Critical consciousness for Individual development in the 21st Century: A freirean critique of education in Kenya

Abstract

One of the central concerns of education today is to bequeath a learner with necessary and relevant dispositions, skills and competences that will enable one to survive sustainably amid the unique challenges of the 21st century. This is the hallmark of the third national objective of education in Kenya, namely, “education for individual development and self-fulfillment”. Education achieves this by transforming and aligning an individual’s potential and habits into a creative critical thinker and a problem solver – the key pillars of the 21st century competences. However, evidence is rife that this goal is hardly advanced. We continue to face an existential problem of producing individuals who often greatly fail to approximate what Paulo Freire describes as critical consciousness; individuals who make very insignificant epistemic effort or none at all to ascend from the captivity of Plato’s allegorical cave. Focusing on educational experiences in Kenya, this study contributes to a philosophical clarification of this problem and a further search for its pedagogical mitigation through critical policy theorizing. The study explores relevant lessons for the construction of critical pedagogical orientations for the realization of education for individual development and self-fulfillment. This is based on an assumption that an educated person is one who has attained the level of critical consciousness that is expressive of the 21st century competences. It examines the concept of “individual development and self-fulfillment” and presents a Freirean analysis of its contextual traces and extent within the national education policy landscape and in the context of the 21stcentury competences. Finally, the study explores the possibility of a pedagogical orientation for critical consciousness in Kenya’s educational framework. Rooted in critical realist and postmodern theories, the study employs three methods to achieve its purpose, namely the transcendental critical method, the speculative and analytic methods. Selected policy documents are analyzed and critiqued in order to provide the historical situatedness and clarification to the problem in the light of Freire’s work, “Education for Critical Consciousness”. This is so as to gain insight from the latter’s critical pedagogical theory, especially with regard to the learner’s journey to critical consciousness. This insight is appropriated to specifically stated 21st century competences and then applied to both policy and phenomenological experience from educational scenarios in Kenya. Conclusions drawn from these reflections indicate the need to revamp education with a focus on developing individuals who are existentially competent. It emerges that besides evolving educational structures and content, what the learner becomes largely determines the overall quality of society. In turn, the quality of the individual learners who ultimately constitute society heavily depends on the nature in which curriculum is crafted, its implementation approaches and the overall professional and philosophical orientation of its implementors. Therefore, more policy reforms ought to be directed towards curriculum appreciation of the learner’s individuality. Attention is to be focused much more on advanced on-going professional preparation of teachers as key implementors of the curriculum, more especially with regard to their pedagogical awareness and orientation.