It’s hard to forget the excitement with which the news that every primary school going child would have a laptop was received. When children looked forward to that day when they would compete with their siblings—who were fortunate enough to have one when they got to the University or College or some even who bought themselves laptops when they started working—for some working space or even a charging port. It’s also hard to forget their disappointment when the laptops never came through; when their patience never paid. I hold the belief that most children tried to campaign for the current government bearing the hopes that they would finally have some technological upper hand against their older siblings—us.
The current government had a very promising pledge, through its manifesto, to move this country to the next level technologically and in the same breathe gave a new meaning to the words ‘digital’ and ‘analogue’ such that the former was to be awed and the latter despised.
Sorry my younger brothers and sisters because the laptops would not come by anytime soon because of some failure in the ‘tenda-ring’ process or is it tendering? Let me hope so.
Technological development has always been credited to the developers creativity—their ability to stretch their imagination beyond the ordinary and find a way of realizing the ideal. A more realistic pledge by the government would have been to have story book at every child’s bag when they are beginning their primary education. We need to breed a reading culture in this country if at all we are to realize an exponential technological growth. It is unfortunate that students begin encountering books when they are in Secondary Schools and most of them do not even bother reading the books such that the teachers are forced to have sessions in which they read the books together. The time lost in reading the books as a whole is supposed to be spent in helping the students come up with new ideas they gained from the books but instead the teachers lead them towards a beaten path. Our children are taught to conform form the formative stages of their school going days. Creativity cannot be realized in an environment where the overriding theme is conformity.
I wonder how much it would have cost the government to ensure that every child had a story book to read. Reading is what breeds creativity in children because they get to see how the impossible is made possible in a world of fiction.
Talking to some of my friends taking Engineering courses I always wonder where their rigidity will get us when they refuse to accept the mere fact that reading is the most vital element when it comes to the survival of the human race compared to the production of machines that will never cease polluting our environment. It is through reading that we get to learn how to pay attention to the smaller details; how to concentrate and relate with the unseen and most importantly; how to empathize. A man may know all sciences and yet remain uneducated. But let him truly possess himself of the work of any one of the great poets, and no matter what else he may fail to know, he is not without education. Looking at the most technologically developed countries one realizes that reading begins the minute starts schooling or even before.
It is also a pity when one comments that Mathematics and Literature have no connection because this furthers the claim that we have a rigid group of students and pupils yet we yearn for the creativity that supports technological advancement from them. To those who uphold this scandalous claim, you should have a talk with Yvonne Owuor and hear how beautifully she describes her Primary School Mathematics class to the point where the teacher left and if that is not possible please have a look at her lecture in Kenyatta University available online via the link (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6OqqkcPVEY ). You should also realize that the child learns from his reading what kind of world he lives in, through books he also becomes acquainted with himself and with his tastes and abilities and sometimes he finds out from them what he is fitted for in life. When carefully directed, reading may be made to cultivate common sense, self-reliance, initiative, enthusiasm and ability to turn one’s mental and physical capital to the best advantage and to make the most of one’s opportunities—qualities which ensure success in life, and it should also cultivate affections and those kindly feelings that make the world a better place to live in. I hope by that you will have realized how the two are eternally related.
I will be very happy when my niece who is about the school going age comes home and narrates to me with a story she read—probably the abridged version of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice or Charles Dickens’ Bleak House or even Doselyn Kiguru’s masterpiece ‘The Rescue Plan’—instead of bothering me with how she can have a game installed on her laptop.
It gratifies my heart when I realize that fourth year students of Literature at the University of Nairobi taking Text and Sources in Children’s Literature engage in book writing projects which when published are donated to children in orphanages. My wish is that the government could tap into this noble endeavour and have the books end up in the hands of our school going children who are not in the orphanages.
As I conclude, I have just a single plea to my Jubilee Government: Mr. President, H.E Hon. Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta, Daniel Arap Moi gave us milk and we became a drinking nation, Mwai Kibaki gave us Free Primary Education and we became a learning nation, please give our younger brothers and sisters (‘nduguzetuni na dadazetuni’) story books so we can become a reading nation which is vital if we have to develop technologically and consequently digitally.
Mr. President, too see a child come into a public library, knowing that he has a right to be there and going directly to the shelf choose a book and sit down quietly to enjoy it give hope for the future of our country.
You can continue the legend Mr. President.
I hope my patience pays.
Sam Dennis 
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