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Kenya: We Let the Social Sciences Die At Our Academic Peril

William Ochieng'

24 June 2008

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opinion

Nairobi — There is a  corpus of  academic disciplines which are collectively called social sciences. This collection includes subjects such as literature, music, religion, history, sociology, geography and languages.

In our schools, colleges and universities in Kenya these disciplines are dying. And why? Because their practitioners and tutors have detoured from realistically studying them and are instead steeply involved in debating their methodologies and theories. Usually, before a theory is accepted it must be confronted with massive empirical evidence, but in our case, theories are simply borrowed, or imagined.

Have you in the last decade, or two, come across any good new book on the history of the Kikuyu, or the history of the Pokot, or the history of the Tugen? If not, what has happened?

Kenyan historians are extremely busy discussing, or quarrelling over delicate theories like post-industrialism, post-modernism and post-feminism.

IN THE ACADEMIC PAST, THEORIES and philosophies were used to help thinkers to ponder their subject matters. Today in Kenya, theory is the in-thing. Everybody has got his theory, and the most elaborate or complicated the theory is, the better. Our people want to read our history, or our literature, or our religions, but our scholars are busy haggling over the most acceptable theories. What did Karl Marx say about inflation? And how about V.1 Lenin? Is what you are saying in line with the views of Walter Rodney?

Instead of telling us whether Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene were husband and wife, as Laurence Gardener claims in his book: The Magdalene Legacy, our religious scholars would rather discuss the pre- and post-Golgothan matrimonialism.

Is there any wonder that our students are not registering in acceptable numbers for history, religion, literature or music in our schools and universities?

History will always remain history, whether or not you spray it with post-industrial or post-modern theories. It is the story of our communities, and how they have changed and evolved to this day.

Once upon a time, some seven blind men visited the elephant. The first blind man to touch the elephant's ear claimed: "My God, the elephant is a huge blanket!" The second blind man touched its snout and claimed: "My God, he is a trombone."

The third one touched his leg and claimed: "My God, he is a huge tree!" and so on. These were the theories which the blind men sprayed on the elephant, but the elephant remained the elephant. We really do have a problem with the social sciences, and particularly with history, in our schools and universities. In many developing countries in the world, such as China, Israel, Japan and South Korea, history is a must subject for learners, whether a student is studying medicine or engineering. You cannot expect a young person to know his people, if he did not study their history. Not in Kenya. Here some graduate is made a district officer in Turkana and he had never heard of the Turkana.

But we are lucky today because we have a full-blooded historian, Dr Sally Kosgei, as the minister of Higher Education. She should order a small commission to find out what is happening to social sciences in our schools and universities. To what extent have they been corrupted by world ideologies? Why are our historians glued to trashy theories? What happened to geography?

LIKE BOND SLAVES, OUR SOCIAL SC-ientists are copying what their former masters are discussing at Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard and Stanford Universities. The Western societies have lived through the industrial revolutions and the post-industrial world, and thus can discuss their post-industrialism, but have we in Kenya?

When will our historians study and write the histories of the Somali, Galla, Samburu, Pokomo, Pokot, Yakuu and Marakwet. When will they? Prof Ochieng' teaches history at Maseno University.

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