GLOBALIZATION AND DISCIPLINE IN KENYAN
SECONDARY SCHOOLS:
ISSUES AND CHALLENGES FOR SCHOOL MANAGEMENT IN
BUTERE/MUMIAS DISTRICT
BY
KISIANG' ANI ELECTINE AYIELA
PROJECT DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE SCHOOL OF
EDUCA TION IN PARTIAL REQUIREMENT FOR THE AWARD
OF THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF EDUCATION OF
KENYATTA UNIVERSITY
OCTOBER, 2009.
Kisiang'ani, Electine
Globalization and
discipline in kenyan
1111111~I ~~ IImI~I~II ~~ ~~ I~I~III111111
2010/344662
DECLARA TION
This is my original work and has not been presented to any other University.
~--
KISIANG' ANI ELECTINE AYIELA
E54/1 03 72/04
This project has been submitted for examination with my knowledge and approval as the
University Supervisor.
W)L..::::,- ====-::7-0 ---
DR. SAMUEL N. WAWERU
LECTURER/CHAIRMAN,
EDUCATIONAL MANAGEMENT, POLICY AND CURRICULUM STUDIES
DEDICATION
I dedicate this work to my parents Nicholas Pius Wabuyabo and Rodah Musundi Wabuyabo for
bringing me to life and for taking me to school.
11
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A project such as this one can never be successfully completed without the express contributions
of many individuals and institutions.
First, I am grateful to Kenyatta University for giving me a chance to undertake a Masters degree
in Education Administration. Through this great gesture, the university has enabled me to
achieve a very important segment of my dreams.
My sincere appreciation and gratitude go to Dr. Samuel N. Waweru for supervising this work.
His patience and encouragement enabled me come up with this document. Furthermore, I am
profoundly indebted to my lecturers at Kenyatta University for guiding me through course work
and for assisting me prepare a viable proposal for research. Besides, I thank all the schools, in the
Butere Mumias District, which accepted to provide me with crucial information for this project.
Without them, my research efforts would have aborted. I also appreciate all the head teachers,
deputy head teachers and students of the targeted schools for accepting to grant me interviews,
for sparing time to fill the questionnaires and for facilitating the successful execution of the
Focus Group Discussions. I acknowledge with thanks the unique efforts made by fellow teachers
at the Bulimbo Girls High School to support this project.
This work is a special tribute to all my colleagues and classmates at Kenyatta University. My
interaction with them was extremely enriching. In many special ways, I stole pieces of wisdom
from their bright ideas.
Research facilities in a number of libraries helped me to realize my objective. The libraries I am
deeply indebted to include the Moi Library at Kenyatta University, the Jomo Kenyatta library at
the University of Nairobi, the 1ration Center and the Standard Group libraries in Nairobi. In
addition, the study benefited from governrnent documents which I obtained from the Ministry of
Education offices in Nairobi:
From day one, my family was part and parcel of this work. I would like to thank our children-
Babu, Purity, Faith, Bella, Garvey, Cleaver and Laura-for their support and understanding. My
children bore the brunt of loneliness while I worked on the project.
Finally, I thank my husband and lifetime Love - Dr. Edward Kisiang'ani- for his patience and
encouragement during the trying moments of this work. Edward provided me with the most
critical shoulder for me to lean on. As a result, this work is as much mine as it is his.
111
TABLE OF CONTENTS
DECLARA TI 0 N i
DEDICATION ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii
LIST OF TABLES viii
LIST OF FIGURES ix
ABBREVIA TI 0 NS: ix
ABSTRACT x
CHAPTER ONE 1
1.0
1.1
1.2
1.3
1.4
1.5
1.6
1.7
1.8
1.9
1.10
INTRODUCTION 1
Background to the Problem 1
Statement of the Problem 6
1.2.1Purpose of the Study 7
Research Objectives 0 ••••••• 7
Research Questions 7
Justification and Significance of the Study 8
Scope and Limitations of the Study 8
Assum ptions of the Study 9
Theoretical Framework 9
Conceptual Framework 15
Definition of Central Terms 16
CHAPTER TW 0 19
LITERATURE REVIEW 19
2.0
2.1
Introduction 19
Media Reported Cases of Students Indiscipline 19
IV
2.2
2.3
2.4
2.6
2.7.0
2.8
2.9
2.10
Possible causes of indiscipline: Government Reports 22
Research Proposals 25
Multiple Identities 25
Role of the Media 33
Disciplinary Challenges 39
2.7.1 Music 39
2.7.2 Soccer and other sports 40
2.7.3 Fashion 41
2.7.4 Divergent Views on Indiscipline 42
Role of Culture 48
Other Sources 49
Summary and Conclusion 49
CHAPTER THREE 51
METHODOLOGy 51
3.0
3.1
3.2
3.3
3.4 .0
3.5.0
3.6.0.
Introduction 51
Design of the study 51
Varia bles 52
Study Locale 52
Target Population 53
3.4.1 Schools 53
3.4.2: Respondents 53
Sample Population 53
3.5.1 Schools 53
3.5.2 Respondents 54
Sam piing Proced ure 54
3.6.1 Sam piing of Schools 54
v
3.6.2 Sampiing of Respondents 55
3.7 Research Instruments 56
3.7.1 The Questionnaire 57
3.7.2 Interview schedules 57
3.7.3 Focus Grou p Discussions 58
3.7.4 Validity of the Research Instruments 58
3.7.5 Reliability of the Research Instruments 58
3.7.6 Piloting 59
3.8 Data Collection Procedure 59
3.8.1 Methods of Data Analysis 60
CHAPTER FOUR 62
DATA ANALySIS 62
THE MODERN SCHOOL AND GLOBAL VALUES IN THE BUTERE -
MUMIAS DISTRICT 62
Introduction 624.1
4.2.0 Effects of Globalization on Secondary School Discipline 62
4.2.1 Background Information: The Modern Secondary School.63
42.2 Radio and Televison 62
4.2.3 The Internet 66
4.3 Disciplinary Challenges Faced By School Managers In Handling
Both Teachers and Students Influenced By Globalization 68
4.4 Effective Management of Secondary Schools In the Face of the
Challenges 76
4.5 Summary and Conclusion 78
VI
CHAPTER FIVE 79
SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS 79
5.0
5.1
5.2
5.3
5.4
5.5.
Introduction 79
Summary 79
1mplications of the findings 81
Conclusion 82
Recommendations 83
Further Research 83
REFERENCES 84
(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
(e)
(f)
(g)
(h)
Books 84
Magazines 87
Newspa pers 87
Thesis and Other Unpublished Material 89
Commission Reports and Other Official Documents 900
Written Speeches 90
Oral Respondents 90
Websites 92
APPEND IX 1: ~ 92
APPENDIX II 94
APPENDIX III 97
APPEND IX IV 100
APPENDIX V 101
APPENDIX VI 102
APPEND IX VII 103
APPEND IX VIII 105
Vll
LIST OF TABLES
Table 3.1 - Number of secondary Schools in Matungu, Mumias, Butere and
Khwisero constituencies 53
Table 3.2 - Total Number of Schools selected for the study 54
Vlll
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Effect of Globalization on Discipline on schools 13
Figure 2.1: Possession of Radio and Television in Kenyan Homes 34
Figure 2.2: Daily readership of newspapers (millions) 35
Figure 3.1: Sampling of Schools 54
Figure 4.1: Student access to Television in their homes 62
Figure 4.2: Email address among students 64
Figure 4.3: Student views on Television censorship 66
Figure 4.4: Incidents of banned materials in schools 67
ABBREVIATIONS:
01 Oral Interview
TV Television
IX
ABSTRACT
The fundamental focus of this study was to explore the extent to which globalization-
characterized by the overwhelming power of the Western-controlled information super highway
called the internet, and consummated by the hegemonizing tendencies of the Euro-American
social-political and economic structures-has influenced the school system in Kenya. It
investigated how school managers are handling the new development .This study attempted to
interrogate the impact of globalization on the management of secondary schools in Kenya. It
investigated the disciplinary problems of the youthful teachers and students and explored the
issues and challenges which school managers face in maintaining discipline in school. The study
sampled 12 of the 62 public secondary schools in the Butere- Mumias District*representing 19 %
. of the total number of schools in the district. Besides, in every sampled school only 19% of the
targeted population of students was involved. The research employed the descriptive survey
strategy to harness data. Since the targeted schools, were identified from the four compass zones
with each compass quadrant of the district supplying three secondary schools, the study sample
was considered a good representation of the district and a significant reflection of what might be
happening across the country. Through various methodological devices which took into
consideration gender and hierarchical balancing in those schools, the data collected was seen to
be objective. The study utilized such tools as the questionnaire method, the oral interview
practice, the Focus Group Discussions (FGD) and supplemented all these with secondary data
from local libraries. The final data was rigorously analyzed through the prism of Michel
Foucault's theoretical disenchantment with modernity. The study established that global mass
culture has profoundly shaped the general behaviour of youthful teachers and students in the
schools under review. Attributable to the intimidating consequences of globalization was the
growing tendency among the students and the youthful teachers to disobey authority and
question the usefulness of the school curriculum, routine and rules. In an attempt to restore the
integrity of the traditional school, school managers have often clashed with the youthful teachers
and students. Consequently, due to contemporary globalization; most schools in Butere- Mumias
have serious disciplinary problems. The study recommends that school managers, in this region,
should involve all stakeholders in finding a lasting solution to the crisis of discipline in the
schools. Not only should the school managers accommodate the global cultural values which
have become irresistible among the youth, they should also demand a fresh redefinition of the
school during these post-modem times. Foucault notes that because it is filled with rigidity ana
discipline, modernity is both oppressive and untenable. This study considers the modern school
as a rigid but oppressive disciplinary device that requires urgent reform.
"Butere-Mumias District has since been split into 3 districts namely Butere, Matungu and
Mumias
x
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.0 This chapter explains the background to the problem, statement of the problem, purpose of the
study, the research objectives, research questions, significance and the assumptions of the study as
well as scope, limitations, theoretical and conceptual framework of the project.
1.1 Background to the Problem
Globalization, it is important to observe, implies many things to different people. As it is now, it
may signify the rule of multi-national corporations and the dwindling powers of the nation-state.
Martin R. (1999) defines it as a type of centralized power and cultural institutions controlled by the
West. In addition it is the state of trans border interconnectedness/communication of values, cultures,
attitudes, opinions, information through pathways of multinational corporations and the internet
In contemporary Africa, globalization has created its own images. Among the youth, globalization
seems to have given rise to cultural identities that appear to transcend or even undermine nationalist
discourses. In such areas as sports, music, language, fashion and religion, the African youth have
notably embraced new identities that are not only subversive to 'traditionalism' b.rt also inimical to
the nationalist agenda. As a result, these identities have served to create cultural representations,
communities and configurations that appear to destabilize the homogenizing institutions and values
of the nation state. One of those institutions of modernity that is at the centre of attack by new forms
of globalization is the school.
1
Earlier forms of globalization which accompanied European modernity gave birth to the modern
nation-state. Among the primary goals of the modern, post-Enlightenment state are
homogenization and conformity within a fairly narrow ethnic and political range, as well as the
creation of societal agreement about the kinds of people there ought to be. Nagengast(l994)
concurs that the ideal state thus, is one in which the illusion of a single nation-state is created and
maintained and in which resistance is managed so that profound social upheaval, separatist
activity, revolution and coups de'tat are unthinkable for most people most of the time.
Abrams(l988),Anderson(l983)and Corrigan(l985) highlighted that the state attempts to ensure
uniformity to encompassing unitary images through diverse cultural forms and an array of
institutions and activities that, taken together, help to determine the range of available social,
political, ethnic and national identities. But this has changed because even within the domain of
the Euro-American modernity, there is a great deal of discomfort about any attempt to totalize
and homogenize social reality. The subversive rebellion against modernity is well documented
through the works of such European intellectual icons as Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, Lyotard
and Foucault.
In Africa, the crisis of the contemporary nation-state springs from its differentially successful
monopolization of power, its failure to confront post modem challenges and the contradiction
between and the demands of peripherilized people(s) who through resistance have created new
subject positions that challenge fundamental definitions of who and what ought to be repressed.
Yet, in its post-independence dispensation, the African post-colony remains a platform upon
which _many identities are conceived, practiced and contested. Richard Webner(l996) has
observed that in the post-colonial politics of everyday life, in Africa, many identities have been
2
mobilized. A similar observation has been captured by Cameroonian scholar, Achille Mbembe
(1992) who has eloquently demonstrated that the African post-colony is a terrain of plural but
competing spheres.
The Kenyan youth, it seems, have tended to respond to the state's refusal of multiplicity as
demonstrated by Clastres( 1974) by espousing many identities including those formed on the
terrains of music and sports, religion, and fashion in order to make a statement of resistance
against homogenization that is so prevalent in our systems.
Our point of entry into the problematic of globalization and the traditional Western nation-state
in Kenya is the school system. Specifically, we take secondary schools in the Butere-Mumias
District of Kenya as our starting point towards appreciating the dilemma of managers in Kenya's
. secondary schools. This is because the school itself, just like the hospital and the prison were
created in the modem era to sustain a disciplinary society.
Thus, in our present era, it is not just the disciplinary and confining tendencies of the school
which are unde~ siege; it is also the homogenizing dispositions of the prison, the clinic, the
parliamentary systems and religious dogmas. In our schools, the role of the head-teachers is
under constant focus by those who consider the traditional s .hool as subversive to human
freedom. Can our secondary schools change their original conception and management style so
as to be relevant to the current demands of globalization? It is the argument of this study that
some of the disciplinary problems emanating from our schools resonate in the general pressures
of globalization and global mass culture.
3
As Hall(1991) demonstrates, it is important to note that global mass culture - the habus of
contemporary globalization- is governed by the modern means of cultural production, dominated
by the image which crosses and re-crosses linguistic and nationalist frontiers much more rapidly
and more easily and which speaks across languages in a much more immediate way. It is
preponderated by all the ways in which the visual and graphic arts have entered directly into the
reconstitution of popular life of entertainment and of leisure. It is dominated by television and
by film, and by the image, and styles of mass advertising. The newsprint and the Internet also
epitomize it. The Kenyan youth (both the teachers and students) have been variously consumed
by this experience. Do the head-teachers consider the new global mass culture, a disciplinary
concern in our schools? How do they want to deal with this?
It is commonplace for our Kenyan youth to fantasize about and idolize such American track stars
as Marion Jones, Gail Devers, Justin Gatlin, Maurice Greene and Tim Montgomery, among,
others. A similar scenario obtains in such sports as boxing, rugby and tennis. Many Kenyan
youths, it seems, are frequently captured sporting various forms of attire which bear the names
and numbers of their favorite European and American sports celebrities.
Sweat and T-shirts beating such names as the Chicago Bulls, the Lakers, Manchester United,
Arsenal F.C, Olympic Marseilles, Bayern Munich abound among the Kenyan youth. The Kenyan
youth too tend to mimic the mannerisms, habits (some of which could be socially destructive
depending on who is looking at them), hairstyles, the grooming features, the fashion tastes of
such tennis stars as Venus and Serena Williams, as well as such soccer icons as David Beckham,..
Ronaldinho Gaucho and Robert Pires, among others.
4
Yet some of the Western celebrities whom our youth tend to ape have variously been associated
with such habits as homosexuality, lesbianism, drug abuse, violence, rebellion and general
defiance of rules and authority. How many school managers would allow the idolization, the
fantasization of mannerisms and habits of Western music, religious and sports celebrities to
flourish in their schools? How successful would school managers be in suppressing those
tendencies?
In this era of neo-liberal-globalization, the African youth have tended to acquire identities that
celebrate Westernization. The Kenyan youth have, for example, continued to simulate the social
habits of such Western music icons as Ashanti, Mariah Carey, Usher Raymond, Toni Braxton,
Baby Face, Nelly, Brook Valentine, Missy Eliot, Nameless, Michael Jackson, Aaliyah, name it,
and they without blinking an eye celebrate the singing and dancing styles of such hip hop artistes
as 50 Cent and the 'enticing' Diamond Real, just to mention but a few.
The Saturday Nation(2005) illustrated that besides this hip hop culture, the culture which thrives
on the rigorous shaking of the waist and general celebration of youth sexuality, pop music has
now been introduced into the country's church practices through initiatives made by the youth,
leaving the traditional ways of worship thoroughiy challenged. What are the challenges of this
influence to our school managers?
Furthermore, the above and many other musical, religious, sports and cultural celebrities and
institutions tend to manufacture fashion and dressing identities, grooming and hairstyle
identities. In addition, they often adopt new ways of talking, laughing, walking and eating. In
Africa, and especially among the youth, those Western-manufactured identities are invaluable
commodities. Thus, to the African youth, the world of music, new religion, fashion, defiance,
5
romance and sports-not the world of national glory, rigid schools, and national values- seems to
be their true world. Considering that global cultural goods and values from the West seem to
affect both the teachers and the students, how can school managers maintain the traditional
school in the heat of this experience?
Like their counterparts in other parts of the continent, the Kenyan youth feel more attached to
their music and sports celebrities than to their respective national cultures, national leadership
and the so- called national values. Indeed, they appear to view their respective schools as barriers
to their ultimate dreams of reaching and sharing life in paradise with their adored celebrities. It is
the contention of this study that Western music, fashion, sports and religious celebrities and
institutions are powerful globalizing instruments that have permanently changed the behaviour of
both our students and teachers in secondary schools.
Because of their high sense of mobility, their loyalty to the internet and the television and their
concern for what is happening elsewhere in the world, the Kenyan youth, just like their
counterparts across the continent, are most affected by globalization. In the Butere-Mumias
District, as well as in many other administrative zones of Kenya, our youth (in this case our
students and teachers in public schools) seem ~()have been irreversibly affected by the new
global values.
1.2 Statement of the Problem
At present, school management in Kenya is faced with a number of issues and challenges. But
perhaps the one formidable problem facing any contemporary school manager in any Kenyan.
secondary school is the crisis of discipline. The media has variously reported and speculated over
cases of student indiscipline in Kenyan schools. The problematic of discipline has also been
6
given a good deal of attention by scholars and education administrators. However, no serious
study has so far been done to assess the crisis in the context of globalization. Furthermore, very
little has been done to examine the role of youthful teachers in aggravating the problem of
discipline in schools.
Using selected schools in the Butere-Mumias District of Western Kenya, this study attempted to
interrogate the impact of globalization on the management of secondary schools in Kenya. It
investigated the disciplinary problems of the youthful teachers and students and explored the
issues and challenges which school managers face in maintaining discipline in schools
1.2.1 Purpose of the Study
The main purpose of this study was to investigate the issues and challenges, which global values
_have posed not just for secondary school teachers but also for their managers as well.
1.3 Research Objectives
The study had\ three main objectives. It set out to:
1. Investigate the effects of globalization on secondary school discipline.
-2. Establish the management challenges facing secondary school managers due to
globalization -
3. To explore how the effects of globalization could effectively be managed without
causing serious upheavals in secondary schools
1.4 Research Questions
Arising from the stated objectives, the study was geared towards answenng the following
questions:
7
1. What are the effects of globalization on secondary school discipline in
Butere/Mumias District?
2. What are some of the disciplinary challenges that secondary school managers In
Butere/Mumias face in handling students and teachers influenced by globalization?
3. How can these challenges be effectively confronted in order to enhance efficient
management of secondary schools in Butere/Mumias?
1.5 Justification and Significance of the Study
It is quite evident that despite its widespread influence in our educational institutions, very little
effort has been made to interrogate globalization in the context of school management and
discipline. Similarly, no research has so far investigated how globalization has tended to create
cultural habits, which, once embraced by our students and teachers, become subjects of
.disciplinary concern for school managers in Kenya's secondary schools. In attempting to fill
these critical gaps, this study is thus not just significant but copiously justified.
1.6 Scope of the Study
The study focused on secondary schools in Kenya's administrative district of Butere-Mumias.
Thus, the problematic of discipline, in primary schools was not undertaken. There are 62
secondary schools in the Butere-Mumias District. However, this study does not deal with all of
them. Rather, a representative sampling procedure has been employed to harness data. Using a
compass, the area of study was divided into four zones with each zone supplying three secondary
schools. Great care was also taken to ensure that, as much as possible, there was a gender
balance in the sampling process. Again, not all the students and teachers in the sampled schools
were targeted for interview. Few students representing specific classes and genders were
8
deliberately targeted. The same rule was applied with regard to the teachers targeted for
interview. Because this research project focuses on the youth, no school teacher over the age of
35 years (except the school head teachers and their deputies) were interviewed.
1.7 Assumptions of the Study
The following assumptions were made:
1. All respondents were cooperative and provide reliable responses.
2. All the respondents were aware of the values brought about by globalization
3. Globalization has caused indiscipline in schools
4. Schools managers have experienced indiscipline in their institutions occasioned by
globalization.
1.8 Theoretical Framework
Michel Foucault and the Post modern Theory
In general, the post-modem theory represents a domain of analyses which criticize the universal
and totalizing tendencies of European Modernity. By Modernity, we have in mind the new
cultural movement which swept Europe between the 16th 1ih and 18th centuries, characterised by
the belief in scientific rationalism. The movement was defined by certain collective values and
code of behaviour that described what was truly right and wrong.
Modernity set the standards for a civilized society and christened anybody who did not subscribe
to the values of European Enlightenment as primitive and backward. So, in addition to giving
humanity common culture and truth, modernity too prescribed universal social institutions such
9
as the school, the hospital, the prison and parliament. It too, approved certain general political
and social practices that were deemed critical in defining a civilized modern person.
Unfortunately, however, most of what was conceived as truly human and universal was
essentially the cultural dogma of the Western European individual.
Over the past 120 years, an increasing number of European philosophers and social
commentators have directed vicious attacks on Modernity. While the anti-modernist assault in
Germany was led by Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger, in France, proponents of post
modernity include but are not limited to Jean-Francois Lyotard, Jacques Derrida and Michel
Foucault. Icons of the post-modern movement are united in their overwhelming disillusionment
with the totalizing dispositions of Modern era.
Foucault argues that modernity gave rise to parliamentary institutions and new conceptions of
political liberty. But this experience was also accompanied by a dark counter-movement marked
by emergence of new and unprecedented discipline directed against the human body. More is
now required about the body than mere political allegiance or the appropriation of its labour.
Bartky(1990) demonstrates that the new discipline invades the body and seeks to regulate its
very forces and operations, the economy and efficiency of its movements.
The disciplinary practices Foucault (1979) describes are tied to peculiarly modern forms of the
army, the school, the hospital, the manufactory; the aim of these disciplinary devices being to
increase the utility of the body and to augment its forces. What was then being formed was a
policy upon the body, a calculated manipulation of its elements, its gestures and its behaviour.
The human body was thus entering a machinery of power that explores it, breaks it down and
rearranges it. A 'political anatomy' which was also the mechanics of power was being born; it
10
defined how one may have a hold over others' bodies not only so that they may do what one
wishes but so that they may operate as one wishes, with the techniques, speed and efficiency that
one determines. Thus, such disciplinary procedures tend to produce, subjected and practiced
bodies, 'docile bodies' (Ibid.).
Foucault's representations could as well be describing the modern school in any part of Kenya,
including the secondary schools in the Butere-Mumias District. The Kenyan secondary school
operates in exactly the same way Foucault has described above. It is a disciplinary enterprise
through which students and teachers' bodies have their movements, their economy, their
operations regulated. The school has a prosaic but nevertheless rigid routine indicating where
the bodies of the teachers and the students should be at what time. It is structured to regulate the
movements of both students and the teachers from Sunday to Sunday and from January to
December. The disciplinary practice of the school also involves a rigid curriculum that
comprises selected forms of knowledge and subjects privileged and authorized by certain
powerful forces in the society. It is a world of school uniforms and regulated time schedules.
Inflexible school rules are part and parcel of the disciplinary practices of the school. Nobody,
including the teachers and students dares break those rules! The thought of breaking the rules
and the imagination' of the punitive consequences that await those rebelling against the
'normalizing' tendencies of the school is enough to cause mental anguish to the students and
teachers alike. Through the 'normal' routine, the rules, the heads of department, the 'spies', and
the prefects, the school head undertakes to control and regulate the movement of the bodies as
well the spaces in which the bodies of his/her teachers and students operate.
11
Hence the school would be likened to what Jeremy Bentham (1995) calls a devise (Panopticon)
of a disciplinary society. With time, even when the school head teacher is not there, both the
students and teachers continue moving and working as if the manager was perpetually watching
them; they actually become robots in the service of the school head teacher. This state of
conscious and 'permanent' visibility is a sign that the tight disciplinary control of the body has
gotten hold on the mind as well as the body. Thus, both the teachers and students eventually
become their own policemen and women -' self policing minds and bodies'. In the perpetual self-
surveillance of a prisoner, a schoolteacher, or a student, lays the genesis of the celebrated
'individualism' and heightened 'self-consciousness' that are hallmarks of modern times. For
Foucault, the structure and effects of the Panopticon resonate throughout society: Is it not,
therefore, surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all
. resemble prisons? (Ibid: 20-228).
Traditional school management has been part and parcel of what Foucault is describing above.
But running counter to any school system, today, are new forms of disciplinary practices that do
not just have the capacity to control both the minds and the bodies of the teachers and students
but they also possess the penetrative effects of globalization. Though initially privileging old
Western European values, in its current disposition, globalization has enabled many people to
not only question the normalizing tendencies of European Modernity but also to celebrate
diversities that were at one time neutralized by the same Modernity. Thus, the general subversion
against Modernity is today being realized through the prism of Post-modernism in which
peripheral discourses and behaviours are constantly threatening to move to the centre by
displacing formerly unquestioned narratives about human life.
12
There is, therefore, a sense in which scholars would view Foucault's criticism of Modernity as
being done in the spirit of the subversive movement of Post-modernity. In a post-modern
arrangement, people are always on the move; both physically and mentally. It is a world of
dynamic people who have learnt to manage multiple identities, depending on place and context.
It is a terrain upon which people have become blinded to and broken down established canons.
As Kottak (1999) describes: Post-modernity is "messier" and more playful. It takes on a diversity
of styles from different times and places, divergent world views and culture.
As we have pointed out before, global mass culture emerging from the leisure and entertainment
world of the West, the Euro-American sports and religious institutions and celebrities, new
conceptions of freedom, the glorification of defiance, the celebration of diversity and difference
- all these are creating new minds, new bodies and new regimes of power among our secondary
-chool students and teachers. As pointed out by Boje and Gephart (1999) these changes are
challenging the authoritarian modernist systems of school management that are based on the
celebration of homogeneity and totalization of social reality. School managers are hence faced
with the daunting task of adjusting to this new revolution that threatens to wipe out from the
phase of the world the traditional school as we know it today.
In appreciating the complex disciplinary reality of the Kenyan school, this study employs
Michel Foucault's anti-modernist theory to interrogate the traditional school system alongside its
management practices. Through the Foucaltian lenses, the study demonstrates that new and old
forces of globalization are now competing on the school terrain to take control of both the minds
and bodies of students and teachers. This experience, it seems, has given rise to new challenges
and issues for school managers in Kenya. Notably, many of the Kenyan youth (students and
13
teachers) are, as a result of globalization, fast embracing new identities and new values that
directly or indirectly challenge the 'universally' homogenizing values and curriculum systems of
the traditional modem school system.
14
1.9 Conceptual Framework
Figure 1: Effect of Globalization on Discipline on schools
Traditional/modern
School Forces
• Disciplinary
(traditional or
modern school
situation }device
• TIght
disciplinary
control
• Rigid curriculum
• Uniforms.
• Regulated time
schedules
• TIght school
. rules
• laid down way
of doing things
ruE SCHOOLSY5fEM
Neo - liberal
IPost Modern
Globalization Forces
• New forms of
disciplinary
practices (post
modern school
situation)
• Glorification of
defiance.
• Celebration of
diversity and
difference .
• New centers of
power
School Youths
Teachers & Students
New challenges and issues for schools and managers
• Fear of Examinations
• Rigid school rules
• iNeak institutional management
• Some teachers part of indiscipline
• Violence; local and global
• Drug and alcohol abuse
• Poverty
• Role of television, radio and newsprint
• Parental failure to provide guidance to children
• Global counter-movement against established
forms of knowledge and other 'normalizing' truths
15
The presentation of the foregoing conceptual framework captures the two competing forces of
globalization-the traditional (modem) and the neo-liberal (post modem) variants-and their impact
on the behaviour or discipline of the youth in schools. The two forces are independent variables
while the youth in either of the forces are dependent variables.
The modem school situation has a tight disciplinary system that embraces a rigid curriculum,
uniforms, regulated time schedules and inflexible school rules. On the other hand, the post
modem school situation which some managers are wary of is influenced by global mass culture;
it has a new conception of freedom; it glorifies defiance and celebrates diversity and difference.
It creates new centres of power.
These two forces and their multiplier effects find room in the same school giving rise to
heightened conflicts within the system, thereby signifying formidable challenges for school
. managers.
1.10 Definition of Central Terms
is the state of transborder interconnectedness/communication of values,
cultures, attitudes, opinions and information through pathways of
multinational corporations and the internet rendering the nation-state
insignificant.
. Youth: Are the young people between the ages of 14 and 35 years
Globalization:
Homogenize: Thinking that things ought to be done in a particular manner everywhere.
School: Formal institution where learning takes place.
School Management: School Head teacher, Deputy Head teacher and their Agents
including the school prefects.
16
Discipline: Laid down way of doing things. In its most general sense, discipline refers
to systematic instruction given to a disciple. According to Picket et'al,(
2000) this sense also preserves the origin of the word, which is Latin
disciplina "instruction", from the root discere "to learn," and from which
discipulus "disciple, pupil" also derives To discipline thus means to
instruct a person or animal to follow a particular code of conduct, or to
adhere to a certain order. Papalia et 'al,( 2006) further explains that in the
field of child development, discipline refers to methods of modelling
character and of teaching self-control and acceptable behavior" (For
example, to discipline a child to wash her/his hands before meals. Here,
'washing hands is one way of forcing the child to adopt this pattern of
acceptable behaviour. 'To disciple' also gives rise to the word
disciplinarian, which denotes a person who enforces order. In the
perception of Barakat& Clark( 2004) an ideal disciplinarian is one who
can enforce order without coercion, for family specialists agree that using
physical force, threats and put-downs can interfere with a child's healthy
development. Douglas &Strauss(2007) however, stress that the phrase 'to
discipline' carries a negative connotation. This is because enforcement of
order - that is, ensuring instructions are carried out - is often regulated
through punishment.
To be disciplined is then, subject to context, either a virtue (the ability to
follow instructions well) or a euphemism for punishment (which may also
be referred to as disciplinary procedure). As a concrete noun, then,
17
Indiscipline:
discipline refers to an instrument of punishment, for example in
mortification of the flesh. Such an instrument may also be applied to
oneself, for example in penitence for not being sufficiently self-
disciplined.
Going contrary to the laid down way of doing things
18
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
2.0 Introduction
The body of literature on education in the Kenyan post independent history is growing.
However, literature on the general impact of globalization on school management is still scarce.
More significantly, specific African area studies on the subject are extremely rare. In addressing
this obvious hiatus, the proposed study hopes to utilize the many works in related fields in order
to establish a fairly balanced platform for debate.
2.1 Media Reported Cases of Students Indiscipline
Throughout the post- independence period, the issue of discipline in Kenyan schools has
attracted the attention of the media. When pluralist politics began to replace the one party
political dispensation in the Kenyan post colony, the media attention on what was going on in the
country's schools became even more intense.
Over the last one and a half decades, media houses have variously highlighted the problem of
discipline ~Jl our schools. For example, the Kenya Times media reported student u.irest at the
Tabaka High School, Kisii, which resulted in the destruction of property including the
headmaster's 504 saloon car (Kenya Times, July 26, 1992). The same paper reported school
disturbances and indiscipline in Homa Bay High School (Kenya Times September 27, 1995) in
the Shinyalu schools' (Kenya Times, May 1, 1999) and at Nangile secondary school in Kajiado
District (Kenya Times, May 20, 2001). In all these cases, students complained about the
intolerance of the school administrators, the general failure by the .school managers to address
the needs of the students as well as the misappropriation of school funds by the heads.
19
The East Africa Standard too gave several reports of indiscipline in Kenyan schools during the
same period. On October 19, 1991, it was reported that students' indiscipline in schools was
attributable to the collapse of morals and the imposing influences of Western materialistic
culture (East African Standard 19, October, 1991). In January 1997, the paper highlighted
student unrest at the St. Mary's Ekerubo Mixed Secondary School in Nyamira District. In this
incident, students beat up the head-teacher and stripped him naked, leaving him for dead (The
East African Standard, January 29, 1997). In September, while on a tour in Maasai Mara Game
Reserve, students of Mitetei Secondary School in Nandi District stormed the Kilgoris town bars
to flash out their teachers. The teachers had kept the students waiting on the bus as they drank
beer (East African Standard, September 21, 1997). On June 16th, 2001, the same paper
disseminated news on indiscipline in Moyale High School where students boycotted classes,
accusing the administration of high-handedness.
On corporal punishment, both the Weekly Review issues of the month of July, 1996 and The
Standard of September 11, 1999 denounced the practice arguing that it had caused student
unrest.
The Daily Nation too published numerous reports about indiscipline in Kenyan schools. Here
are a few samples. In August 1991, the paper highlighted the fact that abuse of drugs was the
fundamental reason behind strikes in educational institutions. The drugs mentioned included
heroin, bhang and morphine. The paper carried an article by Dave Mugo(Daily Nation May 1997)
which argued that indiscipline in schools had been caused by among other factors, over
protective parents, and excessive freedom, archaic practices of punishment and poor guidance
and counseling services.
20
Commenting on the student's unrest at both the Nangina and Bujumba Secondary schools in
Busia district, the then Western Provincial Director of Education, Jonathan Cheloti (Daily Nation
June 1998), had observed that outsiders who did not like heads who wished to improve schools
had caused the disturbances. He also noted that school strikes had been caused by infighting
among teachers struggling for power).
In March 2000, the same paper reported that students at the Garissa Secondary School had killed
a teacher on suspicion that he would have exposed their involvement in cheating practices during
the national examinations. In May 2001, the paper highlighted the plight of a student at the
Gachoire Girls Secondary School. The student had been expelled from school for bullying
others. The head-teacher's decision to bar the student from sitting her final year examinations
was overturned by a High Court ruling in favor of the student (Daily Nation, May 22, 2001. In
July, the Nation (July 30 2001) ~ttributed indiscipline in schools to a growing permissive society,
poor management and too much freedom for students Earlier, in May, a worrying trend of
student unrest which had evolved from simple protests to destruction of property and burning of
prefects was reported in Nyeri. Columnist Muchemi Wachira(The Daily Nation 21 May, 2001)
observed that a new report by the Provincial Education Board had attributed the fall in discipline
to devil worship, homosexuality and drug abuse in schools in Cerrral Province. Further,
homosexuality was reportedly common in Kiambu and Thika districts, a fact attributed to their
proximity to Nairobi, a city going through socio-cultural turbulence.
Between 1999 and 2000 several cases of indiscipline had been reported in various districts of
Central Province. Leading the pack was Nyeri, where 26 cases of student disturbances were
21
recorded. Next in the line was Nyandurua with 21, Kiambu 20, Kirinyaga with 19 while
Muranga's and Maragwa had 15 each. Thika, with six, had the least (Ibid).
From the foregoing samples of media reports, it is clear that concern for the growing incidents
of indiscipline in our schools remains profound. While it is to be appreciated that the media have
extensively highlighted this problematic, there is very little effort to investigate the role of
contemporary globalization in the escalating indiscipline in our schools. This study addresses
this gap. Furthermore, debate on indiscipline in schools as manifested in the media clips above
seems to assume that the problem of indiscipline seems to affect students alone. Yet we know
that very many teachers, especially the youthful ones, have serious disciplinary lapses. This
study has made efforts to explore how globalization has affected the discipline of teachers and
the challenges these pose for school managers.
2.2 Possible causes of indiscipline: Government Reports
Sometime in the year 2001, the government decided to confront the problem of indiscipline in
the country's secondary schools when it set up a special task force headed by the then Director of
Education, Mrs. Naomi Wangai, to trace the roots of the crisis and to make recommendations
that would, hopefully, change the situation. Quoting extensively from the reports of earlier
commissions of education (The Ominde Report, 1964, The Gachathi Report 1976, The Kamunge
Report, 1988 and The Koech Report 1999), the Wangai Task Force reiterated that the school
system should promote national unity, values and heritage. It observed that education should
also enhance national development and contribute to the stability of the nation (Wangai, 2001).
The task force identified drug abuse, devil worshipping (whatever that means!), intolerance on
22
the part of the administrators, and hopelessness for school leavers who could not find jobs and
poor techniques of punishment as some of the causes of school unrest in Kenya.
Further, the report outlined job descriptions for school heads, their deputies, heads of
departments, and prefects. At the same time, the Wangai Report recognized that globalization
had affected the Kenyan society negatively and positively. However, the report failed to explain
how students could, first, balance between the national homogenization and the global diversity.
Secondly, the Wangai report did not even explain how globalization had negatively or positively
affected our students. Besides, the report does not say how the negative and positive aspects of
globalization have raised specific challenges for school managers.
Finally, and as is the case with most people who have so far undertaken studies on the subject of
discipline in schools, the Wangai Report assumes that problems of indiscipline in our schools do
not embrace classroom teachers. Using the schools sampled from the Butere-Mumias District,
this addresses some of the issues the Wangai Report overlooked.
In 1998, the then Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education and Human Resource
Development Mr. Wilfred K. K. Kimalat conceded that head teachers faced challenges in
managing schools. In his address to head teachers, during their annual conference in Kisumu in
June 1998, the theme of which was: Managing Secondary Schools in a Liberalized
Democracy, the permanent secretary observed that teachers and students were politically aware,
sensitive and as well had capacities to ask awkward questions and even raise queries about
answers which school managers gave for the questions asked. In addition, strikes, overt dissent,
demonstrations, arsons and violence practiced by some 'unpatriotic' citizens were, Mr. Kimalat
observed, being enacted with intense passion by students.
23
Kimalat pointed out that some of the challenges, which schools managers faced in dealing with
disobedient students included; truancy, drug abuse, immorality, bullying and other undisciplined
behavior leading to rebellion and strikes. tMinistry of Education: Speech by Permanent
Secretary to Head Teachers, June, 1998) He thus, urged head teachers to understand their
students and handle them with care because those students expected to receive support and
guidance from their teachers (Ibid.).
The theme of the Kisumu meeting was loaded with terms, which had profound relationships with
the problematic of globalization. One can hardly escape to pay attention to issues of democracy,
liberalization and management. These catch words were assembled together to make out the
theme for the 1998, Kenya Secondary Schools Heads Association annual conference. Yet, the
final proceedings did not go out of their way to debate globalization and school management.
In his address to school head teachers at their general annual conference in Nairobi, in June
2000, the then Minister for Education, Kalonzo Musyoka, attributed indiscipline in schools to
written examinations that encouraged rote learning based on theoretical knowledge. He argued
that practical skills were not being assessed vigorously and that the then teaching and learning
methods in institutions had little space to promote and inculcate practices of honesty, integrity,
patriotism, good working ethics, moral values and overall mutual responsibility. This, he
concluded, led to the frequent cases of violence, riots and destruction of property in learning
institutions. (See Ministry of Education, Speech by Education Minister Kalonzo Musyoka to the
Kenya Heads Association, June, 2000). He however excluded from his remarks the role of
globalization in the emerging indiscipline in schools.
24
2.3 Research Proposals
The problem of under-estimating or overlooking the challenge of globalization, in the
management of schools has not just been confined to media circles and government reports.
Various research proposals/projects in our national universities have failed to address the issue of
globalization and discipline.
Concluded research projects (Mogere 1996, Matheri 1996, Makali, 1996, Abongi, 1996, Wangeri
1986, Kilemi 1996, Tuduru 1998, and Ayieko 1998, Arunga 2004, Wainama 2004) attribute the
indiscipline in schools to poor leadership styles, high handedness on the part of school
administration, drugs, examination stress, poor community links and many more without
interrogating the relationship between such causes and globalization. Yet it has increasingly
become apparent that some of disciplinary problems of the school system could be explained in
terms of the tremendous force globalization has exerted on learning institutions, The proposed
study will use the rich data in some of these works to explore how globalization has played a role
in the escalating disciplinary challenges in schools. It will also attempt to highlight the
challenges disciplinary problems originating from the influences of globalization pose for school
managers.
2.4 Multiple Identities
In Citizen and Subject, Mamdani (1996) traces the major trends within African studies by
pointing out that Africa remains entrapped in 'history by analogy' whereby Africa is either
exoticised or simply represented as part of European history. In both extremes, Africa's
specificity is denied. Given that global mass culture manufactured in the West has profoundly
25
affected the ways in which our youth think and do things, this work will be critical to the
proposed study.
Chantal Mouffe (1993) points out that citizenship is a form of political identity, which is based
on modem pluralist democracy based on principles of liberty and equality. She also argues that
it is common for persons in a polity to engage themselves in many different communities that
have differing conceptions of the good. Thus, the conception of citizenship is based upon the
recognition that individuals have more than a single identity and that within society, individuals
occupy a multiplicity of positions depending upon prevailing circumstances.
This study will attempt to investigate how the teachers and students in selected secondary
schools in Kenya's Butere-Mumias district have acquired multiple identities that have the
capacity to threaten the traditional school system. In this regard, we shall appropriate Mouffe's
work to explore how our students and teachers have embraced multiple global identities from the
field of music, sport, art, religion and leisure.
Kathleen Greenfield (1995) takes a critical look at the crisis of identity in Kenya. She does this
by reviewing the works of Kenyan novelist Charles Mangua (Son of Woman, (1971), and Son of
Woman in Mombasa, (1'986). The main character, Dodge Kiunyu Dodge, has multiple identities.
Throughout, Dodge faces a crisis of identity: Is he a son of a prostitute, a criminal, a Kikuyu, a
learned man or a Kenyan citizen? To him, Kenya existed in the form of various bureaucratic
institutions; schools, hospitals, the police and jails.
Thus the colonial and newly independent state is embodied in this series of public institutions
which educate, hire, arrest, try, extort money from, and jail Dodge. Impliedly, these institutions
26
are all set up to fight its citizens including Dodge himself. Accordingly, the national boundaries
that define Kenya were perceived by Dodge as effective limits within which institutions of power
in the state work tirelessly to oppress its citizens. A crucial question which develops out of this
is: How many Kenyan students and teachers in Butere-Mumias' secondary schools have lost
confidence in the school system and how many view the school as a disciplinary device destined
to control citizens and to enhance the interests of those in power just as the bigger polity Kenya
does?
Mangua's works (discussed above) demonstrate the overwhelming diversity of identities in the
Kenyan post-colony. Richard Webner (1996) has captured this enormous diversity by arguing
that, indeed, ethnic identities are a very small fraction of the many identities mobilized in the
post-colonial politics in Africa. In the same vein, Achille Mbembe (1992) has recognized the
plurality of identities in post-independent Africa. Furthermore, in his masterpiece, In My
Father's House (1992), Ghanaian scholar, Kwame Appiah, highlights the issue of multiple
identities when he demonstrates that some of his close blood relatives have Kenyan, Norwegian,
Ghanaian, American, English and Yoruba ties. How can the Kenyan secondary school be
managed in ways that it highlights and embraces these multiple identities? The foregoing works
will be significant to the propcsed study.
Kottak and Kozaitis (1999) contend that we are in a post-modem era in which the world is in a
dynamic state. It is a world of people who have to manage multiple identities in relation to place
and context. Post modernity has blurred and broken down established rules and standards. It has
taken on a diversity of styles from different times and places. Post modernists favour the
"messier" and more playful way of doing things. This kind of description clearly fits our modem
27
youth - both teacher and student-who feel bothered by the stifling standards and expectations set
for them by modernist zealots.
2.5 Governmentality
It should be noted that any modem school administrative network serves the bigger goal of
securing the interests of the state. Indeed, the spirit of the state permeates through the school.
Thus, through the school, the state endeavours to achieve what Foucault calls 'governmentality'
of its population through the rigid control mechanism supervised by the school management
Governmentality could therefore be understood as being the way governments try to produce the
citizen best suited to fulfill those governments' policies or the organized practices (mentalities,
rationalities, and techniques) through which subjects are governed. In his lectures at the College
de France, Foucault often defined governmentality as the "art of government" in a wide sense,
i.e. with an idea of "government" that is not limited to state politics alone, that includes a wide
range of control techniques, and that applies to a wide variety of objects, from one's control of
the self to the "biopolitical" control of populations. In the work of Foucault (1991), this notion is
indeed linked h.; other concepts such as biopolitics and power-knowledge.
The concept of" governmentality" develops a new understanding of power. Foucault encourages
us to think of power not only in terms of hierarchical, top-down power of the state. He widens
our understanding of power to also include the forms of social control in disciplinary institutions
(schools, hospitals, psychiatric institutions, etc.) as well as the forms of knowledge. Power can
manifest itself positively by producing knowledge and certain discourses that get internalized by
28
individuals; it can also guide the behaviour of populations. This leads to more efficient forms of
social control, as knowledge enables individuals to govern themselves.
Contributing to the problematic of modern institutional discipline, Foucault does not see much
difference between the school and the prison. He argues that the emergence of the prison as the
form of punishment for every crime grew out of the development of discipline in the 18th and
19th centuries. He looks at the development of highly refined forms of discipline concerned with
the smallest and most precise aspects of a person's body.
Discipline, he suggests, developed a new economy and politics for bodies. Modem institutions
required that bodies must be individuated according to their tasks, as well as for training,
observation, and control. Therefore, he notes, discipline created a whole new form of
individuality for bodies, which enabled them to perform their duty within the new forms of
economic, political, and military organizations emerging in the modern age and continuing to
date.
The individuality discipline constructs for the bodies it controls has four characteristics, namely:
• eel.ular - determining the spatial distribution of the bodies
• organic - ensuring that the activities required of the bodies are "natural" for them
• genetic - controlling the evolution over time of the activities of the bodies
• combinatory - allowing for the combination of the force of many bodies into a
single massive force
Foucault suggests that this individuality can be implemented in systems that are officially
egalitarian, but which utilize discipline to construct non-egalitarian power relations.
29
Historically, the process by which the bourgeoisie became, in the course of the ts" century, the
politically dominant class was masked by the establishment of an explicit, coded and formally
egalitarian juridical framework, made possible by the organization of a parliamentary,
representative regime. But the development and generalization of disciplinary mechanisms
constituted the other, dark side of these processes. Foucault,(1977) notes that the general
juridical form that guaranteed a system of rights that were egalitarian in principle, was supported
by these tiny, everyday, physical mechanisms, by all those systems of micro-power that are
essentially non-egalitarian and asymmetrical that we call the disciplines.
In the school setting, both students and teachers bodies are often individuated to follow not just
a strict curriculum and rules but also carefully and systematically observe the stipulated routine
as described above. Foucault's argument is that discipline creates "docile bodies", ideal for the
new economics, politics and warfare of the modem industrial age - bodies which function in
factories, ordered military regiments, and school classrooms. But, to construct docile bodies, the
disciplinary institutions must be able to:
a) Constantly observe and record the bodies they control,
b) Ensure the internalization of the disciplinary individuality within the bodies being
controlled
That is, discipline must come about without excessive force through careful observation, and
molding of the bodies into the correct form through this observation. This requires a particular
form of institution, which Foucault argues, was exemplified by Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon.
30
The Panoptic on was the ultimate realization of a modem disciplinary institution. It allowed for
constant observation characterized by an "unequal gaze"; the constant possibility of observation.
Perhaps the most important feature of the Panopticon was that it was specifically designed so
that the prisoner could never be sure whether s/he was being observed or not. The unequal gaze
caused the internalization of disciplinary individuality, and the docile body required of its
inmates. This means one is less likely to break rules or laws if they believe they are being
watched, even if they are not. Thus, prisons, and specifically those which follow the model of the
Panopticon, provide the ideal form of modem punishment. Foucault argues that this is why the
generalized, "gentle" punishment of public work gangs gave way to the prison. It was the ideal
modernization of punishment, so its eventual dominance was natural.
In exarmrnng the construction of the pnson as the central means of criminal punishment,
Foucault builds a case for the idea that prison became part of a larger "carceral system" which
has become an all-encompassing sovereign institution in modem society. Prison is one part of a
vast network, including schools, military institutions, hospitals, and factories, which build a
panoptic society for its members. This system creates" ... disciplinary careers ... " (Ibid. 300) for
those locked within its corridors. It is operated under the scientific authority of medicine,
psychology and criminology. As well, it operates according to principles which ensure that it
" cannot fail to produce delinquents".(Ibid.:266) Delinquency, indeed, is produced when
social petty crime(such as taking wood in the lord's lands) is no longer tolerated, creating a class
of specialized "delinquents" which acts as the police's proxy in surveillance of society.
The structures which Foucault chooses to use as his starting positions help to highlight his
conclusions. In particular, his choice of the penal institution at Mettray, near Tours, is perfect as
31
a prison which helps to personify the carceral system. Within it is included the Prison, the
School, the Church, and the work-house (industry), all of which feature heavily in his argument.
The prisons at Neufchatel, Mettray, and Mettray Netherlands were perfect examples for
Foucault, because they even in their original state began to show the traits which Foucault was
searching for. They showed the body of knowledge being developed about the prisoners, creation
of the 'delinquent' class, and the disciplinary careers emerging.
Since its beginnings with Socrates, philosophy has typically involved the project of questioning
the accepted knowledge of the day. Later, Locke, Hume, and, especially, Kant developed a
distinctively modem idea of philosophy as the critique of knowledge. Kant's great
epistemological innovation was to maintain that the same critique that revealed the limits of our
knowing powers could also reveal necessary conditions for their exercise. What might have
seemed just contingent features of human cognition (for example, the spatial and tempore.
character of its objects) turn out to be necessary truths. Foucault, however, suggests the need to
invert this Kantian move.
Rather than asking what, in the apparently contingent, is actually necessary, he suggests asking
what, in the apparently necessary, might be contingent. The focus of his questioning is the
modem human sciences (biological, psychological, social). These purport to offer universal
scientific truths about human nature that are, in fact, often mere expressions of ethical and
political commitments of a particular society.
Foucault's "critical philosophy" undermines such claims by exhibiting how they are just the
outcome of contingent historical forces, and are not scientifically grounded truths. Thus, the
formal curriculum in our school system, demarcated by disciplines such as history, physics,
32
chemistry and biology represent a serious intellectual fraud which school managers are often
times compelled to impose on students. These disciplines, Foucault (1972) points out, do not in
any way represent any truth as they are expressions of the whims of the powerful people in
society
2.6 Role of the Media
According to Kottak and Kozaitis (1999), the media has the capacity to "propel a globally
spreading culture". It is those who control the media who are the "key gate keepers". They take
on roles played historically by political and religious leaders. They regulate public access to
information. They have the power to direct public attention toward some issues and away from
others. Thus, the West uses the media; in this case, the electronic media to develop
configurations that ultimately tend to dominate the rest of the world. It is these cultural
formations that the youth-teachers and students in Kenyan schools are continuously exposed to.
At the heart of the dominating Western cultural dispensations are deliberate tendencies to create
stereotypes as well as unfounded opinions about people, knowledge and human values. But
closely linked to the media is the world of internet. Eric Aseka (2005) contends that the internet
is a major source of criminal planning and communication. He adds that the internet cannot be
separated from the real world and real people. Yet it is obvious that this information super
highway called the internet is the one which spreads diverse cultural goods from the West. How
do these goods affect school management in Kenya? It is probably true the media-both print and
electronic- are some of the most powerful agents of globalization. There is little doubt that, in
our contemporary times, every school-going youth can hardly escape the overwhelming
influence of the media. Similarly, as high-lighted in The Globalist (September 7, 2001),all
33
members of the teaching fraternity in the modern school are constantly confronted by the
excessive cultural varieties posed by the newspaper, the magazine, the radio and, to an increasing
degree, the television It has to be appreciated that in its true manifestation, the media conveys to
society, diverse cultural values and goods that cannot be summarised in less than one simple
statement or terminology. Broadly, however, the media is itself a post-modern space on which
cultural plurality is unreservedly celebrated. It is a terrain where several truths and several
standpoints are negotiated, recognised, appreciated, chosen and contested.
Through media organs such as the radio, the newspaper or a television channel all issues of the
human experience- sports, music, leisure, politics, religion, education, war, people, science, art,
and business- are routinely highlighted. Thus every media instrument presents, in its own
diverse and unique way, the whole world to individuals and to given societies.
Evidently, one could find most of the world in a newspaper, a magazine, a radio station, and a
television network. Because the fundamental character of the modern media is its capacity to
collect human diversities and experience and highlight them under one roof, this development
has signified that the contemporary person is now able to make choices by deciding which
articles to read in a newspaper and which programs to listen to over the radio or which ones to
watch on television. Depending on which category of the human population one is looking at,
some newspaper articles, radio and television programs could stand out as more popular than
others. Indeed, programs which might be popular to the youth might be less attractive to adults.
For example, while adults might prefer to read newspaper articles or watch television programs
dealing with politics, and business ideas, the youth might chose to go for items related to
romance, sex, leisure, fashion and sports. The foregoing argument makes it untenable for
34
contemporary adults to assume the role of determining which program, item or article were
better for a particular category of people than the other.
Internet sites are private affairs that those who visit them often would not discuss them in public.
Like the radio and the television, the internet conveys a multiplicity of values which cut across
such domains as morality, aesthetics, politics, religion, science, art, sports and even violence.
Thus, a typical student in our modem secondary school is site upon many identities, negotiated
and contested as demonstrated by Appiah(1994) in the Annual Review of Anthropology. The
experience the students get on the net tends to shape them into different but diverse personalities.
Depending on the intensity of one's specific experience some identities tend to be more
pronounced and more explicit than others. Both students and teachers who have been
overexposed to the globalizing dispositions of the radio, the television and the internet have
become destabilizing agents of the disciplinary rigidity of the traditional school; they also exhibit
behavioural features of defiance, and are generally uncomfortable with the school rules and the
school curriculum
A recent survey by Kenya's authoritative research firm-Steadman- shows that at least 10.7
million Kenyan homes have access to either a rac'io or a television set (Daily Nation March 19,
2008). According to the same source, 7.5 million possess radios while 3.2 million others have
television sets (see figure 2.1).
35
Email Addresses among Students
• Television
media in
Kenyan Home
Radio media
in Kenya
Homes
Figure 2.1: Possession of Radio and Television in Kenyan Homes
Of the homes with radios, 5.5 million are in the rural areas while 1.9 million are in towns. On the
other hand, 1.8 million television set owners are in rural areas while 1.4 million live in urban
centres (Ibid)
Besides, Kenya now has 14 television and 63 radio stations. Furthermore, in terms of readership,
2.2 million urban dwellers read newspapers every day as compared to 2.6 million in the rural
areas who read newspapers every day ( see figure 2.2).
Daily Readership of Newspapers (Millions)
2.7
2.6
2.6
2.2
• Rural Re.aders
l Urban Readers
2.5
2.4
2.3
2.2
2.1
2.0
Rural Readers Urban Readers
Figure 2.2: Daily readership of newspapers (millions)
36
As agents of globalization, the radio, television and the newspaper have collectively consumed
all the attention and energies of our youth.
Writing on the same issue, the Globalist (September 7,2001) echoed similar sentiments when it
observed that in most households that had a television set, the scene was the same all over the
globe. It pointed out that kids stare at the "magic box" for hours on end mesmerized! , In most
Third World countries such as Kenya, exposure to radio is even more manifest because many
average families can afford to purchase this crucial instrument. Consequently, whether in school
or at home, many youth cannot escape the powerful influences of radio and television and print
media.
There is little doubt that the electronic media conveys specific cultural goods and values from all
over the world. However, depending on where one is, some of these goods and values are often
given more prominence than others. Because of poor financial and technological abilities, most
media houses operating within the formerly colonized spaces of Asia and Africa are profoundly
dependent on or are mere extensions of the information regimes of the West.
Through these linkages, electronic media in Africa propagates the cultural values of Europe and
America by penetrating not only the African citizenry but also influencing such critical
institutions as the school. That is how the West has been able to control and wield power over
the African continent. Notably most of the Western media presents to the world an African
continent which is prominent for violence, intellectual disability, disease and poverty. Besides,
the Euro American media portrays the fallacy that Africa could actually overcome the foregoing
problems by embracing Western cultural and technological values. Therefore it is hardly
37
.._- .....
surprising that every African child aspires to embrace something or somebody European reduce
human existence to some all- embracing common denominators.
Michel Foucault decries the tendency of modernity and modernist institutions to levelize and
reduce human existence to some all-embracing common denominators. In his informative work,
The Archaeologv of Knowledge (1972:3-9), Foucault celebrates difference and condemns
totalizations, normalizations and universalizations including those envisaged in such modernist
institutions as the school. The responses received from the students in the area of study reflects
the reality that, indeed, unless re-invented, such institutions of modernity as the school might be
coming to an end, (or is it the case of Nietzche's God is Dead?) as more and more seek to do
things which in the consideration of the management could be cases of indiscipline.(See
Nietzche,2002)
In the realm of Michel Foucault, another French Post-structuralist, Jean Jacques Derrida (1997)
insists that every text is undecidable in the sense that it conceals conflicts within it between
different authorial voices. He adds that every text is a contested terrain in the sense that what it
appears to 'say' on the surface cannot be understood without reference to the concealment and
contextualization of meanings going on simultaneously to mark the text's significance, The
youth are left to make their o~n meaning out of what they read and in the end make decisions
that frequently become issues of concern for school managers.
Depending on the intensity of one's specific expenence some identities tend to be more
pronounced and more explicit than others. Both students and teachers who have been
overexposed to the globalizing dispositions of the radio, the television and the internet have
become destabilizing agents of the disciplinary rigidity of the traditional school; they also exhibit
38
behavioural features of defiance, and are generally uncomfortable with the school rules and the
school curriculum
2.7.0 Disciplinary Challenges
2.7.1 Music
Contemporary discourse on global cultural flows and related outcomes has moved to the centre
stage in scholarly research. It is a discourse that implores scholars to focus on some of the
fundamental world views on globalization and the links among different communities in the
world as well as ramifications of such links.
In his seminar paper Richard Ssewakirianga,(1999) contends that music was one of the fastest
moving cultural artefacts in contemporary times. The space that music occupies in this trajectory
is a very central one. Music has subverted the notion of national boundaries and transformed
existing spaces and contexts to allow for the emergence of new identities. For the young people
in a district like Butere-Mumias, music has become a genre that liberates and allows self
assertion. Global popular music has had a great influence on the youth
The dissemination of music produced in the United States of America is perceptively on the
increase and products are marketed through sale of music videos, cassettes and compact disks.
The very "Western genres" are promoted in the radio and television stations. Soap operas,
comedy shows, music time movies and sports shows are very popular among youth viewers. In
retrospect, Ssewakirianga avers that the popular entertainment genres have some common
39
constitutions; which express vulgarity, sexual resonance, preposterous violence and good time's
symbolisms. (Ibid: 24)
Some of the good times symbolisms include, care free teenage/youth sex, pregnancies, unions
and drug abuse. These can be associated with the youth music stars like Aaliyah who at age 15
was already famous and hooked to a man many years her senior in a shaky relationship
(http://w\\lw.africansisters.comlAalivah.html). The other case is that of Brenda Fassie who until
her death a few years ago had got herself hooked to drugs and a carefree life
(http://'A''VVw.southafrica.info/what happening/arts-entertainment). Aaliyah and Fassie are some
of the most adored models of our youthful teachers and students. The question is, will the youth
in our school glorify Aaliyah, Brenda Fassie, Whitney Houston, and Bobbie Brown or will they
take their conservative head or class teachers as role models?
2.7.2 Soccer and other sports
There is no doubt the game of football has become a global sport with wide appeal to both the
young and the old. In an average high school, one would find that two out of every three youths
know something about world football and its celebrities. A lot of high school youth tend to
glorify soccer sta.s not just for their prowess but more so for their anti-establishment behaviours.
Indeed more youth appear to admire the anti-social activities of the soccer stars. (Oranga 0.1,
March 23' 2007)
Commenting on massive dissent by the youth, Biaya (1999:32-38) contends that Basketball stars
and fans alike in South Africa have idolised Dennis Rodman of Chicago Bulls not just for his
talent as a sportsman but for his eccentricity, brutal violence, hostile manner and antisocial
escapades. Rodman is a role model not only to the basketball team but also to the young people
40
in the street gang. This is no different from our Kenyan youth who also idolise local soccer icons
such as Dennis Oliech and a host of influential players in European leagues. Any type of
behaviour these celebrities exhibit is thus bound to influence the youth. How can managers make
sure that only the most desirable aspects of the stars' behaviour are copied by the youth?
2.7.3 Fashion
Young school-going African youth have tended to associate certain fashion modes to vitality.
Indeed, every youth hairstyle and dress mode are themselves cultural statements which might,
among other messages, convey signals of violence, freedom and sexuality.
Those who adorn/go for particular art forms and hairstyles - Reggae:Bob Marley, Rap:
BIG/Tupac Shakur, Boxing: Mike Tyson, Basketball: Dennis Rodman, subjugate and symbolize
an African identity and an art form in which violence is the key to contemporary.
T.K.Biaya(l999) further states that these art forms tend to point the way for male and female
identity in Africa. But these contextualised borrowings tend to link young Africans to the rest of
the world they feel they are an integral part of. Yet some hairstyles have been adorned by the
youth as a sign of protest.
Today it is a con-men to hear French speaking Africans using the word "coiffe headdress". This
new usage, which comes from a misreading of a sign on the window of a Congolese hairdresser
in Paris, refers to any hairstyle that differs from the conventional hairstyles worn by people who
are not in touch with the latest fashions. This cultural authentication of a misinterpreted term
goes to show just how much power it conveys in the world of young people who are at odds with
their own society and want to keep in touch with society's globalizing world (ibid:37).
41
Besides, many youth now want to express their youth by wearing tight swim-suits and mini
clothes that expose vital parts of their bodies to the full.
2.7.4 Divergent Views on Indiscipline
Ask Kenyans what worries them most about the public schools, and the answer might surprise
you: discipline. The recent spate of unrest in Kenya's schools attests to this. Citing grievances
ranging from poor administration, poor diet to fear of the mock examinations, students in several
schools in the country went on strike at various times between June and July 2008, causing
massive destruction of property worth millions of shillings. Although the strikes in the past have
been a common feature of Kenya's secondary schools, the 2008 incidents looked rather intense,
well organized and ruthless. In some cases, the strikes resulted in very bad injuries. In other
cases (Daily Nation, July8 2008) they led to the death of some students. For example in the
strike executed by the Upper Hill High school students, Noor Mohammed, the assistant school
captain and a form three student died as he tried to save other students who luckily escaped with
serious burns.
Though fortunately only a small percentage of schools will ever experience real violence, the
puoiic's sense that something has gone drastically wrong with school discipline isn't mistaken.
Reacting to the increased rate of violent strikes, that resulted into loss of lives during the months
of June and July 2007, Kenya's Minister for Basic education Prof. Sam Ongeri, (People's
Daily, July 2008) attributed strikes in schools and educational institutions to: fear of mock
examinations; weak institutional management; political and other influences; drugs and
substance abuse; misuse of mobile phones; and child abuse The Minister's comments came
42
against the backdrop of concerns that in the month of June 2008 alone, the country had recorded
close to 300 strikes in secondary schools (Ibid).
Persuaded that the mobile phone had something to do with the unrest, the Minister banned the
use of mobile handsets in schools. Prof. Ongeri also directed schools to stop buying luxury buses
fitted with television sets and powerful music systems, urging schools to hand over to police
students who either organized or took part in violence(Itenewsafrica.com October 2,2008)The
same source reports that during the third week of July 2008 alone, more than 20 schools had
been closed countrywide.
The Minister for Gender, Children and Social Development- Esther M. Mathenge - reacted to the
rising cases of strikes by condemning those who had began advocating for the return of corporal
punishment and caning in schools. In a policy statement, (Unrest in Secondary Schools in Kenya
2008) she observed that:
The discipline of our children both in school and at home is determined by many
factors. Among these factors parental upbringing lays the most important basis for
the discipline of the child. Beyond the home, the social environment plays another
fundamental role in shaping the child's character. Corporal punishment has been
used for long in our society both at home and outside the precincts of home to
"instill" discipline. Compliance through caning is often mistaken for discipline.
However, research has shown that this form of violent approach to "discipline" is
counter- productive in the long run. Corporal punishment dehumanize s the child,
is brutal and instills fear in the child which inhibits the child's normal growth and
productivity. Most proponents of corporal punishment are losing sight of the very
basic fact that approaches of instilling discipline abound in our midst. Guidance
and counseling is yet to be fully embraced in our schools, yet it is one of the best
methods of reforming children.
Further, the Minister noted that:
In several international treaties that Kenya has ratified, corporal punishment has
been regarded as a form of physical violence against children. The World Heahh
Organization defines physical abuse as the intentional use of physical force
against a child that results in or has likelihood of resulting into harm of the child's
health, survival, development or dignity, examples include hitting, beating,
43
kicking, shaking, biting, strangling, scalding, burning, poisoning and suffocating.
The Children's Act of2001 categorizes corporal punishment as a form of violence
against children. It is against this understanding that the Act outlaws it. The
Ministry of Education adhered to the Children Act 2001 by banning corporal
punishment in Kenyan Schools through Legal Notice No. 56 of 2001. This notice
effectively repealed Legal Notice No. 40 of 1972 which had introduced corporal
punishment into the Education Act (Ibid).
Evidently, these conflicting views about indiscipline in schools demonstrate the clash between
the traditional school system and the emerging counter-movement of global values in learning
institutions. How is the school manager supposed to harmonize the two forces? What's been
lost is the educators' crucial role of passing on cultural values to the young and instructing them
on how to behave through innumerable small daily lessons and examples, (Obiero, O.J J 2 August
2008). If the children become disruptive and disengaged, who can be surprised?
The rising spate of indiscipline has forced head teachers in Kenya to press the alarm bell.
Cleophas Tirop(Daily Nation July 2008), national chairman of the Kenya Secondary School
Heads Association lamented:
In June we had an average of 10 cases of unrest daily compared to about two last
year. The trend is worrying as incidents of burning down .school property are now
the preferred choice of many students in expressing grievances.
Tirop warned that indiscipline in Kenyan schools had reached i..unanageable levels, arguing that
teachers were unable to enforce discipline as their hands were tied by the law. He alluded to the
legal impediments occasioned by the Children's Act, which was passed in 2001. The Act
outlawed caning in schools. Tirop lamented that:
Teachers dare not punish a student lest they be dragged to court. They can neither
cane nor use other forms of punishment as these amounts to abuse according to
the law (Ibid).
44
The heads Association chief accused parents of being too liberal and for unnecessarily
pampering their children.
On his part, the Kenya National Union of Teachers Secretary-General Francis
Ng'ang'a(NewsfrornAfrica July 2008) observed that in the previous year, court rulings evoking
the Children's Act had undermined disciplinary measures against students and laid the
foundation for lawlessness in schools. The Children's Act which became law a few years ago has
thus expanded the due-process rights of students in Kenya_Students have learned that, if a school
official does something they did not like, they could sue him, or at least threaten to do so. But
lawmakers have failed to see how they were radically destabilizing traditional relations between
adults and children and thus eroding school discipline. Ngang'a observes thus:
Parents have given too much freedom to their children. They are accompanying
them to entertainment joints, where they are exposed to all sorts of behavior. They
must come back to their senses and realize that they are ruining their children.
(Ibid)
Experts say that liberal parents, the ban on caning, some provisions in the Children's Act, and
lack of role models of high moral integrity are some of the factors that have robbed teachers of
the power to correct wayward students .But parents said they were preoccupied with the quest to
feed their families and had little time to monitor their children. Indeed, in its current form,
globalization glorifies money' and promotes the reckless admiration of unrestricted life at the
unfortunate cost of breaking down family values. According to Mr. Musau Ndunda,(O.I June
2008) the secretary-general of the Kenya National Association of Parents (KNAP):
It is true that as parents we have failed in our responsibility. We are too busy
looking for money and we prefer to put our children in boarding schools the
moment we notice signs of indiscipline. .
45
The apathy expressed by teachers and parents paints a grim picture of the country's future and
that of millions of youths currently in school, who are now running wild, burning schools,
engaging in sex and sinking deep into drug and alcohol abuse( Sitati, 0.1 23rd May 2007).
A recent study by Africa Mental Health Foundation gave credence to concerns over runaway
indiscipline. The findings revealed that school children as young as 11years were falling prey to
drug abuse. The study warned of major economic costs and loss of the country's workforce if
urgent measures are not taken to reverse the trend. It also backed teachers' assertions that parents
were "dumping" their children in schools, never making any follow up on disciplinary cases.
Other studies have shown that children whose parents were highly educated were most at risk.
About 43 per cent of students whose parents had a university degree abused alcohol compared to
23.6 per cent whose parents had a high school education. The researchers concluded that highly
educated parents were too busy with their careers to give attention to their children. Educated
parents, too, tended to give their children a lot of pocket money and allowed them to go out
without supervision.
Another report released by the Centre for the Study of Adolescents(Daily Nation July 2008)
revealed that more than 56 per cent of secondary school girls engaged in sex .. Teachers say that
difficulties in enforcing discipline increased as students progressed up the learning ladder, with
students in Form Four reporting major problems related to drugs, alcohol abuse, bullying and
sneaking out of school.
School bureaucracies have struggled to restore the discipline that the courts and parents have
taken away, but their efforts have only alienated students and undermined adult authority even
46
more. Discipline enforcers have to go through long procedures of due process: hearings, specific
charges, witnesses, and appeals. In many schools, teachers are intimidated by their students. Out
of fear of retaliation, they fail to report problems or ignore them hoping that the students
responsible would quit the bad behaviour by themselves. Because of the raised awareness of the
civil rights of children, the law requires adults to go through expensive, time-consuming and
confusing procedures in regard to school discipline. (Chitechi, O.L October 102007)
These legal procedures do protect the rights of children, but make it very difficult to stop school
discipline problems. Very simply; too many adults fail to model the behaviors they want from
students. Modeling the rules that students are to follow should be required of all adults. All
adults in a community, especially parents and teachers, need to model integrity and honesty.
Because of internal administrative problems or lack of procedures, many school officials fail to
enforce the rules or punish students for infractions. Some fear lawsuits from parents; others just
don't care, or they're "burned out". Studies have shown that many rules are not strictly enforced.
Lots of school and classroom rules don't make sense to students. Some discipline codes are
"fuzzy" and not clear on expectations and punishments.
Worse, the influence of lawyers over school discipline means that educators speak to children in
an unrecognizable language, far removed from the straight talk about right and wrong that most
children crave. Nowhere is there any indication that adults are instilling in the young, qualities
they believe in and consider integral to a good life and a decent community. The effect of the
global collapse of adult authority on kids is practically to guarantee their mistrust and alienation.
Schools in this country, particularly high schools, tend to become what sociologist James
Coleman called an "adolescent society," dominated by concern with dating, sex, and
47
consumensm. The loss of adult guidance makes it certain that adolescent society-more
powerful than ever, if we're to believe television shows as Passion, The Bold and The Beautiful
and Miami Sands, Nunca te dire Adios-will continue in its sovereignty.
Quaking before the threat of lawsuits and without support from their superiors, educators hesitate
to assert the most basic civic and moral values that might pose a challenge to the crude and
status-crazed peer culture. When they do talk, it is in a language that doesn't make any sense to
kids and cannot possibly compel their respect.
2.8 Role of Culture
Chattarjee (1993) looks at the powerful cultural products of nationalist imagination in Asia and
Africa. He laments the tendency by Western modernity to normalize diverse practices into a
homogeneous national culture supervised in the end by the post-colonial state. During this
experience, the post-colony undertakes to suppress identities of subordinate groups. The school,
it is evident, was one instrument through which the nation-state in Kenya was used to ensure the
Western control of its colonial subjects. Now, within the post-independence dispensation, the
school still seems to serve the purpose of being a devise through which the ruling elite and
powerful people control its youthful citizens. We shall shortly explore how this experience is
taking place in the secondary schools of Kenya's Butere-Mumias District and the challenges
school managers are confronting, as a result.
Anthony King (1991) interrogates the problematic of culture and globalization by presenting the
views of theoreticians from diverse disciplines including cultural studies, sociology, history,
cinema' and anthropology. In addressing the relevance of different prisms and categories
(ethnicity, race, gender, class and nation), King highlights the heterogeneity of space in the
48
nation-state, which also implies multiple identities. The struggles between the local and the
national, the national and the international are clearly demonstrated. This study benefits from
this rich analytical data in interrogating the Kenyan school system.
2.9 Other Sources
Other works in related fields include Muigai (1995), Radhakrishnan (1993), Kisiang'ani (2002),
Shohat (1992), Shaobo (1997), Manchuelle (1993), Evans (1997), Bartky (1994), Leys (1975),
Fawcet, (1989), Carmichael et'al (1991), Mbembe (1999) and Barkhan, (1992), Bagola (1983),
Aseka (2005). Data from these sources will variously be utilized to enrich the study.
2.10 Summary and Conclusion
This section has attempted to discuss III detail media reports on indiscipline in varIOUS
educational institutions. It has highlighted the reality that school managers are confronting a
serious disciplinary situation yet very little effort has been made to investigate the role of
globalization in this emerging situation. Furthermore in interrogating the crisis of indiscipline in
schools, a lot of attention has been focused on students yet it seems apparent that the teachers
have also been subject to disciplinary concerns.
The role of the government in attempting to confront the problem of indiscipline in schools has
been discussed. Although the government appreciates that there was indiscipline in schools, it
has not sponsored research to explore the global dimensions of this problem. It has also been
pointed out that research projects in the local universities have in equal measure overlooked the
impact of globalization on school discipline. The literature review we have provided recognises
the power of globalization among the youth and appreciates the need to investigate the influence
49
of global values on the traditional school in Kenya. In doing so, the research hopes to explore
ways in which school managers could face the challenges of globalization without destabilizing
the school system.
50
CHAPTER THREE
METHODOLOGY
3.0 Introduction
This chapter describes the following: the research methodology which includes the design of the
study locale, target population, sample population, sampling procedures, research instruments,
piloting, reliability and validity of research instruments, data collection and analysis procedures.
3.1 Design of the study
The methodology of carrying out any research depends on the type of study. This is a non-
experimental or descriptive survey to find out the issues and challenges posed by globalization
that head teachers face with regard to indiscipline in schools in the Butere-Mumias District.
Survey studies are conducted to determine and report things the way they are (Mugenda and
Mugenda 1999). A survey is also used to collect data about opinions, attitudes, practices and
suggestions for improvements using a large sample. Therefore, the research design for this study
is appropriate because the researcher employed it to effectively identify the effects r":'
globalization on discipline in schools in Butere-Murnias. Further the design has also been applied
to investigate the disciplinary issues and challenges the school managers face in the district under
review. The researcher has undertaken to report the way the situation is without manipulating the
respondents. Data was thus collected on the effect of globalization on teacher discipline, effect of
globalization on student discipline and opinion of managers on globalization and student and
teacher discipline.
51
Besides, the researcher has utili sed data from secondary sources. Secondary data was mainly
harnessed from local libraries in Nairobi including, the Moi Library at Kenyatta University, the
Macmillan Library and libraries at the Nation and Standard newspaper premises in Kenya's
capital city, Nairobi. There is little doubt that this study has also benefited from the enormous
data, on the problematic of globalization that is readily available on the Internet.
3.2 Variables
The variables are the two competing forces of globalization namely the traditional (modem) and
neo-liberal (post-modem) variants and their impact on the discipline of the youth in schools. The
two forces are independent variables while the youth in either of the forces are dependent
variables
3.3 Study Locale
The study area is Butere/Mumias District of Western Province which has four constituencies -
Matungu, Mumias, Butere and Khwisero. Butere-Mumias was chosen because two of the
constituencies - Matungu and Mumias - are fairly cosmopolitan in that they border Mumias
Sugar Factory which employs personnel from across the country, and to smaller degree beyond.
Most o.' their children end up in schools in the constituencies. The researcher chose Butere-
Mumias District because she teaches there and so was interested in the development and quality
of education in the area. It is important to note the district has since been split into Butere,
Matungu and Mumias following President Kibaki's pronouncements earlier in the year.
52
3.4 .0 Target Population
3.4.1 Schools
Butere/Mumias has a total of 62 public secondary schools with an average total of 62100
students and 1292 teachers. The target population is therefore in the 62 public schools (see
Table3.l).
Table 3.1 Number of Secondary Schools in Matungu, Mumias, Butere and Khwisero
constituencies
Constituency Boys' Girls' MixedlDaylBoardi Total
Boarding Boarding ng
Matungu 2 2 11 15
Butere 2 2 10 14
Khwisero "'I "'I 10 16.) .)
Mumias "'I 5 9 17.) -ACCUMILATED TOTAL 62
Source: Butere-Mumias District Education Office
3.4.2: Respondents
The study population consists of all head teachers, deputy head teachers and teachers of the
selected schools of Butere-Mumias District and all students.
3.5.0 Sample Population
3.5.1 Schools
A total of twelve schools were involved in the study. There were four girls' boarding schools,
four boys' boarding schools and four mixed/day/boarding schools as selected from the four
constituencies that make up Butere-Mumias District. The breakdown of the schools is depicted in
table 3.2 below
53
...--- - =, Catezorv of-schools, , ,:,' c» ~ •
; Constituency Girls' hoarding Bovs' boarding Mixed/day/hoarding Total
" - , ., <;'< ..
Matungu 1 1 1 "j
Mumias , 1 ," , I 1 '".J
Butere 1 1 1 ..,.J
Khwisero 1 1 ..,,i ,)
Total " 4 4 4 12
Table 3.2 Total Number of Schools Selected for the Study
3.5.2 Respondents
The study involved twelve head teachers or deputy head teachers, twelve head prefects, forty
eight teachers from the targeted twelve schools. Several students were individually interviewed
or generally involved in Focus Group Discussions. Head teacher/deputy head teachers, deal with
disciplinary issues of both teachers and students. They therefore gave information on how they
thought globalization affected the discipline of both the teachers and students in their schools.
Because head prefects are part of the disciplinary forces of schools, they were also interviewed
on various issues of student discipline.
3.6.0 Sampling Procedure
3.6.1 Sampling of Schools
Simple random sampling through balloting was used to select the schools in each constituency to
be involved in the study. To ensure equal representation in proportion to the total number in each
constituency, the schools were stratified according to girls' boarding, boys' boarding and
mixed/day/ boarding.
54
A study by Gay (1976) suggests that for descriptive research under which survey studies fall, a
sampleof ten (10) percent of the population is considered minimum, while twenty (20) percent
may be required for a small population. Gay does not show how he arrived at ten percent of the
population and also does not define what a small population is. At her own discretion, the
researcher selected for study, twelve schools, representing 19% of the total sample.
Figure 3.1: Sampling of Schools
Simple random sampling was used to select the boys' boarding and girls' boarding schools. To
select single boys' boarding school and the single girls boarding school, papers were folded
according to the number of schools with all except one marked NO. The one marked YES was
selected. The same was done in selecting the mixed school.
3.6.2 Sampling of Respondents
The researcher targeted all head teachers/deputy head teachers and head prefects from the sample
schools to determine the sample size of the study. All head teachers/deputy head teachers and
55
'il •••••• _ _ _ _
head prefects of the sample schools were selected for the study through purposive sampling.
Simple random sampling through balloting was used to select four teachers and 19% of the total
student population in the sample school. To ensure equal representation in proportion to the
entire population of the teachers of the schools of study, the teachers were stratified according to
gender, while students sampled according to classes in the same sex schools and classes and
gender in the mixed schools.
3.7 Research Instruments
The following research instruments were used in data collection:
• Questionnaire samples
• Interview schedules
• Focus Group Discussions (FGD)
There were two questionnaires:
• One for students
• One for head prefects
One interview schedule:
• One for the head teacher/deputy head teacher
There were two Focus Group Discussions:
• One for students
• One for teachers
56
3.7.1 The Questionnaire
The ideal questionnaire for this study is one that is widely used in educational research to obtain
information about certain phenomena, conditions and practices and to investigate into
motivations. feelings, opinions, attitudes and practices of an individual or a group (See Kothari
1989). Some of the issues this study has investigated include establishing students' knowledge of
globalization and its effects on the discipline in schools.
The questionnaire consists of open and close-ended items. The open-ended items were used
because they allowed the respondents the freedom to respond to the items in their own words.
This revealed certain information and feelings that could not be captured in close-ended items.
The questionnaire was divided into two sections:
Part A: Background information.
Part B: Information about globalization and discipline.
3.7.2 Interview Schedules
The interview schedule was used to provide in-depth information that could not be captured
through the use of questionnaires. These yielded higher responses because the researcher had the
opportunity to explain to the respondents the nature and purpose of the study and to clarify
meaning of items that might otherwise be misinterpreted.
One interview schedule was administered for the head teacher/deputy head teacher. The
interview schedules were deliberately semi-structured so as to harness wide, varying, holistic and
57
in-depth information on the effects of globalization and school discipline and to explore how
these pose challenges to school managers.
3.7.3 Focus Group Discussions
Focus Group Discussions were arranged for teachers and students. In both cases, the researcher
operated as a regulator. During these discussions the researcher raised questions about
globalization, school curriculum, school routine, school prefects, and school rules among other
things. This helped the researcher to gauge the conflicts between globalization and the traditional
school management practices in the Butere-Mumias District's secondary schools. In total, 480
students participated in various Focus Group Discussions.
3.7.4 Validity ofthe Research Instruments
Content validity is the extent to which the research instrument measures what it is supposed to
measure. The researcher's supervisor and a research methodology specialist were used to
establish how well the items reflect or are related to the objectives of the study. The views of the
specialists were analyzed without reference to any of them. Their comments were incorporated in
the final instruments. Reliability of the Research Instruments
3.7.5 Reliability of Research Instrum t nts
Reliability is the degree to which a test consistently measures whatever it sets out to measure
(Kothari 1989; Orodho 2004; Mugenda and Mugenda 1999). To test the reliability of the
questionnaire or interview schedule, the researcher codified all responses to the open-ended
items. A split half correlation co-efficient was calculated by splitting the items into two
according to odd and even and then applied the Spearman Brown Proficiency Formula to
58
determine the correlation co-efficiency. A co-efficiency of internal consistency of 0.71 and
above was accepted.
3.7.6 Piloting
Piloting is done to measure the validity of the instruments, to ensure that they are clear to the
respondents. Piloting helps to eliminate the ambiguous questions. The result of the pilot study
helped to establish any weaknesses in the research tools basing on the way the respondents
respond to them. The pilot study was also used to estimate the amount of time the respondents
took to respond to the items of the instruments. Appropriate changes/adjustments were made
where necessary, prior to the administration of the tools. The researcher conducted her pilot
study in a mixed day boarding school as it assured her of a balanced representation - it had
boarding boys, boarding girls, day boys and day girls. It was quite convenient since it only
required a one day visit to the school
3.8. Data Collection Procedure
Data collection from each school selected for the study took several days depending on the
administrative schedules of the school. In some cases, the researcher had to visit schools and
respondents several times in 'order to get the data required. The researcher began by obtaining
permission from the head teacher or deputy head teacher.
The questionnaire for students and head students was handed over to the deputy head teacher,
with ~xplanations about the purpose of the study and how to respond to the items. The
respondents were asked to respond to the questionnaire within the stipulated time to minimize
59
consultations among targeted students and teachers. The interview schedules to the head teacher
and the deputy head teacher were personally administered by the researcher. For clarity, the
researcher posed probing questions and each interview schedule lasted between twenty and
twenty-five minutes.
The Focus Group Discussions for the teachers and students were organised by the deputy head
teacher. For large classes students could be broken into small groups supervised by the deputy
head teacher or the researcher herself. However, small classes were themselves treated a
complete Focus Groups Discussions which were assembled during games time. The teachers on
the other hand met after school. The duration of FGDs was approximately forty minutes. At all
times, the researcher made sure the confidentiality of the respondents was sustained.
3.8.1 Methods of Data Analysis
Part of the data was analyzed at the time of collection. Qualitative data analysis was used to
scrutinize the open-ended data. To review the objectives, data was categorized according to
research questions of the study. On the other hand, to analyse content, the researcher examined
the intensity with which certain words, points of view and emotionally- laden words were used.
Data collected from this research was manually coded and tabulated. To analyse the data,
descriptive statistics were used. Results were presented in simple percentages, column charts and
bar charts for they are deemed suitable in large data (See Peil, 1982: 18).
Mean averages and totals provided the entry points for analysis. Calculations were in percentage
forms of exposure to globalization and percentage forms of the effect of the same aspect on
60
discipline in schools. This formed the basis upon which data was obtained and analysed and
appropriate recommendations made.
61
CHAPTER FOUR
DATA ANALYSIS, PRESENTATION OF FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
THE MODERN SCHOOL AND GLOBAL VALUES IN THE BUTERE -
MUMIAS DISTRICT
4.1 Introduction
As stated in chapter 1, this study is based on three research questions namely:
• What are the effects of globalization on secondary school discipline?
• What are the disciplinary challenges faced by secondary school managers in handling
both teachers students influenced by globalization?
• How could these challenges be effectively confronted In order to enhance efficient
management of secondary schools in Butere Mumias district?
The purpose of the study was to investigate the issues and challenges which global values have
"
possed not just for secondary school teachers but also for their managers as well.
4.2.0 Effects of Globalization on Secondary School Discipline
The first research question intended to establish the effects of globalization on secondary school
discipline. The two major agents of globalization that have had effect on student and teacher
discipline are the radio & television and the internet.
62
4.2.1 Background Information: The Modern Secondary School
A typical Kenyan high school begins with space. The school space is a well demarcated
arrangement together with boundaries and fences. Inside the fence are buildings serving different
purposes. They also have playgrounds on which certain sports are played under strict rules.
At the top of the administrative ladder of the Kenyan high school was a school head teacher,
commonly referred to as the principal. The role of the head teacher is to make sure the school
runs smoothly by observing all rules and regulations of the state-approved education system and
by ensuring the required curriculum and instruction are executed. This s/he does with assistance
of the Deputy Head, teachers and prefects.
In the schools we visited, a well coordinated curriculum system approved by the government was
in place. Two forms of curriculum were evident. The formal curriculum composed of subjects
taught in the various classrooms which ran from Form one to Form four and the informal
curriculum which includes clubs and sports.
Although schools treated the informal curriculum as important, great administrative energy went
into the efficient execution of the academic curriculum. This was because the formal curriculum
had been sufficiently designed to execute the mental control of the students. In essence, once the
mental control had been realized, physical control became easier to achieve.
There was also a school routine that stipulated the time and place where approved activities
could be undertaken. Two things are worth mentioning with regard to the school routine was the
strict language code and the imposing presence of the bell But probably the most interesting
63
feature of the school routine was the fact that all students had, at all times, to be in uniform. In all
the twelve schools, it was almost sacrilegious for a student to decline wearing uniform. Besides,
while students had the liberty to choose what to eat at their respective homes, in school they
could only eat what was offered by the institution.
4.2.2 Radio and Television
In the Butere Mumias district we looked at the issue of electronic media by interrogating both the
students and the teachers on the degree of youth exposure to both the radio and television
materials. All the twelve head teachers representing 100% of the targeted group reported that
they frequently allowed their students to listen to school radios. Out of the same number, six
head teachers representing 50% of the total reported that their schools had purchased television
sets for school use. The head teachers intimated that they allowed the students to frequently
watch news on television and view various sports, cultural and religious programmes.
Similarly, out of the total number of 480 students interviewed on the same subject, 300 of them
representing 62 % clearly stated that they had unrestricted access to television viewing in their
homes ( see figure 4.1)
64
Students Access to Television in their homes
38%
III Students with
Televisions in
their homes
Students
without
62% Televisions in
their homes
Figure 4.1: Student access to Television in their homes
When asked which programmes the head teachers allowed them to listen to on radio and watch
on television, the students generally signified restricted access to radio programmes and singled
out teacher preferences for wrestling, soccer matches, rugby matches and Christian programs
especially those coming on the weekends. While confirming unrestricted access to radio
programmes in their homes, students reported varied degrees of restrictions to some television
shows.
Indeed, the students said that despite the parental restrictions, they had invented ways of
watching their favourite prograrnrnes including such romantic soap operas as the Bold and
Beautiful, Cuando Seas Mia, My Three Sisters, Neighbours, Miami Sands, name it. Some of
these prograrnrnes tend to portray explicit sexual scenes like caressing, kissing and love- making
which the school system discourages. Furthermore, in many of these shows, the characters are
not model students acceptable to the school system but men and women swallowed in romance,
65
merrymaking, violence, power and fashion shows (see www.theboldandbeautiful.com,
www.imbd.com).
4.2.3 The Internet
The Internet is also a major area that has greatly affected the youth. The media is awash with
many features of globalization, most of which originate from Western Europe and North
America. These values are just a cyber or a button away from students and teachers.
The researcher learnt that 65 students out of the total 480 had email addresses. This gave a
percentage of 14% of the sample population (figure 4.2).
Email Addresses among Students
III Students with
email
addresses
Students
without email
addresses
Figure 4.2: Email address among students
Today our children are exposed to all manner of threats to their well-being, personal safety and
development-from drug abuse, smoking, gangs and school violence to online pornography,
66
- -- -_. "--_._, ..."'". '"
sexual experimentation; the list is endless. Their peers, the media, the Internet and other outside
influences challenge their resolve unrelentingly.
Thus, it is no exaggeration from the foregoing that many youths in the Butere Mumias District
schools might actually have already been swallowed by the globalizing instruments of
programmes and shows delivered through radio and television.
The critical question, however, to ask is about the impact of these influences on discipline in
schools. The impression got is that, first and foremost, all head teachers interviewed argued that
most of the radio and TV programmes were destructive to the youth. Yet, asked whether or not
they should be allowed unrestricted access to all radio and TV programmes, 86% of the students
we interviewed answered in the affirmative.
In one girls' school, we learned that, on weekends when they should he participating in school-
approved entertainment programmes, some girls opted to practise and rehearse roles of
characters in romantic TV programmes they had been banned from watching by both their
parents and teachers. Besides, some girls went further to redo their hair to match the perfection
of styles depicted by certain characters in the romantic TV programmes.
This cultural rebellion was notably occurring in a school setting which only allowed girls to
either cut their hair short or, like female prisoners, plait it into simple straight lines running from
the fore head to the back of the neck. Definitely, the traditional school routine structured in the
modernist standpoint does not allow apparent diversions from the normal school practices. In
many ways, the foregoing rebellion by the girls could easily be described as a form of
indiscipline by those who believe in the normalising dispositions of the modern school.
67
4.3 Disciplinary Challenges Faced By School Managers In Handling Both Teachers and
Students Influenced By Globalization.
The second research question purposed to validate the disciplinary challenges faced by managers
in handling both teachers and students influenced by globalization. Like the Foucaltian prison or
clinic, the modem school tends to work towards unities and uniformities. Carefully, the
managers tend to censor TV programs to be viewed by students as stipulated. When probed
concerning their view on these restrictions, 322 students out of the total 480- representing 2/3 or
67% of the total sample population- expressed displeasure at the apparently punitive measures
the schools' management had embraced ( see figure 4.3).
Students views on Television Censorship
350
300 322
250
200
150
158
• Students
comfortable
with Television
viewing
restri ctions
50
o
Students
uncomfortable
with Television
viewing
restri ctions
100
Students comfortable with Students uncomfortable with
Televisionviewing Televisionviewing
restrictions restrictions
Figure 4.3: Student views on Television censorship
The same number of respondents reported that whenever opportunities arose, the students
sneaked banned video materials into the schools. They somehow found time to listen to or even
view what was not allowed. In addition an FGD in one Girls Boarding School reported that at
68
times teachers were the source of these banned items. They were specific on the teacher's age,
the young and "understanding ones" (Sitati, 0.1 14 May 2007)
When interviewed on what they did to stamp out the contraband items, head teachers disclosed
that thorough checking of students belongings was often done at the gates before they were
allowed to enter the school compounds. In addition, impromptu checks were routinely done
within the term to make sure no student kept those banned items. However, despite these strict
inspection procedures, 8 out of the 12 head teachers we interviewed, representing 67%, still
observed that they had found students keeping the banned products in their desks, lockers and
even boxes (See figure 4.4). Some of the unethical materials included unmarked pornographic
tapes and highly explicit sexual magazines as Seen and Passions.
Incidents of bamed rmteriaIs il School
• Schools wihoU
bamed rMefiaI
Figure 4.4: Incidents of banned materials in schools
When asked to comment on what they did with the culprits, one head teacher observed that since
the distribution and viewing of sexually explicit materials was considered a major offence, those
69
found committing the crime were often reprimanded. Although the same head teacher was
unable to say the type of punishment meted out to those found in possession of offensive
materials, she reminisced with nostalgia the past decades when similar offences would attract
corporal punishment. She noted that such forms of punishment as uprooting tree stamps,
levelising school fields, digging deep holes were no longer allowed by the law (Okaalo 1. O.
August 29th 2007).
However. in three of the schools in which students had been found with sexually offensive
materials, the head teachers reported lack of parental support to deal with the problem as the
affected parents neither saw neither their children's offences nor the reason for school
management to involve them in managing the behaviour of their off-springs.
In the schools we visited. we discovered that the problem of alcohol and drug abuse had become
a worrying concern. Each of the 12 head teachers we interviewed reported varying degrees at"
alcohol and drug abuse in their schools, One head teacher observed that:
Surprisingly when we catch some students abusing drugs some parents feign
ignorance of the problem or out rightly become defensive of their children, Often.
such parents come to realize the depth of the problem when they have already lost
their children to alcohol and drug abuse (Orondo, 0. 1. J 8'" October :OOl
One head teacher cited the case of a parent who turned up after being summoned to witness the
illegal video materials the teachers had found his son with, On being reminded that his son was
a subject of disciplinary concerns because he kept unacceptable materials in his box. the parent
stormed out of the office and retorted: .Call me here only when Ill») son refuses to go to class. His
care business here is to go lO class' (Oranga. 01 28th May 2007), This clearly demonstrates that.
indeed many parents no longer find such items as sex videos and violent film clips offensive.
70
Consequently, instead of joining the school m~agers to force their children back on the 'right
track', parents are becoming uncomfortable with school rules so prevalent in the modem school.
(Akaranga 0.1, September 16, 2007)
The foregoing scenario pits the school management on one side and the youthful students, the
youthful teachers and to some extent the parents on the other. As a result, the head teachers find
themselves clashing with both the students, the teachers and the parents. Some of the
provocative, explicit and violent items found with the students had the express approval and
knowledge of the parents. Some parents, it was observed, felt that the youth should be left alone
to do as they pleased. as long what they did. did not interfere with their academic performance.
arguing that their children had a right to enjoy their freedom.(Namai 0.1, 2007) This view found
profound support among the youthful teachers (August 23) were privileged to interview.
From these findings it is not hard for one to imagine the enormous challenges a contemporary
school head teacher faces as he/she grapples with the problematic of handling a complex
institutional situation that is playground to complex modernist and post-modern dispositions. The
critical issue here is the extent to which the head teachers could effectively mediate amongst the
different and opposing situations and personalities obtaining within the terrain of a rigid
modernist school environment.
Should the head teachers support the position of the youthful teachers and students as well as
liberal parents or should the school masters. support the rigidity exemplified by the conservative
school routine and rules supplied and supported by the government?(Muganda 0.1.12 September
2007). Even. if the head teachers tried the middle position. how can they effectivelv strike a
7i
compromise between opposing positions without jeopardising their own employment? These and
many issues remain central to interrogating the crisis of discipline in our schools.
Print media has played an integral part in imparting global values to schools. These values have
had a great influence on student discipline which has consequently posited challenges for school
managers. All the schools that were involved in the study reported that they bought daily
newspapers for the teachers and students. The newspapers included the Daily Nation, The
Standard and the Kenya Times. These daily papers were always put on the library shelves. Two
schools out of the twelve schools subscribed to the Parents magazine issues.
In 51 FGDs out of the total 60. numerous reports of proscribed magazines being smuggled into
schools emerged. This number represents 408 of the total population since each FGD had a total
population of 8 students. This represents a total of 85% of the total sample population. The
print media topics that were mostly popular with students and youthful teachers included sports,
fashion. sex. music. and politics.
Indeed this appeared true because a typical Kenyan daily newspaper would have the following -
items covered - sports. business. politics. romance. fashion, death and others. Although one was
free to choose to read what they liked in a newspaper one was not Creeto do as they pleased in
school. When interrogated on what they liked about the topics they read in the newspapers.
various responses emerged. The male respondents - both students and youthful teachers
expressed admiration for the football stars' prowess in juggling the ball. They, in addition,
adored some stars for their roughness when dealing with opponents. For example. during the
2006 final World Cup soccer match between France and Italy. French player Zinadine Zidane
head-burred his Italian' counterpart Marco Materazzi (hllp:;:\nrw. rolllube.cOIn). To some
72
students, Zidane's violence was heroic and ,exemplary. Others expressed their adoration of
Zidane's football skills. Still more focussed on the player's hairstyle. Thus, every student
watching a game of football was attracted to different things on the players.
The website sites email holders liked visiting included those highlighting items related to
entertainment, leisure, pornography. art, beauty, music and horoscopes. Through an open-ended
discussion approach, the researcher established that some of the information which the students
and some teachers accessed on the net was diverse. Critical to the youth were stories about the
sports icons, music stars and other celebrity artists. In a sense. such stories tended to glorify
marital cheating, divorce. violence. drugs and wealth. Young people. it "vas established. were not
interested in accessing internet materials which highlighted matters of education and discipline.
tChitechi 0.1, Octoher 10. 2007). Indeed some of the careers of the heroes of the high school
students tend to demonstrate the insignificance of education in achieving a fulfilling life. Asked
who their favourite models were. the students and the youthful teachers named several global
personalities with values conservative heads call 'wrong values' (Muganda 1.0. ]7/h August
20(6).
On the list of the students role model were soccer characters like Ashley Cole (the England
Soccer defender who has consistently cheated on his wife Cheryl
(htlp'/\l'\l"wmirror.co.llk:neH·s/2008 01 25): Zinadine Zidane, the French soccer star who head-
butted an opponent in the 2006 soccer World Cup in Germany (hap' H'H'l\" rOlilube.com/ ,
http:/hFH,\\"fith.col7l). Britney Spears. a talented American musician who has been associated
with reckless drinking and unapologetic change of partners at the slightest provocation, 50 Cent
group. rap artists associated with gangsterism. nude dancing and substance abuse
(www.contactmusic.com/. ../50-cent-slams-clail1.}s-biopic-glorifies-gun-crime); Tyra Banks (a top
American television talk-show host who has had relationship problems; Naomi Campbell, a rich
British model who has on many occasions broken the law and found herself in police cells). The
list is endless but these role models can hardly find favour and recognition in the traditional
school in Kenya.(Liseche 0.1,15 April 2007)
The new role models for high school students have thus invaded the school system uninvited.
The background life of some of the global stars showed that some were scantly educated while
others never went through formal education. Yet they ended up making it in life by becoming
millionaires. In one girls' boarding school that we visited, we learned how the poorly educated
global stars were influencing the lives of school girls. A form two student in the same school had
suddenly changed her behaviour. She began by frequently sneaking from school and neither the
parents nor the school teachers knew where the girl used to escape to. Suddenly her class
performance deteriorated at the end of the first term. When a teacher-parent counselling meeting
was organized by the school to discuss her performance, she refused to talk. But at the end of the
meeting she rudely retorted that she did not. any longer, wish to stay in that school arguing that
school had become a pathway that was leading her no where( Okafo, 0. I. 2cjh August 20(7).
Instead. the girl declared that she needed to change from being student to a music composer and
a disk- jockey. This shocked both the teachers and the parents. An impromptu search of her
desk and box exposed a lot of literature on local and international music stars. She also kept
downloaded internet material of the private lives of the celebrity models. Some of the material
covered the lives of such controversial music icons as Whitney Houston and Bobby Bro\\11.who
had problems handling drugs and relationships. Besides. we found materials on a number of
74
sports stars including those on fallen sprinter Marion Jones and footballer Christiano Ronaldo.
While Marion Jones (b.ttp://nbcsports.msnbc.comlid/211388830 is associated her career after she
was found guilty of using steroids, Ronaldo is a quintessential beckon of defiance in world
football. In an attempt to chase her dreams, the student ended up patronizing a nightclub in a
neighbouring country. However, she turned to reckless sexual and drinking habits. Later the
mother disclosed that her daughter had been infected with HIV (Oka/o. 0. 1.. 29thAugust 2007)
Although the youth we interviewed could not admit it, some of the websites they had visited
were indeed those broadcasting explicit sexual material involving both adults and the youth. A
head teacher in one high school attested to having come across hard copies, taken from the
students, which bore certain pornographic websites including http://w\.'vw.hardcore.com and
http://www.sex.com. Materials from such sites. were often downloaded and illegally conveyed to
schools, courtesy of some students and youthful teachers (Odera. I.0. u" August 200 7)
Out of the 48 youth teachers interviewed. 18 representing 37.5% of total percentage owned c-
mail addresses. They reported that the sites they often frequented included careers. training
funding. friends. sports. music. leisure and other articles. They shared with the youthful students
their liking for sports. music and leisure articles.
But the question which arises is: how do music systems and mobile phones contribute to the
escalation of violence in schools? From the point of view of the students we interviewed. music
and mobile handsets could never course indiscipline and violence in schools: rather it was the
failure of school managers to effectively address the grievances of the students which caused the~ . '-'
unrest (TVenmga 0. I. July 28'h 2008). So how does the head teacher implement the directive on
75
mobile handsets and music when these are no'Y global items cherished by the youth all over the
world? Will the ban increase or decrease the unrest in schools?
Two school managers supported the Minister for Education arguing that mobile phones tended to
enhance communication between students of various schools thereby aggravating the problem.
Besides, they argued that the music heroes of the students were those individuals across the
world who had failed in school and who were associated with drugs and substance abuse
(Nyangweso 0.1, so" July 2008; Muholi 0.1 2nd August 2008).
4.4 Effective Management of Secondary Schools In the Face of the Challenges
In reference to the last research question. the researcher intended to establish how secondary
schools could be effectively managed in the face of the challenges. School discipline today
would be a tougher problem than ever. even without all these changes. because of the nationwide
increase of troubled families and disorderly kids. Although it has been fashionable to lay blame
on the government whenever school strikes break out. the government is not entirely to blame. In
the circumstances. the government's key failure has been in its simplistic approach to the
unfolding crisis. This has seen it slap bans on such items as mobile phones and televisions in
schools. when a more considerable approach was needed.
Five heads complained that the government's inability to enforce good governance structures in
schools. including the establishment of competent parents-teachers associations and counseling
services for students and teachers has not helped. They advised that such structures would
encourage a more interactive atmosphere in schools. In addition thev advised that ali
76
stakeholders - parents, the government, teachers and the wider society - take a more proactive
approach to student/teacher discipline and welfare.
A head teacher whose students had been exposed to alcohol abuse lamented that it was
deplorable and even unlawful, for example, for businesses to sell inflammable materials to
students. Similarly, it was unacceptable that retail outlets continued to sell alcohol and cigarettes
to minors. He concluded that failure of regulatory authorities on this score could not be gainsaid .
. Among the measures they have proposed are introducing alcohol and drug abuse studies as a
compulsory subject from primary school, restricting sale of alcohol to children and raising the
legal drinking age from 18 to 21 (0. I Osieko)
Two principals said that as principals they lacked the tools they used to have for dealing even
with the unruliest of kids. Formerly. they could expel such students permanently or send them to
special schools (approved schools) for the hard-to-discipline. The social expectation that it is the
role of teachers-whose core qualification is knowledge dissemination and not guidance or
counseling-to instill discipline must also be disabused. Quite bluntly. teachers are not social
workers. Their role as far as discipline goes is basically supplementary. (0.1 Liseche.Orangui
All head teachers agreed that all stakeholders must surely get involved in the search for a lasting
solution to the emerging crisis of student/teacher indiscipline. Those then who defy society must
be treated as the criminals that they are.
Ten of the twelve Head Teachers said that because of the overwhelming pressure of
globalization, a certain degree of values which were never admissible in the traditional school
system should slowly be accepted. This' they agreed might reduce areas of conflict between
77
managers and students and in turn, promote school harmony. The other two were non committal
bearing in mind the government policies and guidelines in matters of education
4.5 Summary and Conclusion
In this chapter, we observed that a modem high school in Kenya has certain fundamental features
which include the administrative structure, the routine and the school curriculum. We have also
examined the influence of media-related global values on the modem school in the Butere-
Mumias District. We have demonstrated that despite the restrictions executed by the traditional
school system-through a stipulated routine and curriculum - there is a counter movement of
global values which is under-mining the school as a disciplinary instrument.
Various examples of cultural values-which media instruments such as the radio. the television.
the newspaper and the internet have been listed. as being propagated to the youth teachers and
students-have created dissent and cultivated rebellion against established norms. As a result. the
disciplinary stability of the schools. in the Butere-Murnias district has been greatly weakened.
The chapter concludes that unless a middle ground is struck between those who wish to enforce
the traditional disciplinary scheme in learning institutions, the school, as traditionally envisaged. -
is threatened with extinction
78
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
5.0 Introduction
It was the objective of this research to investigate the impact of globalization on the discipline of
students and teachers in the Butere-Mumias district of Western Province. To achieve this
objective, the study analysed the background to the problem by looking at the Kenyan post
colony in a global perspective
5.1 Summary
It was observed. in Chapter One, that the post colony has constantly consumed cultural goods
from America and Europe. Cultural products of the West have registered their presence in Kenya
through the Western print and electronic media and through local information systems which
also convey the Euro-American cultural commodities.
Thus, the- radio. the newspaper and the television are critical instruments of Westernization.
Through a conceptual framework which presents the school as a site upon which traditional •
modernity and the neo-liberal globalization are competing for attention, the study has outlined
the probable issues and challenges which this competition creates in school management. In
theoretical terms. the study undertook to employ the Foucaltian disillusionment with Western
Modernity to analyse the disciplinary problems which are currently emerging from the schools.
Through a select literature review. in Chapter Two. the study showed the various avenues in
which the young people are embracing new forms of globalization. In particular. it has been
demonstrated that through the platforms of music, sports and fashion. young people have
exhibited and glorified dissent and rebellion against established values. Furthermore, the
79
literature review has shown that both scholars and government officials have in the past
interrogated the problematic of discipline in schools. However, very little effort has been made to
examine the problem within the framework of globalization.
Methodologically, III Chapter Three, the study has highlighted the vanous research devices
employed to achieve the desired results. These include research design, initial piloting, and
sampling procedures and data collection. As a descriptive survey project, the study employed
both purposive and random sampling tools on the targeted institutions and populations. Research
instruments included questionnaires, Focus Group Discussions and oral interviews. The data
analysis was done through simple statistical calculations and computations of frequencies. The
data was qualitatively represented through simple interpretations and conclusions. Besides. the
qualitative analysis was enriched by pie and column charts.
Chapter Four analyses the research findings on the modem school in Butere-Murnias district. by
examining the rigid curriculum and 'the school routine. Overall, this chapter scrutinises the toll
effects that globalization has had on school discipline. The role of the television and the internet
as agents of globalization has been discussed at length. A large number of students and teachers
have been exposed to these agencies and as such their effects can be seen in the schools ..
In the same chapter. media- related global values that are affecting school discipline and
management are investigated. Efforts were made to demonstrate the extent to which students
may be exposed to the radio. television. and the newspaper. Students' preferences for certain
television programs were also highlighted. The issue of program censorship was also discussed.
Finally, the chapter discusses some of the critical issues and challenges which school managers
80
'.M _
face. The chapter finally, explores ways in which schools could be managed effectively in the
face of the challenges.
5.2 Implications of the findings
This study had three fundamental objectives. First, it set out to investigate the effects of
globalization on discipline in schools in Butere-Mumias and second, to explore the management
challenges which school managers were confronted with in the face of globalization. Finally, the
study aimed at exploring how the managers could handle -the disciplinary challenges caused by
globalization.
It has been established that indeed contemporary globalization-manifesting itself in music,
fashion, sport and media- has profoundly influenced the way in which our young students and
teachers behave. As a result, a culture of defiance has gripped schools as more and more
youngsters question school routines. curriculum and rules. This tendency has systematically
undermined discipline in schools.' The youths are also bringing in schools. pornographic
materials and drugs. Yet. the society has also passed laws which tend to overprotect the chi ld.
School managers face a big dilemma on how to deal with the problem. Their only option is to
talk and talk to all the stake holders in the hope that everybody will contribute to creating a
disciplined population in schools.
Evidently, a clash between the students and the managers exists. From the student standpoint.
we found out that those who did not like restrictions on watching TV and radio programmes
spend most of their free time discussing what they had missed instead of tackling academic
problems -
81
School discipline today would be a tougher problem than ever, even without all these changes.
because of the nationwide increase of troubled families and disorderly kids. Although it has been
fashionable to lay blame on the government whenever school strikes break out, the government
is not entirely to blame. In the circumstances, the government's key failure has been in its
simplistic approach to the unfolding crisis. This has seen it slap bans on such items as mobile
phones and televisions in schools, when a more considerable approach was needed.
The government's inability to enforce good governance structures in schools, including the
establishment of competent parents-teachers associations and counseling services for students,
has not helped. Such structures would encourage a more interactive atmosphere in schools.
Going forward, it is imperative that all stakeholders, take a more proactive approach to student
discipline and welfare. Stun restrictions should be meted out on business premises that sell
inflammable materials to students. Regulatory authorities to be vigilant and ensure that retail
outlets stop selling alcohol and cigarettes to minors (Otando O. I., July 23rd, 2007).
5.3 Conclusion
This study has made a modest effort to examine the crisis of discipline in Kenya's schools using
samples from the Butere-Mumias district. The study recognizes that there is truly a problem-
disciplinary issues and challenges posed by globalization- whose solution is still a matter of
debate. Consequently, it is anticipated that the findings of this study will not only contribute to
the growing literature on school administration but also provide challenges for further research.
In this way, we shall transform our schools from being devices of control and manipulation to
free institutions in which we can comfortably celebrate our diverse values and preferences.
82
5.4 Recommendations
Basing on these findings obtained from the study, the following recommendations were made:
• Majority of respondents felt that all the stakeholders must get involved in the search for a
lasting solution to the emerging crises of student and teacher indiscipline.
• Quite a number of respondents agreed that that since globalization is with us, a certain
decree of values which were never admissible in the traditional school svstem should~ " -
slowly be accepted.
• Head teachers and the managers of schools should begin accommodating certain cultural
values which a few years ago. were deemed unacceptable in schools.
• There was a feeling among most of the respondents that the traditional school managers
should attempt to meet the growing mass of the post modern youth mid-way. since the
global mass culture is almost irreversible.
5.5 Further Research
This study has not interrogated education policies and guidelines in Kenya that may get in the
way of managers who may want to soften their stand on the post-modern.nco-iibcral wave of
globalization that seems to be moving at a very fast pace. The post-modem youth are already
taking over at the helm of management. How are they operating within the system they found
oppressive? What challenges are they encountering? Research should thus be undertaken to
investigate how to harmonize the post-modem global values within the traditional school to
maintain stability in learning institutions. Further research should be done to interrogate what
really constitutes real discipline in schools. Is knowledge the rigid subjects we see in syllabi or
should students and teachers as well as the community have a say in what constitutes knowledge
and discipline in schools?"
83
REFERENCES
(a) Books
Abrams, P. (1988), 'Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State' Journal of Historical
Sociology.
Aleinkoff, T., A. Douglas Klusmeyer (Ed) (2000): Citizenship Today: Global Perspectives and
Practices (Washington D.C: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace).
Anderson, Benedict (1983), Imagined Communities: Reflection on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism London: Verso.
Appaiah Kwame, A.(1992), In my Father's House' Africa in the Philosophy of Culture London:
Methuen.
Aseka E.M (2005): Pitfalls of Ideology. Social Policy and Leadership in Africa. Nairobi. Kenya.
Bentham Jeremy(1995):Panopticon (preface) In Miran Bozovic(ed) The Panopticon
Writings, London.Verso.
Biaya. T. K. (1999) Hair Statements in Urban Africa: The Beauty, the Mystic and the Xladtnun
CODESRfA Bulletin 1 & 2.
Bhabha H.K. (1990). 'Dissemination: Time Narrative. and the Margins of the 'Jlodern Xation
and Narration London: Routledge .
. (199-+). The Location Culture. London: Row/edge.
Bartky Sandra Lee (1990), Femininity and Domination: Studies in the
Phenomenology of Oppression. New York: Routledge.
Boje.D.M.&Gcphardt RJr (1996). Postmodern Management Organization Theon. Thousand
Oaks. Ca: Sage.
Baraket Ibtisarns. & Clark. Janet :\ .. Pas itire Discipline & Child Guidance. Columbia: Lniversity
of Missouri Extension
Carmichael W. and Brown A. (1991). Kenva: Taking liberties. UI1 .itrican Warch Report
Washington D.C.: Human Right Watch.
Chattarjee, Partha (1993), The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Post-Colonial Histories
New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Convcr. p.r (1995), 'Citizen Identities and Conceptions ofSelf'. Journal of Political Philosophy
3 (2).
8-+
Corrigan, P., Sayer D. (1985), The Great Arch English State Formations as Cultural Revolution,
Oxford: Blackwell. '
Douglas, Murray A. & Strauss Wilef, (2007) "Discipline by Parents and Child
'Psychopathology'" in Felithrus A. & Sarott. International Hand Book of psychopathology and
the Law. New York. P. 1-2
Evans, P. (1997), The Eclipse of the State: Reflections on Stateness in the Era of Globalization in
World Politics No. 50.
Foucault, Michel (1979), Discipline and Punish New York: Vintage Books.
Fawcet 1.T. (1989), Networks.Linkages and Migration System in International Migration
Review, Special Silver Anniversary.
Fredrich .Nietzshe(2007)Thus Spoke Zarathustra(Bamess&Noble)Classic SerriesTranslated by
Clancy Martin(2007) .
....................... ... (1 996)Human,All Too Human Translator-R.J
Hollingdale, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Lyotard. Jean-Francois (1984). The Postmodern Condition: A Report on
Knowledge. Minneapolis: Minneapolis University Press
Gay. L.R. (1976) Educational Research: Competenciesfor Analysis Application: Ohio: Charles
E. Merrill Publishing Company.
Greenfield Kathleen (1995). 'Selland Nation in Kenya: Charles Manguas SOI/ of !Vama/1' in
the Journal ofModern African Studies Vol. 3 NO.4.
Hall. Stuart (1991). 'The Local and The Global: Globalization and Ethnicity in Anthony King,
Culture, Globalization and World Economic System (London: Macmillan Press.
Derrida. Jacques (1982) ..Margins of Philosophy. Chicago: Chicago University
Press
King Anthony 0 (199 I). Culture. Globalization and World Economic Svstem London:
Macmillan Press.
Kisiangani E. W. (2002). 'The Youth and African Heritage 111 the ,Yell' Xlillennium. Some
Reflections Codesria Bulletin Nos. 3 & 4.
Koopman, Ruud and Paul Stattarn (1999), 'Challenging the Liberal' .\"aJioll-Swte: Post
nationalism, Multiculturalism and the collective claims making of migrants and Ethnic
minorities in Britain and GermatJ', American Journal ofSociolof{v 105.
85
Kothari, C.R. (1984) Research Methodology and Technique, New Delhi: Vikas Publishing
House PVT Limited.
Kottak C. P. and Kozaitis A. K. (2000). On Being Different; Diversity and Multiculturalism in
the North American Mainstream.
Laswell H.D". (1952), Power and Society: A framework for Political Inquiry_London: Kaplan A.
Routledge.
Manchuelle, FJ.B. (1993), 'Post-coloniality and Boundaries of Identity' Callaloo, Vol. 16 No.4.
Mamdani. Mohamood (1996), Citizenship and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of
Late colonialism Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Marks M. (1999). Policing for democracy? The case of public order police unit Durban, In
Africa development. Vol. xxix No 1&2.
Martin Heidegger( 1978):Being And Time:Albany State University New York Press
Martin Randy (1999). 'Globalization: The Dependencies Question' in Social Text, 17 March
1999.
Mbernbe, Achille (1999). 'AI the Edge of the World: Boundaries, Territoriality and Sovereignty
in A/rica Codesria Bulletin, Dakar. Senegal, Nos. 3 & 4.
_______ (1992). Provisional Xotes 011 the Post-colony. Africa
62( 1).
Michel M (1995). "Positioning the Subject: Locating Postcolonial Studies Ariel 26
Mouffe C (1993). 'Liberal Socialism and Pluralism: Which Citizenship in J. Squires (cd)
Principled Positions: Postmodernism and the Rediscovery of Vallie London: Lawrence and
Wishart.
Mugenda O.M and Mugenda AG (1999) Research Methods: Quantttutive Lind Qualitative
Approaches. Nairobi. Acts Press
Orodho Aluko J (2003). Essentials of Educational and Social Sciences Research Methods.
Masolo Publishers. Nairobi. Kenya.
_____ (2004). Techniques of Writing Research Proposal and Reports In Education
and Social Sciences. Masolo Publishers. Nairobi. Kenya.
Picket Joseph B. etal (2000) American Heritage Disciplinary of {he English Language (-llh
Edition) Boston: Houston Mafflin.
86
Papatia, D. E. Wendkos-olds, S. & Duskin-Fieldman. R. (2006), A Child's World: Infancy
through Adolescence, New York: Maerrow Hall.
Said Edward (1993), Culture and Imperialism London: Chatto & Windus.
____ (1994), Representation of the Intellectual London: Vintage.
Ssewakirianga Richard. (1999) Codesria Bulletin No.1 &2 1999:Imagining Futures:Jdentity And
Nation In South Africa.
Yolk Steven S (2000). "Frida Kahlo Remap the Nation" in Social Identities. 6(2).
Webner R., Ranger T (1996), Postcolonial Identities in Africa London: Zed Books.
(b). Magazines
• NewsfromAfrica :July :2.008
• People's Daily. July 2008
87
(c) Newspapers
Daily Nation, Nairobi, 27th February, 1997
" 1st May 1997
" s" August, 1991
" is" March 2000
" 14th July, 2008
" 21st May, 2001
" 19thMarch, 2008
" 8thJuly, 2008
" 13thJune, 1998
zs" August. 1999
9thMarch, 2000
22nd May. 2001
30th July. 2001
22l1d Ju1v 2005
The East African Standard. Nairobi. 19thOctober. 1991
"
"
"
.,
" 215tSeptember, 1993
29th January. 1997
11thSeptember, 1993
11thSeptember. 1999
I-+thSeptember. 1999
rs" September. 1999
16thJune. 2001
215tJune. 2000
The Weeklv Review. Nairobi. July. 1996
The Kenva Times. Nairobi. 22nd July. 1991
27th February. 1993
27th September, 1995
20th January. 1998
2nd June, 1999..
88
" 19th July, J999
16th October, 2000
s" May, 2001
3151 March, 2003
"
"
"
(d)Thesis and Other Unpublished Material
Abongi A. Yusuf (1996), 'An Investigation into the Effect of Discipline on Academic
Performance of Kuoyo Kochia, Secondary School in Homa Bay district " P.G.D.E Kenyatta
University.
Arunga E.J. (2004), Factors Threatening Security tn Secondary Schools. M.Ed. Baraton
University.
Ayieko John Scura (1998), 'Solving Discipline Problems in Kenyan Secondary School', M.E
Thesis, University of Nottingham.
Bajola Justine (1993), 'An Examination of Indiscipline in Secondary Schools in Congo' P.G.D.E.
University of Nairobi.
Killemi Franco Nkubuto (1996). 'Causes of Strikes in Secondary in Tigania Central Division'.
P.G.D.E, Kenyatta University.
Kita Edith Jumba (1996), 'Analysis of Factors Contributing to Student Absenteeism in Selected
Schools in Nairobi ', P.G.D.E, Kenyatra University.
Makali Peter W (1996). 'Major Causes of Indiscipline in Secondary Schools in Kabraas
Division of Kakamega District " P.G.D.E, Kenyatta University.
Matheri Peter Mungai (1996), Analysis of Discipline Problems 111 Selected Schools 111
Muranga '. P.G.D.E. Kenyatta University.
Mogere, Donald. 0 (1996). A Study of the Causes of Indiscipline in Secondarv Schools in
Kegogi Zone, Kisii district', P.G.D.E. Kenyatta University.
Tuduru, D.O. (1998). An Investigation into the Causes of Indiscipline in Schools in Xyochoki
Division, Gucha District ', P.G.D.E. Kenyatta University.
Wainama E. S. (2004), Students Unrest and Indiscipline in Githunguri Secondary Schools in
Kiambu District.
89
(e)Commission Reports and Other Official Documents
Republic of Kenya (1964) Kenya Education Commission Part 1.
_______ (1976) The National Committee on Educational Policies and Objectives, The
Government Printer.
_______ (1988) The Presidential Working Party on Educational and Manpower
Trainingfor the Next Decade and Beyond.
____ (1999) The Totally Integrated Quality Education.
______ (2001) Report on the Task Force on Student Discipline and Unrest in Secondary
Schools in Kenya.
Republic Of Kenya.(2002) Ministry Of Education Science and Technology: Secondary
Education Syllabus Vol. 1
. (2002) Ministry Of Education Science and Technology: Secondary Education------Syllabus Vol. 2
The Kenya National Examinations Council (2008) KCSE Examination Time table
(f)Written Speeches
• Speech by the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education and Human Resource
Development (1998). Mr. W. K. K. Kimaiat at Head Teachers Annual Conference in Kisumu.
Speech by the Minister of Education (20QO). Hon Kalonzo Musyoka at Head teachers Annual •
Conference in Nairobi
• Statement by Minister for Gender. Children and Social Development. Hon.Esther M.
Mathenge .l\IP. Unrest in Secondary Schools in Kenya
(g) Oral Respondents
• Aggrey Muholi
• Benson Oranga
• Cryspin Muganda
• Dora Okalo
• Edward Odera
• George Otando
• Grace Narnai
Ekambuli Mixed secondary School
Kholera mixed Secondary School
St.Peters Boys School
Munami Mixed Secondary School
Butere Boys Secondary School
Shatsala Mixed Secondary School
Butere Girls High School
90
• Judith Akaranga
• Marystella Chitechi
• Musa Osieko
• Ndunda Musau
• Nicholas Liseche
• Violet Sitati
• Albert Werunga
• Joseph Nyangweso
Khwisero Secondary School
St. Mary's Mumias Girls
Muslim Mixed Secondary School
Secretary General, Association of Kenya Parents
Mwihila Boys Secondary School
Bulimbo Girls High School
(Student)
(Student)
91
(h) Websites
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Postmodern music
• http://en.wikipedia.orglwiki/Globalization
• http://www.mirror.co.ukf- Ashley Cole cheats on wife Cheryl, 25/01/2008
• http://nbcsports.msnbc.comi-Jonespleadsguilty,admitslyingaboutsteroids,Fri., Oct. 5,
2007
• http://www.authorsden.com/- Top 10 Infidelity Stories, 2005
• \vww.contactmusic.coml .. .150-cent-slams-claims-biopic-glorifies-2:un-crime
• www.fifa.com
• http://www.youtube.com/- Zidane head-butts Materazzzi
• http://www.buzzle.com - Whitney Houston/Bobby Brown Seperated, 4th May 2007, also
see issue of 29th March. 2006
• http://www.africansisters.com - Aaliyah Relationship.
• http://www.southafrica.info/what happenin!!/arts entertainment/brendatJssie.htm Brenda
Fassie. Township Madonna
APPENDIX 1:
REQUEST LETTER TO CONDUCT THE RESEARCH.
Kisiang'ani Electine A
P.O.Box 166
Kimiliii
December 2005.
To
The Head Teacher
Through the Director of Continuing Education
Kenyatta University
P.O. Box .•38.•.•
NAIROBI.
92
Dear SirlMadam;
REF: A RESEARCH STUDY AT YOUR SCHOOL
I am a student at Kenyatta University and would like to conduct a research in your school. My
research entails information on globalization and discipline. It will involve interviewing your~ ~ -
students and members of staff.
It is mainly for academic purposes and as such the in formation given will be treated with the
confidentiality it deserves.
Kindly allow me to conduct the research.
Yours Faithfully
Kisiang'ani E.A
93
APPENDIX II
DISCIPLINE AND GLOBALIZATION QUESTIONNAIRE FOR HEAD PREFECT
The information obtained through this questionnaire will strictly be used for academic purposes
and will be treated as confidential. I will be most grateful if you co-operated to make the work
successful
Part A: Background Information
Tick appropriately -V
l. State your sex
• Male
• Female
2. State your age category
• Below 15(years)
• Between 15-20(yrs)
• Above 20 (yrs)
3. State your current class"!form
• Form
• Form
• Form
• Form
..J.. How were you appointed to the position?
• Students' election
• Teachers selection
94
5. State how frequently students involved them selves in the following offences
Offence 1 2 3 4
Sneaking
Fighting
Possession and-
reading
pornography
Sexually related
offences
Drinking
Smocking
Being unkempt
Poor dressing mode
Any other
KEY
i). Too frequently
ii). Frequently
iii). Not so frequently
iv). Never
6. Are students allowed access to the following? Tick ( ) appropriately
I Yes Sometimes No l ,
Radio I I
,,
I
Television I III
Computer I I I
7. If the answer in 5 above is yes or sometimes, what programmes do they enjoy most?
Radio
95
Television
Computer
8. Do the programmes in any way contribute to the offence that students are involved in?
Yes No
If the answer above is Yes. how?
9. Do students manifest some of the habits they acquire on radio "s. TV and Computer while at
school?
Yes 1 0
10. How does this interfere with the smooth running of the school?
II. What can the school management do to ease the problem with students?
96
APPENDIX III
QUESTIONNAIRE FOR STUDENTS ON GLOBILAZTION
The information obtained through this questionnaire will strictly be used for academic purposes
and will be treated as confidential. Iwill be most grateful if you co-operated to make the work
successful.
Part A: Background information
(Tick appropriately) -J
1. State your sex
Male [
Female [
2. State your age category
Below 15
]
]
Between 15-20
Above 20
3. What is your position in school?
Prefect
Ordinary student
Part B: Information about knowledge about globalization.
(a) Do you have a radio at home?
Yes
No
(b) If yes what programs do you enjoy most?
97
'i. ." ...r-:« ••
2. Do you have a television at home?
Yes ]
No ]
If yes which program do you enjoy most?
3. Do you have a computer at home?
Yes [
No [
Which program do you enjoy most?
4. Do you have an Email address?
Yes [ ]
No [ ]
Which areas do you access most on the internet?
5. Which of the programs that you enjoy most are you allowed access to at school?
6. Which are you denied access to?
98
7. Why do you think you are denied access to?
8. State the game(s) that you enjoy
9. Which international stars do you like?
10. What do you like about himlher /them?
99
APPENDIX IV
INTERVIEW SCHEDULES ON GLOBALIZATIONAND DISCIPLINE FOR HEAD
TEACHER! DEPUTY HEAD TEACHER
The information in this interview schedules will be used entirely for academic purposes neither
your name nor that of your school will be required.
1. What are some of the agents of globalization that are found in your school?
2. Have you allowed your student's access to these agents?
3. In your opinion how have these agents of globalization affected students' discipline?
4. How do students manifest indiscipline in schools?
5. How have teachers, influenced by globalization manifested trends of indiscipline in
your school?
6. Base your answer on dressing mode. hair. adherence to school routine. compliance with
laid down procedures. compliance with authority and policy matters.
7. Why has it been hand to nib the vices thus brought about by globalization?
8. What do you think you and other Heads can help to cope with these challenges?
100
APPENDIXV
FOCUS DISCUSSION GROUPS FOR STUDENTS ON GLOBALIZATION AND
INDISCIPLINE
NB - This work is for purely academic purposes. Nothing you say will be held against you. Be
very free ~d open.
1. You have all heard about globalization. Say something about it?
2. Tell me some of the values/identities you acquire due to globalization.
3. Name some of the international stars you have known?
4. Tell me some of the things you like about these stars?
5. Say some of the trends you have tried to ape in the stars.
6. Are you able to portray those trends openly where the Head Teacher, deputy teacher
and prefects are?
7. Tell me some of the offences that students in general are punished for here?
8. Do they in any way stem from globalization?
9. How do you feel about the daily routine?
10. How would you wish it was arranged?
11. What don't you like about the school uniforms?
12. How do you defy the school uniform policy
101
APPENDIXVI
FOCUS DISCUSSION GROUP FOR TEACHERS ON GLOBALIZATION AND
DISCIPLINE
NB. This work is for purely academic purposes. Nothing you say will be held against you. Be
very free and open.
1. You have all heard about globalization, say something about it?
2. Tell me some of the values of globalization that are manifest amongst teachers of
your category?
3. Have these values posed a challenge to school administration?
4. State some of the globalization trends/values that you value which the administration
is uncomfortable about.Base your answer on the following
• hair.
• dressing mode.
• adherence to code of conduct,
• adherence to laid down procedure/daily routine,
• compliance with authority.
• -Policy matters.
In the above. how would you wish it was done?
5. What do you think the administration can do to cope with these requirements
102
APPENDIX VII
QUESTIONNAIRE FOR THE HEADTEACHERS
(The Information in this questionnaire will be treated as confidential. Neither your name nor that
of your school is required. The questionnaire is for the data collection for my course project.
1 ( ) D h lh the folla oes your sc 00 ave 0 owing
Yes No
Radio
Television
Computer
(b) Do you allow student access to the above?
Yes No Sometimes
Radio
Television
computer
2. If the answer in b above is yes or sometimes, which programs do the students like most?
(a) Radio _
(b) Television. _
(c) Computer _
3. Which programs would you rather they did not watch Ilisten tol get access to?
(b) Do you have any reasons for your answer above?
4. Do you have any discipline problems emanating from any of the three above?
Yes No Sometimes I
Radio ,I
Television
Computer
103
What kind of discipline problems do student~ manifest?
How have you tried to confront Isilence the problem?
104
APPENDIX VIII
QUESTIONNAIRE FOR STUDENTS
The information obtained through this questionnaire will strictly be used for academic purposes
and will be treated as confidential. I will be most greatful if you co-operated to make the work
successful.
Part a: background information
(Tick appropriately) -V
1. State your sex
Male []
Female []
2. State your age category
Below 15 [ ]
Between 15-20 []
Above 20 []
3. What is your position in school?
Prefect [ ]
Ordinary student []
Part b: Information about knowledge about globalization.
1. (a) do you have a radio at home'?
Yes [ 1
l 0 [ ]
If yes what programs do you enjoy most?
2. Do you have a television at home?
Yes
No [ ]
If yes which program do you enjoy most?
105
3. Do you have a computer at home?
Yes [ ]
No [ ]
Which program do you enjoy most?
4. Do you have an Email address?
Yes [ ]
No [ ]
Which areas do you access most on the internet?
5. Which of the programs that you enjoy most are you allowed access to at school?
6. Which are you denied access to'?
7. Why do you think you are denied access to'?
R. State the game(s) that you enjoy
106
9. Which international stars do you like?
10. What do you like about himlher /them?
107