English is a foreign language...

This Thursday, our minister of (mis)education claimed that the declining performance of English is because of the proliferation of sheng.  Prof says, “Adulteration of Kiswahili and English, where even senior members of the society, including top politicians, talk sheng to endear themselves to the youth, has affected performance in the two subjects.”  Eh?  But aren’t the Kiswahili scores getting better?  This makes no sense, no?  Not being one to dismiss a politician offhand, I sought to investigate further, this I did by reading the following day’s paper. 

Apparently, the geniuses at Elimu House, or wherever they come up with their cockamamie schemes, decided to merge English grammar and literature, and now the ‘experts’ blame this, as well as ‘the lack of a reading culture, the language used in social media and incompetent teachers…’ for the decline.  One (assumed to be not incompetent) teacher complained that ‘the testing of technical aspects such as phonetics at form four level had complicated the subject.’  Another (also assumed to be not incompetent) teacher is quoted as saying, “There is a huge disparity between what is taught in class and what is tested in exams.”  Eh?  On the up side though, the paper did state that ‘teachers agreed that use of sheng did not have any significant impact on the English examination scores’, although the writer didn’t clarify if said teachers were competent, so we can’t really be sure about this. 

Now ordinarily I don’t give a rat’s ass about KCSE results, I have no babies and until some bastard forcefully impregnates me, I get to live in blissful ignorance.  That said, the mean score for English this year was 36.42, down from 38.90 last year.  36.42?  Say it with me…Eh?  This means that majority of these children no speaka de english! 

I had to take a minute to weep in frustration…

Now this knowledge, while causing me great concern, is also a source of great relief to be honest.  See, for a long time I’ve been trying to figure out why the media sounds illiterate and now I finally get it, it’s because they probably are.  Case in point, the genius who wrote this magnificent headline: ‘Rookie farmers whose ventures have gone bust’.  Brilliant spelling, zero understanding, the article was about ‘youth’ making millions from agriculture.  Clearly a mean student…

And on an unrelated but happier note, I now have a crush on Goodluck Jonathan.  A president with a brain, one that he uses, and uses well?  And he took a pay cut?  I just died and went to heaven(ish)!  Read this interview, Jonathan Power interviews Goodluck Jonathan (as seen in Tuesday’s Nation), tell me if you don’t agree.  Shaka has been bumped off temporarily, my man Goodluck is now at the top of the list of men I plan to one day kidnap and hold hostage in my basement so we can have beautiful conversation for ever and ever.  For crying out loud the man wears a homburg dammit, a homburg!