Millennium children speak out

By midnight tomorrow, everyone born in the year 2000 will be 18 years old.

It will mean that individuals born at the turn of the millennium, in a year welcomed with bated breath as many feared an apocalypse and a collapse of computer systems, are henceforth adults before the law.

They are now free to partake of everything meant for adults, cast votes and even give birth to the next generation of Kenyans.

The story of Kenya’s 18-year-olds is an interesting slice of the country’s history.

They were born in a year when the local mobile telephony providers were launched, when Kencell (the predecessor of today’s Airtel) and Safaricom were making baby steps that later translated to the phenomena they are today.

The 18-year-olds were just a year old when President Daniel arap Moi assented into law the Children’s Act which, among other things, outlawed corporal punishment; meaning this group has grown up in a Kenya where caning a child is an offence.

They were also a year old when the Education ministry struck out subjects like art and craft, home science, music and business education from the primary school curriculum, meaning a number of them entered their teens with little or no knowledge on tending to their clothes or whipping up simple meals at home.

This group was two years old when President Moi left power after a 24-year reign, and with it came many changes like free primary education and Constituency Development Fund (CDF) that would help build schools and even pay fees for needy learners.

In 2006, when the majority of this group had left the enclaves of their parents to get pre-primary education, Kenya adopted an earth-shattering piece of legislation — the Sexual Offences Act.

The Act prescribed punitive sentences for people found guilty of sexually abusing children. For instance, it stipulated that anyone who defiles a child aged below 11 should be locked up for life.

In 2007, when this group was just starting primary school, post-election violence almost tore Kenya apart, threatening to deny them an education and a future.

Hundreds of thousands born in 2000 have now completed secondary education and are looking forward to the next phase of their lives.

In this year’s Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examinations, some 279,482 eighteen-year-olds made up 27.96 per cent of the 664,479 candidates who sat the examination.

ASPIRATIONS OF GROUP

Some of the individuals born in 2000 joined primary school a year earlier, because 10,217 of them sat KCSE in 2017, which was 1.66 per cent of the 615,591 candidates.

Juliet Otieno is by no means a representative of the born-2000 group, but having turned 18 on August 5 and having emerged the best student in this year’s KCSE, she epitomises the aspirations of this group.

Juliet has grown up seeing people with mobile phones. The phones used to be bigger, pricier and fewer at the year of her birth. Back then, the handsets in the market also had ubiquitous antennae sticking out of them.

By 2014 when she was finishing primary school, 78.3 per cent of Kenyans had phones, according to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics. A good number of the handsets owned by Kenyans then were smart phones, with the ability to perform more advanced tasks that were hitherto reserved for computers.

We asked the Pangani Girls alumna to imagine life without mobile phones.

“I think it wouldn’t have been as easy as it is in the world today”, she said. “Mobile phones have created a global village, where you can communicate with people very easily. You can exchange ideas very fast.”

Japheth Mudumah was also in the KCSE class of 2018. He sat the examination at Kakamega School, topping his class with an A- of 76 points. He turned 18 on the day Education Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohamed released this year’s KCSE examination results.

In Japheth’s view, it must have been a dull life for those who grew up without mobile gadgets. “It would be boring without phones. Now, if I want to communicate with my friends, it’s easy. Without mobile phones, life would not be that easy, because we need to communicate every day with people from other parts of the world”, he said.

What about growing up without corporal punishment? Was it a reality?

Japheth said he has witnessed situations where teachers still use canes, adding that the rod is necessary sometimes.

“At some point, I think it’s useful because it brings the students back to line”, he said.

But in Juliet’s view, caning should never be in the picture. “Banning corporal punishment was a good move because, I think, it is not an effective mode of punishment. It instils plain fear and at times the behaviour or attitude may not change. I think counselling is a better mode of correction than corporal punishment”, she argued.

Juliet’s father, Mr Paul Otieno Were, and Japheth’s uncle, Mr James Okal, both aged 50, also shared their perspectives with Lifestyle regarding the youngsters.

Mr Otieno said the fact that children born in 2000 have grown up in a digital world has positives and negatives.

“At their age, they know a lot of things that the children of before 2000 did not know,” he said.

“Sometimes there are the negative aspects. For example, the kind of literature they meet could be distracting to some extent”, added Mr Otieno.

Mr Otieno argued that growing up without corporal punishment may have had an impact on this generation.

“Even if you didn’t cane them, that element of fear brought some discipline”, said Mr Otieno, a teacher.

Mr Okal said abolition of practical subjects in primary school was a mixed bag.

“I could say there is something lacking in them. And I can also say it’s just okay because, during our days, all the other subjects were there but it was hectic work. We were doing nine subjects and you were to perform in all of them. It was a bit hard to pass all of them”, argued Mr Okal, an electrician.

Developmental psychologist John Samson Oteyo, who has a background in teaching, also weighed in on the realities of the children born in 2000 and what the future holds for them.

INCREASE IN TV STATIONS

“There is so much that has happened after 2000 that has affected the development of children”, said Dr Oteyo, one of the lecturers at Kenyatta University’s department of psychology.

Among the changes that have happened, as those born in 2000 grew up, Dr Oteyo argued, is the increase in the number of television and FM stations.

“I grew up at a time when there was only one TV station”, he said.

The most recent one, he said, is sports betting that has caught Kenyan youth by storm.

Dr Oteyo took us back to the situation in the year 2000.

“There were a lot of myths about it; about the end of the world and such”, he said.

Newspaper reports of that year make for interesting reading.

One story in the Saturday Nation of January 1, 2000, reads: “Public and private organisations in Mombasa were on high alert yesterday in anticipation of the dreaded millennium bug”.

On New Year’s Eve, one of the stories in the Daily Nation read: “All crucial systems are at the ready to assault the Y2K millennium bug, authorities declared yesterday, amid reports of panicky withdrawals from banks”.

Another story on that New Year’s Eve edition read: “Teams of Kenyan computer experts will be working through the night, alert to the faintest hint of breakdown in, among others, the country’s electricity supply, telecommunications, hospital equipment, air control consoles, automated bank services, public water system and the railway network”.

EVANGELICAL FEEL

None of the foreseen troubles happened. The predicted end of the world, Dr Oteyo said, provided an “evangelical” feel to the onset of 2000.

“It was accompanied by a liberal style. There are many things that used to be viewed as taboo but nowadays are no longer being taken as taboo”, he said.

Asked whether there are effects on the generation that has grown up with mobile phones all along, Dr Oteyo said one adverse consequence is that parents can no longer control what their children access.

“Obviously, that will have a negative influence on these children”, he said.

He also noted that the fact that this generation is wont to communicate via acronyms on mobile phones will affect their language.

The positive thing about the generation that has grown up surrounded by phones, he said, is that their creativity is likely to be higher.

With regard to growing up with a law against corporal punishment, Dr Oteyo said there was a gap in legislation. The Education ministry was right in recommending guidance and counselling, he argued, but it failed to institutionalise counselling in schools.

“These are children who have been brought up in an environment where there is no use of the cane, but the alternative equally has not been developed so well to ensure that positive gain of discipline of these children is there”, he said.

“Teachers will then resort to other methods which are negative, like hurling insults at these children. And mental violence is more dangerous than physical violence that was use of the cane”, added Dr Oteyo.

On the aspect of growing up without practical subjects in primary schools, he argued that TV and the internet provide many learning opportunities.

Asked to give a prediction of the future of the individuals born in 2000, Dr Oteyo said: “The future is bright or gloomy, based on the decisions these emerging adults make”.