School Knowledge and Its Relevance to

Everyday Life in Rural Westen Kenya

ONYANGO-OUMA
University of Nairobi

This article examines the relevance of school knowledge in the context of

everyday life using ethnographic data collected among primary schoolchildren and
adults in rural western Kenya. Using the concept of the educated person as an analytical
construct, it is shown how children in rural western Kenya aspire to become
educated and to acquire school knowledge to increase their chances of success in
everyday life. Adults acknowledge the importance of school knowledge in everyday life
and take pride in their children attending school. School knowledge is believed to
transform and change children and the status of the educated person draws its
importance from the relevance of education in everyday life. The extent to which
school knowledge is relevant or not, including the relevant aspects are
discussed. It is concluded that education programmes should strive to meet
both cognitive and immediate functional needs of the learners in everyday life.
Keywords: Education, schoolchildren, school knowledge, Kenya

1. INTRODUCTION
Anthropologists and radical critics of education have long recognised the
important role schools play in creating and reproducing the
social order (Watson-Gegeo and Gegeo 1992: 10; see also Bourdieu
1986). Schools are significant public institutions which groom the
younger generation for their participation in the dynamic life of the
society. Schools are viewed as gatekeepers for access to economic
development and political leadership; socializers of attitudes and
values, and modelling ways for their students (Watson-Gegeo and Gegeo
1992).
The dominant position occupied by schooling in the society as well as
in the life of individual learners has in most cases provided the
justification for children to go to school. Schooling is perceived as a
major investment and an obligatory activity for all children. This
noble role played by schooling is no doubt the impetus behind the
advocacy for universal free primary as one of the millennium development
goals (MDGs). However, in fulfilling its objectives, schooling may carry
a variety of meanings in the lives of different individuals and contribute
in various strikingly different ways in their lives, thereafter (Serpell
1993: 187).

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School knowledge is usually transmitted to the learners through formal
curriculum containing subject matter taught at specific stages during the school
calendar. It is generally assumed that learners by mastering the subject contents
of the formal curriculum acquire knowledge, which can be of relevance in
everyday life. The rationale for formalising education through schooling arose
from the need to focus and the desire to transmit an accumulation of
knowledge (Serpell 1993: 82). While formal curriculum is key to gaining
school knowledge, it is not the only way through which school knowledge can
be acquired. Learners can also gain knowledge from the experience of being in
school what has been referred to as the hidden curriculum (Masemann 1974:
480).
Education programmes are designed to assist learners to grow intellectually
and morally thereby increasing their cultural capital (Bourdieu and Passeron
1977) and chances of economic success which are important attributes of the
the educated person (Levinson and Holland 1996: 2). As learning institutions,
schools provide access to the status of educated person in the formal sense and
both adults and children construct schools as sites for the production of such
persons in the society.
The literature on education and schooling show the benefits of school
knowledge including acquisition of literacy and numeracy skills (Serpell 1993;
Cook-Gumperz 1986), development of a modern identity (Rival 1996; Luttrell
1996) and acquisition of character traits such as taste and intelligence
(Levinson and Holland 1992: 2). Other studies show that maternal education
increases child survival (Caldwell 1979; Bicego and Boerman 1991; Hobcraft
1993; Katahoire et al, 2004). Children born to unschooled mothers are at a
significantly higher risk of dying before their fifth birthday than those born to
mothers with some schooling. A study in eastern Uganda (Katahoire 1998)
showed that school knowledge enabled women to plan their daily activities
better than those with no schooling who tended to be unstructured. Womens
schooling is often a better predictor of health and reproductive outcomes
including reduced child mortality and fertility than other household-level
variables such as family income and husbands occupation (LeVine et al. 1994:
304). School knowledge and experience changes womens health and child care
outcomes.
While the general perception is that school knowledge has potential benefits
and is of relevance to everyday life, in some cases it has failed to meet the
expectations of learners due to the irrelevancy of the formal curriculum. Willis
(1993) described how a group of students with working class background (lads)
developed a counter school culture from which they derived fun instead of
paying attention to the formal curriculum, which offered them a false promise of
better jobs. The students saw their status as given by their working class
background and the formal curriculum did not make sense to them.
In discussing classroom (school) knowledge, Keddie (1971) argues that
teachers who transmit knowledge prefer students who accept their definition.
However, students willingness to take over the teachers definition of what is to
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constitute the problem and what is to count as knowledge may require students
to regard as irrelevant or inappropriate what they might see as problems in a
context of everyday meaning (Keddie 1971: 151). Other studies (Wolcott 1967;
Watson-Gegeo and Gegeo 1992) describe situations where school knowledge
was found to be inadequate.
By going to school children are engaged in the creation of a new form of
symbolic capital the capital associated with formal education and in the
process produce the other of the educated world the uneducated person
(Skinner and Holland 1996: 291). This article focuses on the relevance of school
knowledge in everyday life in a rural community in western Kenya.

2. STUDY AREA AND POPULATION

The study was conducted in two primary schools and surrounding villages
among the Luo people living in Nyangoma sub-location, Bondo district,
western Kenya. Subsistence agriculture and fishing are the main occupations
while labour migration to urban centres is common. The kinship system is
traditionally patrilineal and virilocal and polygyny makes extended families
common (Ocholla-Ayayo 1976; Parkin 1978). Children in the community are
introduced to work tasks at a tender age and engage in productive tasks (e.g.
fetching water and herding animals) and self-care activities such as bathing and
washing their own clothes (Ominde 1952; Blount 1979). Customary education
and learning among the Luo occurs in practical situations of everyday life and is
embedded in social relations (Prince et al. 2001). The everyday settings of
activity are sites of learning where communication and learning take place in
social relationships (Onyango-Ouma 2000).
Data was collected from 40 primary schoolchildren and 34 adults (parents
and guardians of the schoolchildren). Another 15 adults were interviewed as key
informants. The study population were selected on the basis of purposive
sampling. The schoolchildren were aged between 915 years while adults were
aged between 2468 years. About 57 percent of the adults had completed
primary education, 17 percent had completed secondary education while 26
percent had no formal education.

3. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS

Data were collected through participant observation, in-depth interviews and key
informant interviews. I lived in the study area for about fifteen months
observing and participating in some of the everyday activities of the study
population. The participant observation method made it possible to observe
daily routines in schools and everyday life activities in the village. I participated
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in local discourses about school knowledge and its relevance to everyday life
among children and adults.
In-depth interviews were conducted with individual children and adults on
the perceived and experienced benefits of schooling and school knowledge.
While children talked mainly about what they thought they would gain by going
to school, adults talked about their experiences and what they aspired their
children to gain by going to school. Key informant interviews were held with
opinion leaders including village elders, retired teachers and religious leaders on
the historical dimension of schooling in the community and their views and
experiences about the impact of education in everyday life of an individual.
Interviews were conducted in the local language (Dholuo).
Data from in-depth interviews and key informant interviews were translated
into English. For purposes of analysis, data from the three sources in-depth
interviews, key informant interviews and participant observation were
organised into themes and triangulated to provide an understanding of the
relevance of school knowledge in everyday life.

4. FORMAL EDUCATION AND SCHOOLING IN KENYA

The education system in Kenya is a three-tier system (8-4-4) comprising of 8
years of primary, 4 years of secondary and 4 years of university education. Since
independence in 1963 the government has recognised primary education as the
minimum basic education that should be made available to all Kenyans.
Consequently efforts have been made to provide universal free primary
education. The Government abolished direct payment of primary school fees
from Standards (grades) I to IV in 1974, thereafter in Standards V to VII by
1980 and to Standard VIII in 1985, and again in all other levels in 2003. On
average, children start formal education at the age of 6 years. There is an
estimated 7.2 million children in primary schools in Kenya (Republic of Kenya,
2003). Bondo District is well served by both primary and secondary schools and
85 percent of the population live within 2 kilometres of the nearest primary
school. Most children of school going age attend school and the enrolment rate
is relatively high compared to other districts although the drop out rate is high
especially for girls.
Reasons for drop-outs include orphanhood, teenage pregnancy and
increasing poverty, which forces students to look for menial jobs to sustain the
often large families. Due to low income levels of parents in the district most
schools lack facilities. Bondo is one of the poorest districts in Kenya and the
majority of its population live below the poverty line. By 1999, about 15 million
people in Kenya (about half the total national population) were living in poverty
below the absolute poverty line now set at less than 3, 000 Kenya Shillings per
month (about 40 US$) (Republic of Kenya 2001: 8). As a result, most parents
cannot afford to provide the facilities required for proper learning in schools. In
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some schools students lack textbooks, desks and quite a number of classrooms
are not favourable for learning, as they have no windows and door shutters.
Formal education in the study area has increased in the last 30 years or so
with a strong influence from the Catholic Church. Historical accounts by key
informants indicated that while the first primary school was established in the
area in 1947, it was not until after the 1970s that most of the current schools
were built. The Catholic Church came to the area in 1960 and was later to build
the Mission Complex incorporating five schools. During this period the number
of primary schools have increased tremendously.

5. SCHOOL LIFE IN THE STUDY SCHOOLS

The two study schools had big compounds planted with trees to provide shade
and to contain surface run off during the rain season complete with welltrimmed fences of euphorbia bush. Inside the school, one is struck by the way
space is used, things appear in order and specific places are reserved for specific
things. The most conspicuous is the assembly ground outside the headteachers
office demarcated by stones and flowers with a flagpole at the centre.
The school day starts at 7.00 a.m. for students in the upper classes who are
expected to have arrived in school by then. While students in Standards VII and
VIII are expected to report to their respective classrooms for either teaching or
private studies, other students engage in manual work of various kinds until
8.00a.m time for the morning assembly. Children (610 years) in the lower
classes of Standards I and II often report after 7.30 a.m.
Manual work in the schools is more demanding and intensive during the rain
season than the dry season. During the rain season the fast growing grass has to
be cut and digging and planting done at the school garden in addition to the
routine tasks of cleaning classrooms and latrines, mending the fence and picking
up litter in the compound. After the assembly at 8.15 a.m. students proceed to
classrooms for lessons until 10:35 a.m. when they go out for a twenty-five
minute break. Lunch break is between 12:45 and 2.00 p.m. while afternoon
lessons run until 3.45 p.m. when students go for games until 4.30 p.m.
The school compound is a space for modern civilised values and a welltrimmed euphorbia fence with one main entrance marks its boundary with the
other world of the village. It is within this bounded space replete with
buildings larger than others in the village that school knowledge is acquired. The
school is a highly structured and closed social environment with rules and
regulations. According to Simpson (1999: 11) the buildings, the organisation of
space within them and the disciplinary demands that each space requires of the
students work upon them, transforming their perceptions both of themselves and
of the world around them.

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6. SCHOOL KNOWLEDGE AND EVERYDAY LIFE

The benefit of school education and learning was often equated to being brought
out of darkness into light, which resonates with the teleological view of
learning1. This view focuses on learning outcomes in terms of knowledge
gained. Simply put going to school enables a child to read and write which are
important things in everyday life.
Okeyo (12 years) had the following to say about school knowledge:
If my grandmother has been written a letter, it is me who reads it for
her. It helps me to know about money and the change I should get back.
Literacy, one of the most tangible products of schooling, is considered as highly
relevant in everyday life. This aspect of school knowledge valued by adults is
what children also aspire to achieve by being in school. Parents recalled how
their school going children assisted them in communication with relatives in
urban areas through writing and reading letters on their behalf. Children on their
part aspired to gain the literacy skills for their own use in everyday life and
ostensibly to assist their parents in communication. Numeracy skills acquired
through schooling enable children to do simple arithmetic calculations and even
keep records. In local discourses non-school going children are often teased that
they should have gone to school just to know that one plus one is equal to two.
Literacy is considered a significant aspect of school knowledge and an
inherent quality of the educated person. As Serpell (1993: 106) noted literacy
leads to new possibilities for accumulation and sharing of knowledge.
Individuals who amass literacy skills in reading and writing use it in practical
matters such as reading and writing letters, as well as reading other material like
the Bible and newspapers. Similarly literacy in numeracy skills enables one to
do simple arithmetic calculations and even keep records. Such skills are relevant
for individual and societal functional needs in everyday life and are highly
cherished.
School knowledge is believed to equip children with credentials necessary
for entry in the job market. Ayoo (11 years) explains:
I come to school to learn so that when I finish in a good way then I can
go and get a good job.
Schools are the gateway to the job market since they prescribe who is educated
and who is not. Schools engage in the production of educated persons by
equipping students with knowledge taught through the formal curriculum. In
Kenya schools follow a national curriculum tailored in many respects to meet
local needs. It is generally assumed that learners by mastering the subject
contents of the curriculum acquire knowledge, which is of relevance in everyday
life. Through learning students acquire a series of competencies (Levinson and
1 The idea that learning is for a purpose and is geared towards achieving that purpose.

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Holland 1996: 2) and thereby increase their chances of success in everyday life,
for example, getting a good job.
Modernity is the dominant discourse in the production of educated persons in
the study schools. An educated person is also a modern person distinct from
others in the community. Through their formal classroom lessons teachers
espouse ideas that link school education to modernity. Students should behave
like people who have gone to school and not like fishermen at the beach are the
words that students are confronted with in the event of any strange behaviour.
The school transforms children and distinguishes them from the unschooled
villagers. In constructing their sense of a schooled identity children distance
themselves from an image of backwardness.
Oluoch (13 years) stated:
You do not just grow very big or carry a club like people who do not go
to school. Your hair is clean and not shaggy .
School knowledge is considered to introduce children to modern values and
improve their chances of success in everyday life. In the public sphere
schoolchildren are expected to behave differently dress nicely and maintain
proper hygiene. The practices and values surrounding schooling have found
their way into the fabric of community life where styles of living of the educated
persons are admired. A striking example in the study area is the glittering home
of a US based professor which is seen by the villagers as the epitome of the
educated person. School going children admire his success and even teachers
use his example in class to cultivate an image of the educated person while
encouraging children to work hard towards becoming a somebody (ngama
idewo in the local language). Parents, too, are caught up in the modernity
discourse at school and when they visit the school they try to look modern
dress nicely to appear presentable different from what you see when you meet
them in the village for a school is not where you just go like that.
The school presents students with an opportunity to acquire a modern
identity through formal learning and social practices at school. Students learn to
become a somebody a modern person. As Rival (1996: 157) pointed out to
learn new skills is to learn a new identity so one becomes at once educated,
modern and civilised. Luttrell (1996: 94) suggests that schools as sites of
cultural production are engaged in the formation of the self by encouraging
certain styles of the self while discouraging others. Students try to become
somebody a real and presentable self, anchored in the verifying eyes of
friends. Children are aided in this process by drawing upon a shared
understanding of success and how success works to form a valued and legitimate
self. This opportunity to express self and develop autonomy is offered and
supported at school.
The formal educational experience of learners was also found to contain a
wide variety of informal experiences of relevance in everyday life. This
experience has often been referred to as the hidden curriculum lessons taught
unknowingly by the teachers and school personnel and not part of formally
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designed syllabus or curriculum (Masemann 1974: 480). The experience of
being in school transforms an individuals worldview and consequent
experience of every day life. The concept of time was specifically pointed out as
something that tremendously changes with the experience of being in school.
Adults pointed out that by experiencing school life students learn many aspects
of daily life including marital, parental and occupational roles. Students
experience from the way the school days are structured that time is a resource
that can be put to best use or wasted. This aspect of school knowledge was said
to be useful in planning or arranging ones daily activities in a way that ensured
efficiency. Individuals with little or no level of schooling were said to report late
at church, health centres and school meetings. This view of school knowledge
concurs with studies (e.g. Caldwell 1979; Katahoire et al, 2004), which show
that maternal schooling increases child survival. Women with some level of
schooling have been found to plan their lives better, take care of children
appropriately and seek health care promptly.

7. LIMITATIONS OF SCHOOL KNOWLEDGE IN EVERYDAY LIFE

While both children and adults value school knowledge in everyday life, schoolbased ethnography shows that schools are not just simple and straightforward
sites for the cultural production of the educated persons (Levinson and
Holland, 1996: 14) but are complex and heterogeneous. Students, the objects of
school doctrine, are social agents and in their daily interactions produce different
cultural forms. In the study schools, I observed that students formed alliances
through which they hid their deeds that could displease teachers including
making noise in class or feigning illness when they did not do assignments thus
increasingly developing a cultural form of lying. The alliances formed by
children in the study schools and the lads behaviour (Willis 1993) are childrens
adaptive strategies, which run parallel to, and counter, the official school
discourse. Levinson and Holland (1996: 23) have argued that different models
of the educated person are historically produced and contested in schools, as
both dominant and subordinate groups carry forth distinctive modalities of
cultural production. Schools are thus sites of struggle among the various groups
and in some cases the knowledge acquired may be harmful to the learner in
everyday life.
In the competitive and evaluative system of formal education in Kenya some
students who find the going tough end up dropping out of school. In the study
area students expressed the desire to struggle and pass their exams so that they
do not drop out of school and become fishermen and boda boda (bicycle taxi)
operators like some in the village. When students drop out they are constructed
as failures of the schools project of producing them as educated persons. In this
way, schools are responsible for the production of the uneducable person
through their discourses and practices of specifying the properly educated
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person. Such people are perceived as not suitable to perform certain tasks and
responsibilities simply because they failed in school.
For school knowledge to be of relevance to its learners, proper ways of
imparting the subject matter must be considered. The teaching of the formal
curriculum in the study schools takes place in a classroom environment and
students spend most of their time within classrooms. However, the teaching
methods are mostly didactic with students on the receiving end and the
knowledge hierarchy is quite clear. Students view teachers as possessors of
knowledge, which they are then supposed to get, and because of a crowded
curriculum there is often a lot to be done within a short time. Teachers are, thus,
less concerned with other needs of students apart from the main task of
delivering the curriculum. Students whose concerns are not met may develop a
conformist approach to learning and decide to play it cool. Such students are
made to put aside their experiences since academic knowledge is structured in
such a way that makes it remote from everyday experience (Keddie 1971: 154).
In the absence of concrete experiential learning students may easily construe
classroom (school) knowledge as of relevance only in the school but irrelevant
outside the school.
As a result education programmes though ambitiously designed, have fallen
short of meeting their expectations to equip the learners with skills, attitudes,
and knowledge necessary for their social and economic progress. This has partly
been a question of the amount of schooling one needs before reaping the
benefits. Related to this is a general tendency to view the benefits of schooling
as being in the distant future which makes some students despair and drop out
for more practical things of immediate benefit such as fishing.
In most cases the problem has been due to the irrelevancy of the curriculum
to some of the immediate functional needs of the learners. Successful mastery of
curriculum does not always confer all rewards of personal fulfilment. In Zambia,
for example, it was observed that primary schooling was not relevant to jobs like
tailoring and electrical repairs which school graduates were involved in (Serpell
1993: 174). The irrelevancy of the curriculum to the needs of the learners may
arouse opposition among the learners (Willis 1993) and apathy among adults
who are the custodians of childrens education.
Even where education has been taken as the panacea for those with no
schooling as in the study area, school knowledge is still not regarded as the
ultimate requirement for living in the society. In the study area one does not
need school knowledge to be a good fisherman, herdsman or boda boda
operator. Similarly in an Indian Village in Canada it was reported that on
occasions formal education was used to rebuke school graduates due to their
limited knowledge in community life survival skills like fishing yet they had all
that education (Wolcott 1967: 80). In the Solomon Islands formal school
curriculum was found to be shallower than traditional education (Watson-Gegeo
and Gegeo 1992: 19). Formal teaching was reportedly decontextualised in many
respects; hence studying and learning in school was symbolic yet less
meaningful in everyday life. Schooling removes people from the mainstream
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of village life and yet one requires the two sets of knowledge formal and
informal to meet the challenges of everyday life.
It has also been argued that literacy, a key aspect of school knowledge,
cannot be solely the product of schooling for it is possible to have literacy
without schooling (Cook-Gumperz, 1986: 41). A broader view of literacy shows
that there are some pluralistic set of skills and understandings that are often
described as school literacy but are part of societal common sociohistorical
heritage. The purpose of schooling is to transform such commonplace literacy
(Cook-Gumperz, 1986: 43) into a set of technical skills. Hence there is a
possibility that school gained literacy may not always be relevant in everyday
situations, which require commonplace literacy. In such circumstances
experience gained literacy takes precedence over school gained literacy.
Although non-schoolgoers are considered uneducated in the formal sense, in
reality they are knowledgeable in areas that do not require school knowledge.
Through experience they learn techniques of survival in the community and end
up becoming successful individuals in everyday life.
In view of the foregoing, the concept of the educated person as an
analytical construct is not limited to the school but goes beyond a solely schoolbased angle on the cultural production of the educated person. Thus outside the
school in the diverse spaces of the community other kinds of educated persons
are culturally produced. The school competes with other spaces in the
production of educated persons and whilst the school is geared towards
producing the formally educated persons, other spaces produce culturally
educated persons. Individuals who for one reason or another do not go through
formal schooling can be considered as culturally educated and not necessarily
primitive or backward. Such individuals are useful to the community in the
sense that they can perform culturally appropriate tasks and roles that do not
require school knowledge.

8. CONCLUSION
The school is an important institution in the community and generally taken as
the gateway to modern practices and success in life. School knowledge is
appreciated and school going children acquire a schooled identity. Drawing on
the image of the educated person children see themselves as different from the
villagers, and try to keep certain expectations of a schooled person. In families
schoolchildren are accorded a social status as people who have seen the light,
they acquire a social age disproportionate to their biological age. In the face of
others they appear as knowledgeable and this allows them to participate in
different activities that require school knowledge.
It has also been argued that in certain respects school knowledge may be of
little relevance in everyday life outside school. As such education programmes
while aiming to equip learners with basic skills to develop their cognitive
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abilities should also strive to meet the immediate functional needs of the learner
and community in general. As we strive to achieve universal primary education
the relevance of school knowledge in everyday life becomes more important
because it raises questions of form and content of the education in question.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful to the students and parents/guardians in Bondo district who
devoted their time to the study. I would also like to express my gratitude to the
field research team based at Nyangoma Research Training Site (NRTS) and
especially to the late Japhan Otieno Oyier for their role in the data collection
process. This study was funded by the DBL Institute for Health Research and
Development. Thanks to the anonymous reviewers for valuable comments.

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About the author: W. Onyango-Ouma graduated with a PhD in anthropology

from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark in 2001. He is a Research Fellow
at the Institute of African Studies, University of Nairobi, Kenya. Current
research interests include children, schooling/learning, health communication,
health systems and reproductive health.
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