Catholic high schools in the Archdiocese of Nairobi: An exploratory study

It is important that Catholic schools in the 21st century determine the degree of their Catholic identity. This exploratory study examines the voices of stakeholders of Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Nairobi (CASAN) namely: students, parents, teachers, principals, professionals and the Archbishop of Nairobi's understanding of how far their schools fulfill the three goals of education, that is the critical, dialogical and evangelization goals of education. Almost 50 years after achieving its political independence from the British, Kenya as a nation is now faced with the serious decision of whether to continue with the cultural and pedagogical heritage it inherited from its colonial past or to change the course of direction in order to provide Kenyan students with the kind of education relevant to the needs of the country and students in the 21st century.; Four interventions have been proposed as being helpful in helping CASAN achieve this vision. First, there is a need for the schools to use liberation theology as the language of critique of the Eurocentric pedagogy. Secondly, there is need to ensure that this education is dialogical in nature. Third, that a cultural change needs to be effected and finally, that the education ought to be culturally relevant to African students.; Eight focus group interviews, two mini-focus groups and two individual interviews were conducted to obtain data. Twenty three schools of the 24 schools identified for this study were recruited. All in all, 53 participants: that is 18 students, 12 professionals, 13 teachers, 5 principals, 4 parents and the Archbishop of Nairobi were interviewed.; Among some of the major findings in this study are that participants were in agreement that a majority of Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Nairobi had failed their students. This was felt more in areas such as equity of resources distribution, curriculum taught in schools, taking of national examinations, and so forth. A majority of participants believed that Kenyan schools in general and more particularly Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Nairobi emphasized the teaching of sciences at the expense of humanities, or the cognitive dimension of education at the expense of critical, dialogical and normative dimensions.; For these reasons, the study makes a number of serious recommendations. Among these are that the Archdiocese of Nairobi needs to set up a diocesan synod or education commission to study the issue of what type of schools the Archdiocese needs to set up or emphasize in the 21st century. The study also made recommendations related to new ways of funding an authentically Catholic education, the need for separation of church and state in the field of education, and the use of Jumuiya as the praxis method for dialogical education. This study finally recommends that for Catholic schools to become "great" schools of the 21st century, there is a need to have visionary leadership.