Since time immemorial, we have always conducted the parliamentary system in our Primary and High school debate sessions. Our pupils and students are familiar with how laws are made through parliament. Every week, they come up or the teacher in charge of debate comes up with a motion and they assemble for debate sessions where in the end, the speaker announces a ruling either in favour of the opposes or proposers of the tabled bill.Normally, in most high schools in Kenya, the debate ends there but the teacher in charge usually goes further to explain how the bill goes through first reading, second reading and finally presidential assent to become a law. Our students are well conversant with all these.After high school, they join Universities and jump head long into campus politics.
After clearing campus, all they ever think of becoming is a politician. So you will find most of them either vying to become MCAs (Member of county assembly) or MPs (Member of national assembly).The sad reality is that they strive to join politics, not with the aim of coming up with better laws, but because they know it is the fastest way of getting rich in Kenya, legally or illegally! If they chance to get elected, what kinds of legislators do we end up with? Your guess is as good as mine. The corrupt politicians that we have today are not entirely the old guys. We have, among them, young politicians who, less than twenty years ago, were in high school eating githeri and failing in simple arithmetic! Now the kinds of money they steal, in Millions, are bigger than their actual age!
It is high time we replace the parliamentary system with the court system in our primary and secondary school debates. May be through this, we might end up having more lawyers than politicians. We should now introduce our students to how a court system works. They should now familiarize themselves with the structure of the Judiciary. They should, through debate, know how a case is handled in a court of law. Form three History and Government syllabus covers the Judiciary but in theory. Instead of organizing a trip once a year to take the students to a court to see how the cases are handled, the students can organize their own court right within the school compound and come up with cases the same way they come up with motions during debates. They can then select a judge, a plaintiff, defendant, lawyer, prosecutor, witnesses etc
.Believe me, we need more lawyers than politicians. We need more people who can interpret and apply the law well than those who thwart and place themselves above the law.Besides,lawyers will not steal our money they way politician are doing with such reckless abandon and sheer impunity!
What is the main aim of a debate in primary and secondary schools? Is it not to equip the pupils and students with excellent communication and public presentation skills? Is it not to improve their spoken English and thinking capacities? Is it not to teach them how to argue out a case with soberness and application of reason, fairness and facts to convince the opponent to accept one’s point of view? Where else is this more demonstrated if not in a court? Will a court system not achieve all these, if not more? These are some of the questions that we should be asking ourselves.