NTV Attacked!
NTV is on the spotlight once again for what it displayed a few days ago. Arguably one of the biggest media houses on the land, the Nation Media Group-owned TV station is on the receiving end of a backlash from a section of Kenyans who feel that a story it ran two days ago was unfounded and not good for public consumption.
NTV displayed the worst compositions written by KCPE candidates in 2014 to display the level of mediocrity in our primary schools.
The compositions were meant to show how pupils get to sit for national exams yet they are poorly prepared for the same.
Here are the photos aired by the station:
This, however, is what some Kenyans consider an irritation. Led by a popular journalist who writes for one of the National newspapers, NTV is accused of subjecting pupils behind the compositions to trauma and rejection by displaying their mediocrity.
Click the next page to see what the journalist told NTV.
Here is what the journalist wrote in one of his social media accounts:
NTV was wrong to display that composition. Wrong. In a country where students commit suicide because of poor performance, I can only imagine the trauma the student who wrote will go through when he or she realises that she has been made a laughing stalk for his or her inability to communicate in English, which in any case is an acquired language. This is the stuff that Ngugi wa Thiong’o hates. With hindsight, I remember being made to smear a toilet because I spoke in mother tongue while in primary school and it pains my heart that the we assume speaking in English as a mark of intelligence. I see some parents who pride themselves that their children cannot speak in mother tongue, instead they are fluent in English and other foreign languages.
This kind of idiocy ought to stop. I know senior people in the media who got Ds but they often do their job. One of the most respected TV anchors in this country got a D and he and another she probably make more than that student who got an A-, went to study bio-systems and is now unemployed or working in an underfunded government institution where the pay takes six and half months for them to be paid two months’ pay.
I reiterate, it was rather shallow to display that composition. You gain absolutely nothing by reveling in other people’s assumed misfortunes. May be the writer now doing well. Or worse. Besides in this country where education standards have been deteriorating with a wide gap in terms of class when it comes to private and public schools, we should not laugh at others. Students in other parts of the country, north of the equator rarely have enough teachers, coupled with the harsh environment and the hard economic times, they rarely even go to school. Yet you expect them to compete with those who go to national schools and come from better parts of the country.
KNEC itself is a discredited institution that should be disbanded. Last year it was greatly mired in corruption scandal and the fact that they still give blanket Ys to students whom they suspect of teaching, goes to show that they have failed in their mandate. The fact that they cannot ensure confidentiality of sensitive materials such as answer sheets, goes to show the immaturity and stupidity with which is run.
