (Githinji,
1985).
A survey of the insecticides, pesticides, fungicides, herbicides and fertil-
izers available in stores in Kisii revealed that most products were sold with
instructions in English and Kiswahili. Among the exceptions was Diazinon,
which is one of the most toxic agricultural chemicals. Instructions on bottles
of Diazinon are in English and warn the purchaser that the substance is
poisonous, hands should be washed after using the product, and that the
bottle should be kept away from foodstuff and cooking utensils. It is sold,
however, for household useto kill bedbugs, ants, fleas, mosquitos, cock-
roaches and other domestic pests. The product is sold in North America for
outdoor use only. In 1976 the most recent year for which such information
is available, at least twenty-two Kenyans died of Diazinon poisoning
(Githinji, 1985).
Correct use of agricultural chemicals presumes some understanding of
the principles of plant and human biology; for instance that: (1) what
kills insects, fungi, undesirable plants or promotes plant growth may not
be healthy for humans; (2) the mechanisms for human contamination
are similar to, say, the poisoning of insects, i.e., the chemicals are either
absorbed into the circulatory system through the skin or are ingested by
contamination of hands and food products; (3) agricultural chemicals must
be applied in recommended quantities under favourable weather conditions
and an even application of chemicals is most effective; (4) applications must
be timed with the life and growth cycles of insects and plants; and (5) what
is safe for one plant or animal may be harmful to others. Instructions
warning purchasers to store poisonous chemicals away from foodstuffs, to
take an example, assume knowledge of the first two principles. Given the
prevalence of chemical poisoning in many parts of Kenya, this cannot be
assumed to be common knowledge (Goldman, 1986,262-295). Exchanges
observed between sellers and purchasers of agricultural chemicals in Kisii
did not reveal popular awareness of the poisonous properties of these
products, nor was it alluded to in the advice about their application which
peasants received from extension agents we observed. In fact, the Kiswahili
BBE1
term used to describe many products, dawa or medicine, has connotations
quite different from any of those which the word chemical implies to English
speakers living in societies sensitized to the dangers associated with the
misuse of agricultural chemicals by the attention given to the matter in
printed media and by formal instruction in schools.
The 1984 reorganization of the Kenyan educational system which resulted
in lengthening primary cycle instruction by one year had, as one of its
principal objectives, the vocationalization of the final two years of schooling
to reflect the fact that most school leavers would remain in rural areas where
they should put their school knowledge and skills to use in improving
agricultural production. Agriculture was made a paper for the school leaving
examination to ensure that students and teachers would take the subject
more seriously. The new syllabus for the upper stage of the primary cycle
incorporates several lessons on using agricultural chemicals in the sections
dealing with Care of Crops and Pollution (Units 7 and 4) for Standard VII
(Jomo Kenyatta Foundation, 1984).
A teacher at Kisii Primary School in the town of Kisii was asked to teach
one of the new lessons on crop care and pollution which students are to
study for the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education examination in order
to answer this kind of question: "Pesticides are useful in agriculture, but they
have some disadvantages. One of these disadvantages is that they, A. reduce
the resistance of pests. B. reduce soil fertility. C. increase water loss from
the soil by evaporation. D. pollute the soil, air and water" (KNEC, 1984,
64).
The lesson:
Teacher: (about sources of pollution) What are these chemicals which
can pollute the soil? There is a chemical which we use in our
shambas (plots) to kill the pests (that are) polluting the soil and
the water too. Now what will happen to you if you take the
water which is polluted?
Students: You will die!
Teacher: Yes, I can hear some people saying that you will die. Now if
the soil is polluted what will happen? The crops will die. Say
that so we can hear.
Students: The crops will die!
Teacher: . . . Some of you have seen the coffee dying (Is it) the chemical
that pollutes the soil? For the coffee does not pollute the soil.
You see that because the coffee still lives there. But some crops
if they are planted in that soil they d i e . . .
(Standard VII Science Lesson, Kisii Primary School)
Prior to the introduction of the 1984 syllabus, instruction on the use of

agricultural chemicals generally stressed the benefits of these products,
although rules for using them were taught. A Standard III Beginning
Agriculture textbook, for instance, informed students that "spraying crops
with chemicals that prevent or kill diseases is another method of fighting
common diseases in crops," and later advised students to copy into their
exercise books ten rules to observe when using insecticides, fungicides, cattle
dip chemicals and all other farm chemicals starting with, "Always read the
instructions carefully" (Migwi and Moss, 99, 109-110).
Instruments and Selection of Subjects

A study was carried out with the threefold purpose of identifying diffi-
culties cultivators may experience in comprehending and making appro-
priate inferences from instructional text about agricultural chemicals,
examining how comprehension is affected by the language of instructional
materials, and of ascertaining what prior knowledge is used in comprehend-
ing instructions for these products. The study focused on products marketed
for control of diseases of vegetables as they are among the most widely used
agricultural chemicals in Kisii. Female cultivators that obtained at least six
years of schooling were selected for study, as it is women who make the
greatest use of the chemicals. Female school participation rates are similar
to those for males in Kisii district and wastage occurs primarily in the upper
standards of the primary cycle (Standards VII and VIII).
The test materials consisted of instructions in English, Kiswahili, and Kisii
for two popular fungicides and insecticides, Dithane M-45 and Murphy
Dawa ya Mboga. The texts were administered by female research assistants
to six groups of five women cultivators from several villages outside the town
of Kisii. Subjects ranged in age from 14 to 50 years with most (20) being
between 20 and 29 years of age. Nineteen had completed one to four years
of secondary education. All had used the products from which the test
materials were constructed.
Subjects were tested under three language conditions: English text and
questions, Kiswahili text and questions, Kisii text and questions, and
encouraged to respond in the language of their choice. This design differs
from the one adopted for studying comprehension of instructions for
malaria pills in two respects. First, English questions were used with English
text better to simulate ordinary verbal exchanges in which instructional
information about applying agricultural chemicals is communicated either
in English or incorporates many English technical words into Kiswahili and
Kisii discourse. Second, instructional text and questions were translated into
Kisii which is the mother tongue of the subjects. Kiswahili is taught in
primary school from Standard I and is, of course, widely used for commer-
cial transactions.
The interview protocols developed for the three language conditions
required subjects to recall information in the text as well as to make
inferences from prior knowledge according to the format of the
previous studies. Subjects were first asked to read the instructions aloud,
for example:
Murphy Dawa ya Mboga

1. Murphy Dawa ya Mboga dusting powder controls a wide range of insect
pests affecting crops both at soil level and on the foliage.
1.1 Pests controlled include aphids, caterpillars, cutworms, ants, beetles
and other soil pests.
1.11 Use on Brassicas, peas and beans.
2. Caterpillars and Beetles. Sprinkle Dawa ya Mboga dust on the foliage of
affected plants.
3. For general soil pests including cutworms, chafer grubs and ants. Apply
1 oz (30 grams) of Dawa y a Mboga dust per 2 square yards (1 \ metres)
of soil surface and mix the dust into the top 3 inches (7.5 cm) of soil.
3.1 Ant nests: Sprinkle dust freely into the top of the nest.
4. Caution: Do not use Dawa ya Mboga on curcurbits (cucumbers),
marrows, etc. Dawa ya Mboga should not be applied to coffee or root
crops intended for human consumption such as potatoes and carrots as
it may cause taint.
5. Root crops intended for human consumption should not be sown into soil
treated with Dawa ya Mboga for at least one year after treatment.
One question was asked which could be answered by identifying where in

the instructions it indicated which types of insects could be killed by the
product. Three questions required recalling information from memory
(e.g. What kinds of plants should Dawa ya Mboga be used on?). Eight
questions involved making inferences from the text (How many square yards
or meters of soil surface can 3 ounces of Dawa ya Mboga be applied on?)
or from prior knowledge (What should you do immediately after using Dawa
ya mboga? and How should the product be stored?) Dawa ya mboga is one
of the most toxic agricultural chemicals sold to peasant producers. It
contains 5% DDT.
The other product, Dithane M-45, is accompanied by a longer set of
instructions beginning with a listing of the chemicals in the fungicide. While
the instructions for Dawa ya Mboga contain some expressions which may
be ambiguous or unfamiliar to an English speaker, they would seem to be
easily understood in comparison to the directions for Dithane M-45. The
application rate, for instance, is given as \\-2\kg in 400 to 1,000 litres of
water per hectare or 1^-2^ lbs in 36 to 90 gallons of water per acre. For small
plots, it is recommended that the cultivator use 50 grams of Dithane M-45
in 20 litres of water, which is sufficient for 200 square metres. The units of
measurement are especially difficult to compute because of the use of two
measuring systems and the fact that most cultivators use another liquid
measure, the debe, a jerry can with a capacity of about 4 gallons. As in the
study of malaria pills reported earlier in this chapter, the questions asked
about the products were similarly phrased. Table 12 summarizes data
obtained from the rated responses to the two sets of questions.
T A B L E 12
Comprehension of Instructions on Use of Agricultural
Insecticides and Fungicides
N = M F Significance
1. Text:
1.1 Murphy Dawa ya Mboga 15 2.8 2.36 NS
1.2 Dithane M-45 15 3.8
2. Language of administration:
2.1 English/English 10 3.7 0.549 NS
2.2 Kiswahili/Kiswahili 10 3.3
2.3 Kisii/Kisii 10 2.5
Comparison across texts and languages of administration did not produce

significant differences. Average scores are very low for all groups. Scores for
subjects who received instructions for Dithane M-45 in English, Kiswahili
and Kisii are slightly and unexpectedly higher than the scores for Dawa ya
Mboga which may be an artifact of standardizing the difficulty of the
questions across texts, as was the case when the instructions for Paludrine
and Nivaquine were compared. This conceals differences in text difficulty,
especially with respect to the comprehension of important information such
as application rates.
The absence of differences in comprehension scores when the language of
the text and questions were varied is also surprising but consistent with the
findings of the previous study. Comprehension scores do not improve with
mother tongue text and questions. Indeed the English/English scores are the
highest. Most subjects regarded them as more intelligible than the Kiswahili
translations of the instructions for the two products, or the Kisii translations
which were prepared for this experiment. Subjects who were administered
the texts in English and Kiswahili were asked to translate a line from the
instructions into Kisii. The majority of subjects could not do this from either
the English or the Kiswahili texts. For example, subjects were asked to
translate this line from the Dithane M-45 text: "The powder may cause skin
or nasal irritation. Avoid inhaling and wash hands after using." Thirteen of
the twenty subjects given the English and Kiswahili texts for this product
scored four or fewer points out of a maximum of ten assigned for the
translation task.
Inferring application rates from the information given in the instructions
was a common source of difficulty. None of the subjects used the examples
provided in the directions for calculation. For instance, subjects who
received the directions for Dawa ya Mboga were asked to estimate the area
that could be covered with three ounces of the product. The correct answer
involves multiplying the area specified for one ounce per 2 square yards, by
three. Subjects could make this calculation by looking at the text and most
located the correct passage. However, the use of the metres as units of
measure was confusing to many of them. A common response to this
question was to give the illustrative calculation in the text as the answer
without using it as the basis for an inference, even when in subsequent
probes the unit of measure was expressed in yards and steps.
Few subjects took note of exceptions stated in the instructions. Dawa ya
Mboga should not, the instructions indicate, be used on such vegetables as
cucumbers, which are grown in many kitchen gardens, nor, for that matter,
should it be applied on any root crops. Asked what kind of plants the
products should be used on, all subjects mentioned vegetables, giving
examples such as cabbage, maize and beans. This did not prompt notation
of any exceptions. While the directions are explicit insofar as which plants
the product can be safely used on, and unsafe uses are specified, the brand
name Dawa ya Mboga implies that it is safe for all vegetables. In English
it means medicine for vegetables. The medical metaphor may also explain,
in part, why subjects could not answer the question requiring calculation of
the area of effective application for this as well as the other product.
Application rates like correct dosages are not thought to require calcu-
lations. It is only necessary to follow what is prescribed in the instructions.
Other questions were asked about how and where the two products are
to be applied. The information pertinent to these questions was provided in
both sets of instructions. Since all subjects were familiar with the product,
their answers often drew upon previous experience. Several (four) of the
fifteen subjects who received the instructions for Dawa ya Mboga, for
instance, said that they spray the product on the leaves of plants after mixing
it with water, although it is a dusting powder. This practice would seriously
reduce the effectiveness of the pesticide. Spraying is the principal method for
applying agricultural chemicals on cash crops such as coffee and tea, and
illustrations of portable sprayers accompany the passages on the use of
fungicides, herbicides and pesticides in the school texts. Many subjects
simply assume that any chemical should be applied by spraying. This, of
course, does not take into account the fact that chemicals intended for
spraying usually have an oil base which adheres the chemical residue to
leaves and other parts of plants. Most dusting powders do not have an oil
base and are effective only under certain environmental conditions.
Except for two subjects who felt that the products should be used in the
dry season (which would result in serious crop damage), nearly everyone
understood that applications should be done during the rainy season. About
this as well, subjects inferred from previous experience. In the rainy season
insects and fungi are more likely to attack crops. But effective use of each
of the products depends upon other environmental conditions. For Dawa ya
Mboga, applications must be done when rain is not expected for at least a
day, and during the early morning or evening when the wind is slight.
Dithane M-45 must be applied under somewhat similar conditions, although
rain is not as likely to wash the product off the plants. These preconditions
are not given in the instructions for either product and must be inferred
from prior knowledge, or successful experience with agricultural chemicals
generally.
More alarming, the dangers of improper use of pesticides and fungicides
were very poorly understood. Three questions were asked about the
handling, storage and health hazards of the products. The questions related
to storing and handling Dithane M-45 could be answered by recalling
information from the instructions, but these precautions and the dangers of
using Dawa ya Mboga have to be inferred from the instructions that
accompany the product:
Interviewer: (In Kisii) What should you do immediately after using

Dawa ya Mbogal
Subject: You see whether the insects are living (and if they are) you
put more medicine on.
Interviewer: How do you store Dawa ya Mbogal
Subject: You can keep it in the house. When you see that the insects
are doing more damage, then you continue to use it.
Interviewer: Is Dawa ya Mboga dangerous to your health?
Subject: Yes.
Only one of the women interviewed doubted the danger of the products,
reasoning that if they could be used on vegetables they were safe for humans.
Nevertheless, only three subjects mentioned two or more procedures for safe
handling and storage of the products. The most common precaution
mentioned was washing hands before consuming food. But often an
individual who understood the importance of washing hands after using a
chemical did not in the case of Dawa ya Mboga conclude that it should be
kept in a safe place away from food and children, or recall instructions given
to this effect for Dithane M-45. In brief, in comprehending the instructions
for the two products, subjects did not appear to utilize rules for applying,
handling and storing chemicals, nor did their answers seem to elicit any
school-based knowledge of agricultural biology and chemistry. This is most
evident in the questions relating to the use of Dithane M-45. Although it is
widely used in Kisii and elsewhere in Kenya on vegetables and other crops,
Dithane M-45 requires greater sophistication on the part of users, as several
applications may be necessary at regular intervals. Unlike Dawa ya Mboga
it is intended to prevent crop disease. Effective use is based upon some
knowledge of plant growth cycles as well as anticipation of fungal diseases
from information about local weather and soil conditions. In the absence of
such knowledge, many of the women cultivators interviewed extrapolated
from their experience with agricultural chemicals that work very differently.
For instance, most of them when asked when the product should be applied
answered "when the leaves start dying."
While well-schooled cultivators may be able to read instructions in English
and Kiswahili for the use of agricultural chemicals, this does not necessarily
imply an ability to utilize such modern agricultural technologies to increase
production. Schools have an important role to play in imparting the
necessary knowledge of biology and agricultural chemistry, and rules for the
safe use of agricultural chemicals. However, there is little evidence of the
effects of school instruction in agriculture and science in the data that have
been presented. Agriculture was not a compulsory subject for the school
leaving examination until 1984/85 and though the amount of agricultural
instruction the women actually received could not be determined, it is likely
that few of them (or their teachers) took the subject seriously, especially in
the final years of the primary cycle. Moreover, the instruction in science and
agriculture that is given in school may not be very useful, even if it is relevant
to applying agricultural chemicals. Computational skills, for example, are
clearly relevant to determining applications rates. Yet numerate subjects did
not make use of simple arithmetic operations learned in the lower stage of
primary education either because they did not feel that the problem given
could be solved with the information provided and the skills they already
possessed, or they did not believe that a computation was required. To take
another example, while almost all subjects had learned in school or from
other sources that agricultural chemicals may be dangerous to personal
health, this understanding was seldom connected to a set of precautionary
behaviours mentioned in the instructions or derived from previous knowl-
edge and experience. What is absent in the responses of most of the subjects
is an understanding of principles relevant to the use of agricultural chemicals
which, in turn, is predicated upon an explanatory knowledge of biological
and chemical processes. Schooling does not seem to foster the organization
of knowledge into explanatory schemata for making inferences that are
genuinely relevant to performing tasks requiring scientific and technical
knowledge in daily life.
It is possible that oral administration of the instructions for the two
products would have facilitated their comprehension. The reading aloud
task was difficult for most subjects. Not only were the chemical names
unfamiliar and difficult to pronounce, but terms such as "root crops" were
unfamiliar to them also. Many subjects asked to translate the line in the
instructions for Dawa ya Mboga where root crops are referred to made a
literal translation, roots of crops, rather than using the Kisii equivalent,
ebimeri hi emeri. This misunderstanding has serious implications.
However, the source of the difficulties most of the subjects experienced
may have little to do with reading or with unfamiliar vocabulary in the
English, Kiswahili and Kisii texts, or for that matter with the lack of basic
skills and knowledge. To reiterate, relevant knowledge and skills are not put
to use in comprehending the instructions for these products, perhaps because
they are not acquired in a way that makes them useable. Knowing that
agricultural chemicals are dangerous and being able to read precautions
given for particular products will not ensure that they are applied safely and
effectively unless cultivators also understand why they are dangerous and
why they must be used at certain times under favourable conditions. School
instruction in science, agriculture and other practical subjects is oriented to
vocabulary building rather than to developing an understanding of natural
and physical processes that would be useful in daily life. This is partly
attributable to the reliance on national examinations, partly to limited
learning resources, and partly to poor teacher training and poor supervision
of instruction. It is the combination of these factors that lessens the impact
of schooling on everyday activities in which school knowledge and skills can
be used.
School-acquired knowledge and skills have been associated with profound
changes in individual behaviour, and with social and material improvement
generally. This association assumes some connection between what is
learned in school and the development of cognitive capacities embedded in
"modern" productive technologies. The two studies carried out in Msamb-
weni and Kisii suggest that while schooling may develop basic competencies
that are essential to the use of products of modern technology that improve
health and increase production, this is not sufficient for desired changes to
occur unless the schooling individuals receive provides them with an
understanding of scientific and technological principles.
CHAPTER 7
Conclusion
Increasing attention has been drawn to the educational "miracle" that has
taken place in developing countries since the end of the Second World War
(Patel, 1985). School participation rates have grown enormously and this
combined with high rates of population increase in developing countries
resulted in a more than sixfold increase in enrolment between 1950 and 1981
(Patel, 1985, 1214). The greatest absolute increase has of course occurred at
the primary level where enrolment increased from an estimated 80-90
million in 1950 to almost half a billion (456 million) in 1981. More
significantly, in terms of per capita participation rates the developing
countries as a whole now rank only slightly behind the developed countries
in primary level enrolment, and have already achieved the level of enrolment
in secondary and post-secondary institutions in developed countries in the
1950s (Patel, 1985, 1317). "By any standards," Patel concluded in a recent
article on educational expansion in the Third World, this is "a miracle, a
marvel, an extraordinary event" (Patel, 1985,1317).
School expansion in Kenya, particularly since independence in 1963, has
certainly been extraordinary. Primary school enrolment quadrupled between
1963 and 1983, and today almost all (96%) children of primary school age
attend primary schools (Personal communication, Ministry of Education,
1985). This is an impressive quantitative achievement and it was repeatedly
stressed by the President and other leading political figures during the 1983
celebration of the second decade of independence.
A year later (1984), the educational system was reformed for the first time
since 1963. The reform involved expanding access to secondary and higher
education, and revising the length and content of primary schooling. The
practical effect of the reform will be to increase greatly primary and
secondary enrolments at an enormous cost that is only now being calculated.
Education accounted for about 26% of the national budget in the early
1980s (Ministry of Education, 1984). This proportion will greatly increase
in the next few years due to the costs of adding an additional year to the
primary cycle (more than 13,000 Standard VIII classes with a projected
437,000 pupils must be constructed and maintained), and with the increase
in enrolment in Form I from about 190,000 in 1985 to 222,000 in 1987
(Personal communication, Ministry of Education, 1984).
130
Conclusion 131
Substantively, the reform represents a major departure from previous
policies and practices, especially at the primary level. In the first two decades
of independence the structure of the educational system reflected a concern
for maintaining the and A level sequence that would ensure Kenyans
access to universities in the United Kingdom and in North America. At the
primary level, this meant that emphasis was placed on academic subjects and
on the use of English to prepare students for the Certificate of Primary
Education, the "gateway" to Form I to use the terminology adopted by the
authors of examination guides. Today primary education is being given a
practical orientation in recognition of the fact that it will continue to be the
terminal stage of education for most Kenyan children.
In Kenya, as in many other developing countries, there is a political and
an economic rationale for primary school expansion. Politically, agitation
for greater provision of primary schooling has its origins in the nationalist
movement in the colonial period, in the racial organization of schooling,
in the control of African education by missionary societies and in the
restrictions placed on the education of Africans for government employ-
ment. Colonial land tenure and education policies were the principal objects
of African political resentment. Pressures for educational expansion were
encouraged by nationalist politicians, particularly by the country's first
president Jomo Kenyatta and the flamboyant Tom Mboya, who soon
found themselves in the position of providing the educational fruits of
Uhuru.
The political necessity for educational expansion coincided with the
evolution of a powerful rationale for increasing public expenditures on
education drawn to a very large extent from human capital theory which had
been developed by economists in the 1950s to explain the high economic
growth rates of western countries in this century. Schooling came to be
viewed as a key instrument in the social technology of economic change. For
the developing countries the educational lessons of western countries seemed
obvious. Create a large infrastructure for upgrading the skill level of the
population, eradicate adult illiteracy as an interim measure, and significant
increases in the efficiency of all productive resources will occur. Subsequent
refinements to human capital theory in the 1960s proposed that developing
countries could optimize their educational investments by investing more
heavily in primary education where the returns to society in improving the
quality of human resources were highest. This advice was reinforced by
primary education being made a priority for African countries by inter-
national lending institutions, notably the World Bank.
Studies of the social and economic outcomes of primary schooling in
developing countries have generally supported the policies of lenders and
donors and the practices of those countries which rapidly expanded their
enrolments. Primary schooling has been associated with a wide range of
social and material improvements at the individual level and with collective
benefits to society, including lower infant mortality, smaller family sizes and
the adoption of modern technologies and methods of production.
It is difficult to reconcile claims made on behalf of primary school
expansion with evidence of the poor quality of primary school instruction.
The qualitative consequences of expansion have recently received much
attention from social scientists as well as from agencies which finance
educational development. Textbook availability, teacher training and other
measurable educational inputs have been identified as especially crucial to
learning outcomes in developing countries, and as areas where efforts should
be focused to bring about qualitative improvements. A serious weakness of
such advice is that little is known about how these inputs actually affect
learning, and even less about the usage of skills and knowledge acquired in
schools in daily life.
For a variety of reasons, most educational research in African countries
has tended to employ survey methods in data collection and to use
input/output models for analysis of school effects. This is perhaps the result
of a perceived policy imperative for educational research which is encour-
aged by foreign donors and African governments alike.
Unfortunately, input/output models require a much more precise
specification of educational inputs and outputs than is possible to generate
with survey research. Data about textbook availability, for instance, pro-
vides few insights into how textbooks are used in classrooms, what is
retained from them or how knowledge may be used. Moreover, textbook
availability is simply one part of the instructional ecology of classrooms. A
numerical increase in textbooks that is not articulated in changes in other
qualitative inputs is not likely to produce a proportional change in learning
outcomes, however these may be measured. There is, to be sure, a need to
collect better data about school resources and similar inputs for educational
policy making. But even more important is the need for better qualitative
descriptions of actual school conditions.
It is indeed remarkable how little descriptive literature exists about schools
in any African country despite the abundance of quantitative information
about the qualifications of their teaching staff, the number of textbooks,
class sizes, the performance of students on national and international
examinations, and other subjects. What has happened to primary education
in a period of rapid expansion cannot be inferred entirely from quantitative
indicators. What is the importance, for example, of 50 Standard VII children
sharing one textbook for most subjects at a rural primary school, to the
development of the ability to read printed texts? This question cannot simply
be answered by correlating textbook availability with examination scores. A
more subtle descriptive account of teaching and learning processes is needed.
The combination of ethnographic and experimental approaches which has
been employed in this research provides important insights into teaching and
learning conditions and into uses of school knowledge and skills as well. It
Conclusion 133
directs attention to the cognitive changes that schooling may foster and to
their implications for daily life. This study has focused, more specifically, on
the processes of text comprehension as central to the cognitive changes
which schooling may induce and to some of the social and economic
outcomes with which schooling had been correlated. The studies reported
here were initiated with the twofold purpose of specifying the knowledge and
comprehension skills which are developed from particular conditions of
instruction and showing how these may be related to behavioural changes.
Most of the field work was carried out in Msambweni location in Kwale
District in Kenya's Coast Province. There it was possible to study the
cognitive outcomes of literacy acquired through traditional Koranic edu-
cation as well as from government schooling, and thus better to characterize
what is unique about school experiences in terms of the opportunities they
afford for the development of various kinds of comprehension skills.
Experimental work was preceded by lengthy observation of Koranic and
government schools in order to develop instruments for assessing compre-
hension skills that assessed these in relation to familiar tasks. Use of school
knowledge and text comprehension skills outside of school was also studied
ethnographically and experimentally. In Msambweni a study was under-
taken of the comprehension of printed instructions for pharmaceutical
products to determine whether school influences could be detected in an
activity that is presumably related to schooling. A similar study was done
in Kisii district on a different subject, but one that is related as well to the
usage of school knowledge and literacy in daily life. Both sought to examine
the antecedents of behaviour that can be observed in school.
Koranic and Secular Schooling in Mswambweni

The "miracle" of primary school expansion occurred later in Msambweni
than in other areas in Kenya. Although the Kiswahili speaking peoples of
coastal Kenya were the first to be exposed to western schooling, they were
among the most resistant to the changes which colonialism introduced in this
century. Missionary efforts to educate Muslims were notably unsuccessful,
as were the schools for Arabs which the colonial government established in
the coastal protectorate. Western schooling developed with the suppression
of the slave trade, the resulting decline of a prosperous Arab plantation
economy and the growth of a market economy dominated by European
settlers and traders and, eventually, with the migration of other African
peoples into the economically and educationally backward but agriculturally
rich coastal districts. Historically, schooling was linked with slave origin and
Christianity, and both with wage labour.
The semi-autonomous status of the Arab population living in the protec-
torate provided an impetus to coastal Africans who had been in contact with
Muslims for many centuries to convert to Islam and to practise it
more conventionally. The institutionalization of Koranic education in
the colonial period was in part a response to external pressures on the
Muslim community, especially to government attempts to incorporate
religious instruction into secular schooling. Madrassas became important
institutions of cultural resistance, allowing the Muslim community to
remain spectators of pervasive land alienation, forced labour, and similar
measures adopted by colonial authorities to bring modernity to the interior
of Africa.
Independence put an end to the aspirations of some Muslims for a
confederation of the coastal strip with the islands of Pemba and Zanzibar.
It also put an end to the special status of the coastal strip and to the
protections which the Muslim community enjoyed, among them the privilege
of not sending their children to government schools. The vulnerability of
coastal Muslims to the demographic, economic and political changes that
were taking place in independent Kenya was emphasized in the early 1970s
by the abolition of the native reserves and the subsequent acquisition of the
coastal land by members of better educated, more prosperous communities
who brought with them modern methods of agricultural production. School-
ing for the Muslim population is now recognized as essential to the
community's ability to withstand external pressures and to borrow the
rhetoric of local Muslim politicians, to participate in national development.
School participation rates in coastal districts have greatly increased in the
past fifteen years, reaching the national average for participation at the
primary level in Msambweni and other locations.
The madrassas, once the only formal schooling available to Muslim
children, have diminished in importance as attendance at government
schools has grown and the connection between schooling, wage employment,
cash crop production and retention of land has become more evident.
Koranic education is evolving into a form of pre-school education for most
Muslim children. And it is losing much of its distinctiveness in philosophy,
methods and organization of instruction as religious educators try to
modernize instruction by adopting features of secular schooling.
Koranic education has as its principal purpose the preparation of children
for a religious life through a lengthy period of disciplined learning involving
the acquisition of literacy in Arabic. Koranic text is committed to memory
for ritual recitation. Choral reading is done to facilitate memorization.
Understanding of text is not emphasized, at least in the usual sense of a
process of critical reflection developed through interactive instruction. In the
more "traditional" madrassas in Msambweni, religious text is not learned in
the student's mother tongue until the final stage of instruction when a few
chapters from the Quran are taught in Kiswahili.
An experiment was designed to examine the cognitive skills acquired from
Koranic instruction related to the comprehension of religious text. Previous
Conclusion 135
research indicated that while Koranic literacy may foster the development
of capacities in recalling information from text, it does little to promote
abilities in making inferences involving more complex cognitive processes of
the kind that school-acquired literacy is thought to enhance (Scribner and
Cole, 1981). Our study of children who had completed or nearly completed
traditional Koranic schooling suggested that the cognitive outcomes of such
instruction may include skills in making inferences within and between
religious texts, even texts in Arabic which the children were not taught in
translation.
Another study considered the comprehension of religious and science texts
among school children who had attended madrassa for less than two years.
Comprehension was found to decrease when the language of the texts and
the questions administered to subjects replicated conditions of instruction at
school. Children performed particularly poorly with English texts and
questions. A small number of school children who had finished madrassa
were compared to the other students. Their comprehension scores were
higher under all language conditions, indicating that skills acquired from
Koranic education may facilitate comprehension of secular as well as
religious texts.
Three factors may account for the better performance of children that
have undergone a lengthy course of study in a Koranic school. First, and
perhaps most significant, they are constantly working with printed text.
Although the learning conditions in most madrassas are deficient in many
respects, there is no shortage of Koranic texts and these are central to
instruction. In school, students seldom have an opportunity to read, as few
textbooks are available for study. While Koranic education might be
regarded as an extension of oral tradition, this characterization may be more
appropriate for schooling.
Second, understanding of religious principles and their moral applications
in daily life is a salient feature of religious education. This is not developed
self-consciously through expository discussion, but it pervades instruction.
Understanding is seen to require obedience to the will of God rather than
interpretation; nevertheless, God's will must be discerned from a knowledge
of sacred text. School instruction, especially in the upper standards, is
oriented to acquiring knowledge for the school leaving examination. In
preparing students for the examinations, teachers make extensive use of
vocabulary-building exercises of the fill-in-the-blank type which often do not
develop an understanding of principles or their applications in science and
other subjects. However, the national examinations cannot be passed with
only a knowledge of English scientific and technical vocabulary. Such
knowledge is still essential and it is more easily taught by poorly trained
teachers who may have little understanding of natural science, have
difficulties in using English for instruction and rely upon sample papers and
examination guides in preparing lessons.
Third, the language policy of Koranic education is consistent throughout.
Children attending madrassa learn the Quran in Arabic, largely without
benefit of translation. Although performance is assessed in terms of reading
and reciting Arabic, Kiswahili is used to organize learning activities,
ensuring that children always understand what they are asked to do.
Children who stay in the madrassa after they have entered school benefit
from the experience in two ways. Koranic education affords an opportunity
to develop skills, especially in recalling text in a foreign language from
memory, which are pertinent to school instruction. Moreover, it involves an
intellectual training focused on the correct understanding of text. This is
important in school as the student's attention is more likely to be directed
to the meaning of what is taught.
Koranic education is increasingly becoming a form of universal pre-school
education, and even that future is uncertain. The Kenyan government has
made religion a compulsory subject in primary schools and is encouraging
communities throughout the country to construct pre-schools, though it has
not as yet pledged to maintain them. One has been built in Msambweni. This
will put further pressure on the Koranic schools which have been losing
enrolment of school-age children to the government primary schools. That
is unfortunate because the madrassas appear to be effective in making
children literate, providing them with a "head start" for their schooling by
offering a more rigorous intellectual training than what they will receive in
school.
Studies were carried out in Msambweni and in Kisii to assess long-term
outcomes of schooling, specifically the usage of school-acquired knowledge
and literacy skills in comprehending printed instructions for taking malaria
pills and applying agricultural chemicals. Adult literates who finished at least
six years of primary school were asked to perform a series of comprehension
tasks requiring recall of information presented in instruction and making
inferences from the materials as well as from their prior knowledge. Analysis
of the findings indicated that while subjects may possess knowledge and
skills essential to following the instructions for and correctly using these
products of modern technology, they often do not draw upon what they have
learned in school when it is necessary for them to do so. It was suggested
that how children become literate and acquire knowledge in school has an
important influence on the use they make of schooling in adult life.
The effects of schooling on many indicators of social and material
improvement in developing countries are profound but quite modest. The
large qualitative variations in schooling, especially at the primary level, may
be the source of this. Efforts to improve school quality have focused on
specific needs, the need for more textbooks, for in-service training for
teaching staff, etc., rather than on the ecology of instruction. It is the
combination of these factors which may limit the effectiveness of schooling
as an instrument of social and economic change.
Conclusion 137
Textbook Availability
The shortage of school textbooks in Kenya and elsewhere in Africa is well
documented and critical in rural areas. Schools such as those studied in
Msambweni do not have more than a few textbooks for each subject, for
classes that often exceed fifty students. The result? Students rarely have any
opportunity to read or to study from printed material with serious con-
sequences for the development of literacy skills. Textbooks in vernacular
languages (with the exception of Kiswahili) are frequently unavailable in the
first three standards, and since most of them are not commercially produced,
they cannot be easily purchased by parents. English and Kiswahili texts,
particularly the English texts prescribed for use in the upper standards, are
available to rural schools only in limited quantities and are priced beyond
the means of most Kenyans. Classroom learning is, for this reason, an
extension of pre-literate traditions. Children listen and seldom read. How-
ever, they do copy information they receive from the teacher into their
exercise books. Transcription is an important learning activity; it is the
means by which literacy is acquired.
The "traditionalism" of Koranic education, more specifically, the empha-
sis placed on rote learning of text has its parallel in the dictation of learning
material to students in government schools. In fact, rote learning may be
more prevalent in secular than in religious education because of the scarcity
of printed matter. Schooling may facilitate the acquisition of literacy, but
it does not offer much opportunity to practise literacy so that its use becomes
habitual.
Increased provision of textbooks is certainly a necessary element of any
strategy for improving the quality of primary schooling. This may, some
studies have claimed, facilitate significant knowledge gains (Heyneman,
1983). But it may well have an ever more important effect in increasing the
use and subsequent retention of literacy by school leavers. Skills in compre-
hending information presented in printed text must, after all, be developed
at school if they are to be utilized for acquiring information in daily life.
Language of Instruction
Shortly after it obtained independence in 1963, the Kenyan government
enacted changes at the primary level limiting the use of vernacular languages
to the first three years of schooling, and making this optional. Many schools
in urban areas with ethnically mixed student populations teach in English
from Standard I. Whatever benefits may be claimed for introducing English
early in the primary cycle, two circumstances greatly affect the outcomes of
this policy. First, primary school teachers often enter teaching with a poor
knowledge of English, despite the fact that most have undertaken six to eight
BBEJ
years of instruction in English and in the case of trained teachers passed
three national examinations in English including the compulsory English
paper. Transcriptions from school classes in science, agriculture and other
subjects have been discussed in various connections in previous chapters; one
observation can be made with respect to all of them. Classroom discourse
is difficult to follow. Teachers' directions and illustrations are expressed in
ambiguous language and it is frequently unclear to an English speaker what
is being expected of students. Students seldom utter more than a few words
when asked questions by their teacher because they do not know the answers
or, as is more likely to be the case, because they are hesitant to answer in
English questions that they do not fully understand. Classroom instruction
is not based on an expository dialogue between teachers and students except,
perhaps, in the first three standards when basic literacy and numeracy skills
are taught through drills and choral recitation. In the upper standards where
English is supposed to be taught as a subject, the teaching of English
scientific and technical vocabulary is often, as has been shown, the object
and not the medium of instruction.
Second, the majority of children who enter primary school will leave
school before completing the final standard and sitting for the Kenya
Certificate of Primary Education examination. Attrition rates increase
particularly after the sixth standard in many rural schools, and especially
among women students. Most students may have become literate in the
vernacular and in English by then. However, much of the school knowledge
that is important to daily life is not taught until the end of the primary cycle
and at that time in English.
Experimental data obtained from Standard VII students in Msambweni
indicates that text comprehension scores seriously decline when English texts
and English questions are used to elicit information. These are the conditions
of instruction in the upper standards. Data from the studies of adult literates
indicate that comprehension of instructional text does not improve with the
use of text in the subject's mother tongue. The findings from these two sets
of studies appear to be contradictory. Children have more difficulty in
comprehending English text in school than adults do in comprehending
printed instructions in English outside school. What they suggest, though,
is that present language policies may not only be an obstacle to learning in
school, but they may as well inhibit the use of school knowledge in daily life.
School leavers may be able to read English and to recall some school
knowledge acquired in English. Still our studies provide little evidence that
this enables them to apply what they have presumably learned to a familiar
task of practical importance, even when mother tongue text is used to
facilitate comprehension. In other words, knowledge essential to many social
and economic changes may not be acquired or if acquired not retrieved in
the mother tongue or in another language of instruction. One implication
is that school effects would probably be enhanced by the use of either
Conclusion 139
English or the vernacular language for instruction throughout the primary
cycle.
Examinations
The orientation of primary school instruction to national examinations
has been the subject of much complaint in Kenya, from, among others,
President Moi who in 1984 described the examinations as unrealistic and
biased. This resulted in new administrative appointments at the Kenya
National Examinations Council and the renaming of the school leaving
examination (Weekly Review, 1984). The examinations have been criticized
for favouring children in urban schools, for requiring recall of factual
information and for contributing to the rigidity of instruction. These
criticisms have some foundation in fact. Children in urban districts do score
higher than those in rural districts, although the proportion of students that
obtain entrance to secondary schools is sometimes higher in rural than in
urban areas. Many examination questions do seem to require recalling
factual information, but this has been recognized by the Examinations
Council and serious attempts have been made to rectify the situation
(KNEC, 1983).
Examinations strongly influence instruction at all levels of the educational
system (King, n.d.). At the primary level, students spend several years
preparing for an examination that will select the majority of them out of
further schooling. Still, there is little disagreement with the notion that
admission to secondary school should be evidence of successful completion
of primary schooling as well as of the quality of instruction students receive.
The school leaving examination is an efficient selection device, partly
because it is administered in English. This is probably much more important
in accounting for the high failure rate than the topics chosen for question
construction, the types of questions used or the "quality" of student
preparation. Students do very poorly with English text if English questions
are asked to elicit comprehension. The higher scores for the comprehension
tasks administered under the Kiswahili/Kiswahili and English/Kiswahili
language conditions indicate that the examination results for students such
as those studied in Msambweni could be greatly improved if they were
examined in Kiswahili.
The school leaving examination that is being administered in 1985 has
been changed in several ways. Kiswahili and practical subjects have been
added to the examination and some account will be taken of continuous
assessment in calculating the total score. These measures are unlikely to
make the examination less "biased" and "unrealistic". Students in rural
schools where facilities for teaching practical subjects are poorest, where
language teachers and other specialists are in short supply and where
coverage of the present syllabus is weak are not apt to find the examination
any easier because less importance is placed on academic subjects. More-
over, the examination will still be administered in English.
Teacher Training and Methods of Instruction

Each step that the government of Kenya has taken to increase access to
primary schooling since independence has at least temporarily set back the
progress made in upgrading the qualifications of primary school teachers.
The most recent reform lengthening primary schooling to eight years had to
be carried out by employing more than ten thousand untrained teachers,
thus lowering the overall quality of the teaching profession and straining
the capacity of the newly established teacher advisory centres which are
responsible for most inservice training. However, there has been a general
upgrading of teachers' educational and professional qualifications since
independence. Whether this has improved instruction in primary schools is,
of course, difficult to assess.
What teachers are supposed to teach, when, how and with what texts are
matters which are determined by the Ministry of Education and monitored
by district education officers, school inspectors, school headmasters and,
of course, by the Kenya National Examinations Council which assesses
"terminal" outcomes of the quality control exercised at the various levels.
All this creates the appearance of a high degree of uniformity.
In practice there is wide variation in the instruction primary school
students receive. The number of periods of instruction in subjects like
mathematics, Kiswahili and English students actually received in the three
schools in which observations were carried out in Msambweni varied from
half to more than one and a half times what is prescribed by the Ministry
of Education; subjects like mathematics, which is more easily taught and
corrected without textbooks, are given greater importance than, say, Kiswa-
hili, in the upper standards. Science and agricultural topics prescribed for
study in Standard IV, for instance, may be taught in Standards V, VI or VII,
and sometimes not at all if the teacher feels unprepared to teach the topic
or if lesson and demonstration materials are unavailable. The school
schedule also varies. Some schools begin instruction promptly at 8:30 a.m.
In others, most of the teaching staff does not arrive until after 9:00 a.m. and,
in the interim, students are supposed to use the time for "self study" which
in a few of the schools visited in the Msambweni results in substantial
periods of the school day being given over to unsupervised learning. Where
the staff is more closely supervised, teachers do not have sufficient time to
correct scripts and exercise books.
What is uniform about instruction in the primary schools observed in
Msambweni (and earlier in Kisii) is that: (1) teachers have a poor command
of English for instructional purposes; (2) they often have a poor under-
standing of the subject of instruction, especially subjects such as science,
Conclusion 141
agriculture and English; and (3) in the upper standards teaching methods are
determined by what teachers think students will be expected to know for the
school leaving examination (Eisemon et al, 1986). Teachers rely on drill
methods to impart knowledge, though the "New Approach to Primary
Education" adopted ten years ago requires them to foster discovery and
activity learning, and the syllabus and textbooks are predicated on this
approach. Drill learning, the findings of the previous chapter indicate, is
unlikely to develop capacities to make use of school knowledge and skills
in daily life. Individuals leave school without the much needed under-
standing of physical and biological processes for applying what they have
learned to practical tasks in daily life. Understanding of these processes is
embedded in the use of modern technology and techniques of production
that is essential to the social and economic changes which investments in
schooling are supposed to bring about. Drill instruction is, however,
adaptive to the constraints imposed by teacher quality, textbook availability,
language policies, the use of national examinations and other factors.
Improving the quality of primary education to increase the school effects
must be based upon the recognition that manipulation of a few "key"
qualitative factors is not apt to achieve a great deal unless schools rather
than specific school inputs are the object of the improvements. This
distinction may seem pedantic but it is important to educational change
which in Kenya and many other countries has been characterized by a
piecemeal approach to qualitative improvement. That, in turn, is reinforced
by educational research which has sought to understand instructional
processes and outcomes by a factor-by-factor accounting of their influence
on intermediate outcomes, usually performance on standardized achieve-
ment tests, and speculation as to their long-term effects. Schooling cannot
be significantly improved by tinkering with particular inputs or even with
a mix of inputs.
Additional resources will not be made available for qualitative im-
provements in primary education in Kenya unless demands for increased
access to secondary schooling and higher education diminish, and birthrates
appreciably declinewhich is to say this is unlikely to happen in the
foreseeable future. Instead, educational expansion will continue seriously to
constrain efforts to make even modest improvements in instruction. Getting
more from less will require, as a first step, rethinking the purposes of primary
schooling. During the first two decades of Kenya's independence, the
government sought to universalize access to primary schools in the belief
that a schooled labour force was a prerequisite for certain kinds of
development to occur.
Development planning assumed that public spending and the state-
dominated public sector would be the source of economic growth, providing
the means not only to satisfy the aspirations of parents for schooling for
their children, but also employment opportunities for school leavers. It now
acknowledges a greater role for local and private initiative, especially in
financing the costs of educational expansion (Government of Kenya, 1983).
The government is encouraging the establishment of private universities, for
instance the university system being for many years the most visible and
disproportionately most expensive educational undertaking of government
(Eisemon, 1986). And efforts are being made to stimulate self-employment
among school leavers. The President has repeatedly emphasized in this
connection that a primary school leaver who is able to raise enough capital
to purchase one grade cow, care for it properly and sell its milk can earn
a monthly income that is higher than what is paid to a junior lecturer at a
university. The example is revealing of the changes that are taking place in
the country's economy as well as in the thinking of its political leadership.
The modern industrial sector is growing very slowly in comparison to the
informal and agricultural economy and while prices paid to commodity
producers are not always as attractive as the preceding example suggests,
most Kenyans will continue to make their living directly or indirectly from
the land with the resources they are able to generate, and with whatever
knowledge and skills they possess. The primary school has a crucial role to
play in fostering capacities for self-employment. It is the principal source of
the skills and knowledge that are relevant to the introduction of many
practices which benefit individuals and society. But optimizing the effective-
ness of schooling must be predicated on a better understanding of the
contribution of schooling to the kinds of social and economic outcomes that
the government expects.
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Index
Achievement, school quality 27 Diet 72

Adult literacy 36 Digo 6, 38
Advertising 107 Dithane M-45 124
Afro-Arabs 37 Drill learning 2, 141
Agricultural chemicals 3 , 1 1 9 Drop out 80
Agricultural innovation and literacy 19 Drugs 111
Agricultural productivity and schooling Dukas 112
3, 18
Agricultural technology 106
Arabic instruction 67, 75, 136 Economic benefits of educational investment
Arabs 37 16
Arab schools 42 Economic growth and literacy 104
Asian community 43 Education and health 23
Attitude and modernity 15 Education for national development 50
English 4, 72, 82, 101, 138
Enrolment 2, 12, 27, 45, 51, 130
Bilharzia 110 European plantations 40
Breecher report 47 Examinations 139
Certificate of Primary Education 12, 32, 33, Gay, J. 20

34, 79, 80, 83 Goody, J. 20
Chanting 77
Chemical poisoning 120
Chieftainship 8 Harma, R. 18
Chloroquine 110 Health 23, 72, 107, 109, 112
Christianity 38 Hussein, T. 56
Church Missionary Society 38, 42
Circumcision 11, 41
Classroom environment 31 Immunization 111
Coastal Arab Association 44 Income and schooling 17, 18
Coastal Kenya, Western schooling 36 Independence 48, 50, 134
Cochrane, S. 24 Initiation of children 11
Cognition and literacy 70 Inkeles, A . 14
Cognitive outcomes of schooling 19 Instructional text comprehension 71
Cole, M. J. 20, 21 agricultural chemicals 119
Colonial rule 39, 40 pharmaceutical products 108, 114
Comprehension of texts 1, 2, 22, 70 Instruction materials 107
agricultural chemicals instructions 120 Instruction methods 140
language 101 Islam 9
pharmaceutical products 108, 114 Islamic educational system 55
religious vs. secular instruction 85, 135
Contact farmer 106
Correspondence 106 Jomo Kenyatta Primary School 80
Dawa Ya Mboga 124 Kenya African Union 47

Devotional acts 59 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education
Diazinon 121 Examination 79, 80, 83
147
148 Index
Kenya National Examinations Council 33 Numeracy 20
Kenya National Primary Education Nutrition 72
Examination 34 Nyika 42
Kenyatta, J. 41, 47
Kikuyu 41
Kisii 2 O'Hara, D . J. 24
Kiswahili 4 Ominde, S. 50
Kiswahili texts 71
Knowledge/understanding 62
Koranic education 4, 9, 15, 133 Paludrine 114
comprehension 86 Pastoral populations 51
tradition and change 64 Pesticides 121
Koranic schools 36, 51, 55, 73 Pharmaceutical biochemistry 113
Koranic teachers 67 Pharmaceutical products, instructions 108
Kpelle 20 Plantations 40
Kwale 4, 36 Pollution 122
Postal communication 106
Practical subjects 29
Lancaster agreement 49 Preachings 61
Land alienation 40 Pre-school education 69, 136
Language and comprehension 101, 137 Primary school curricula 34
Liberia 20, 21 Primary school enrolment 2, 12, 27, 45, 51,
Literacy 130
acquisition and uses in a coastal society 1 Production and schooling 17
agricultural chemicals 120
agricultural productivity 19
cognition 70 Quran 54, 73, 105
devotional act 59
retention 22
uses in daily life 104 Racially segregated schools 41
Local Native Councils 42, 46 Rates of return, educational investment
16, 17
Recall 58, 96
Madrassas 9, 10, 55, 73, 134 Recitation 4
Malaria 4, 108 Religious instruction 4, 9, 54, 74
Market economy 7 in secular education 65
Marriage 80 Religious texts, comprehension 85, 91
Material aspirations 24 Retention of skills 21
Mboya, T. 48, 50 Reward and punishment 15
Memorization 4, 58, 73, 96
Migrant wage labourers 40
Migration 6 Schisms 60
Mijikenda 37, 43 School attendance 12
Missionaries 37, 38, 40 School effects
Modernity syndrome 14 cognition 19
Modernization, cognition 20 health 23
Modernization theory 14 instructional materials 106, 108
Mombassa Institute of Muslim Education theories 13, 14
46 School environment 16
Msambweni 5, 74, 133 School expansion 26, 130
Multi-racial school 42 School leaving examinations 79, 139
Muslims 4, 9, 39 School quality and achievement 27
Mwalim 74, 77 Science texts, comprehension 89
Secondary education, economic benefits 16
Secularization 10
National Committee on Educational Secular schooling 4, 54, 79, 133
Objectives and Policies 29 Self-employment 107
Nivaquine 115 Simmons, J. 22
Index 149
Slavery 9, 37, 39 Tourism 5, 6

Social change in colonial Kenya 40 Tribal lands 6
Social control 8
Standard VIII 30, 81, 130
Subsistence production 7
University education 28
Sura Fatiha 87
Sura Humazah 88
Swahilis 37
Syllabi 31 Vai 21
Teacher, muslim education 55, 74, 77 Water filtration 88

Teacher training 30, 140 Western schooling in coastal Kenya 36
Technical school 42
Textbook availability 4, 27, 72, 132, 137
Text comprehension 1, 2, 22, 70, 85, 101,
108, 114, 120, 135 Zanzibar 39

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COMPARATIVE A N D INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION

Series Editor: PHILIP G . ALTBACH, State University of New York at Buffalo, U S A

Editorial Advisory Board:

SUMA CHITNIS, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Bombay, India

S. GOPINATHAN, Institute o f Education, Singapore

G A I L P. KELLY, State University of N e w York at Buffalo, U S A

KAZAYUKI KITAMURA, Research Institute for Higher Education, Hiroshima, Japan

THOMAS LABELLE, University of Pittsburgh, U S A

G U Y NEAVE, Institute of Education, University of Education, U K

Volume 1 WAGNER: Future of Literacy in a Changing World

Volume 2 EISEMON: Benefiting from Basic Education, School Quality and

Volume 3 TARROW: Education and Human Rights

Volume 4 THOMAS & KOBAYASHI: Educational Technology: Its Creation,

Volume 5 BRAY with LILLIS: Community Financing of Education: Issues and

Volume 6 LAUGLO & LILLIS: Vocationalizing Education: An International

THOMAS OWEN EISEMON

Copyright 1988 T. Eisemon

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored

First edition 1988

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Printed in Great Britain by A. Wheaton & Co. Ltd, Exeter

The Comparative and International Education Series is dedicated to inquiry

Various individuals provided practical assistance without which this book

The Acquisition and Uses of Literacy

Primary schooling is the terminal stage of schooling for children in most

essentially school based skills as most African countries lack a literate

Religious and Secular Instruction

Msambweni, Kwale District

Internal Migration and Expansion of the Market Economy

Authority and Social Control

The Institutionalization of Koranic Education

Benefiting from Basic Education

TWENTY YEARS of African educational research has established a convincing

transformations of belief systems favouring the acquisition of

Theories of School Effects

The Economic Benefits of Educational Investments

Cognitive Outcomes of Schooling

Effects of Education on Health

Different kinds of education may of course operate through these channels in

In a footnote to this observation, O'Hara expresses regret that "for policy

Qualitative Consequences of School

Going to School, an English primer used in Kenya and other African

School Quality and School Expansion in Kenya

Greater importance would be given to Kiswahili and practical subjects

Qualitative Implications of Educational Expansion

Always Do as You are Told

This composition received a mark of 38 out of a possible 40. Although

1. Mother Tongue 5 periods of 30

The Implantation of Western Schooling

Christianity, Slavery and Land Alienation

Education and Social Change in Colonial Kenya

missionary opposition to the eviction of the Maasai from their ancestral

Preparation for Independence

Education for National Development

significant departures from the recommendations of the 1964 report being

Education in the Coast Province Koranic School System

Kilifi 13.2 247.8

Religious Education in a Secular Society

In his influential writings on the social functions of education, Max Weber

Hussein's parents closely monitored their child's education, often examining

The seriousness of scriptural learning is suggested by the vivid recollections

Literacy as a Devotional Act