Fellow Kenyans,

Let’s put an end to this nonsense of saying someone is being a jerk because “hajasoma”.
I personally make the point of correcting folks i’m speaking with if they say something in the line of “Hiyo ndio shida ya kudeal na mtu hajasoma”

“Mtu hajasoma” is their explicit reference to someone who hasn’t undergone “sufficient” formal schooling. The subject of this insult might have schooled all they way to form 4 or even acquired some technical training,but to some pretentious folks, that still amounts to “kutosoma”

Each one of us knows a relative or a friend, perhaps an older one, who was raised when schools weren’t ubiquitous. Most of our grannies, never went to school. Yet some of them are the most pragmatic, intelligent and wholesomely level-headed people you’ll ever know

On the other hand, we have some Ivy League and Oxybridge talking heads, particularly in government, who are the most vile, obstinately unreasonable folks you will ever know. You see some of them hurling insults on this and other platforms at ordinary citizens just tryna do right.

Of course the act of going to school exposes you to new people, ideas, diversity and so on. Esp if you were lucky enough to attend school in an area culturally and locationally different from your area of upbringing.

Perhaps you should be more gracious in admitting your luck, and be more considerate before insulting other folks who perhaps hold a KCSE certificate as opposed to an MBA. If someone is behaving a certain way, formal education is probably not the absolute sole reason.

The police force is a major victim of the “shida ya watu hawajasoma” tag.
I’m not a fan of the police. I have this bubbling mistrust and eternal dislike for the Police. A lot of them are actual jerks. Yet, I wouldn’t ascribe their general ujinga to lack of university degrees.

Some years back, maybe as a response to public kutosoma complaints, the Police started hiring highly schooled officers, particulary in the investigative/ intelligence units. Also, the officers who now get appointed to the highest posts are usually well schooled folks.

But they are just as corrupt. Maybe worse, because they might feel entitled to bigger bribes. Or perhaps feel (sometimes rightly) that their renumeration is not commensurate with their academic credentials.

There are also some good, incorruptible cops. I’ve always harbored the wish to come up with an organization that will periodically identify and reward such cops. They are the minority and don’t enjoy the economic “rewards” their less morally heeled counterparts do.

These good cops, did not necessarily enjoy more formal schooling than the bad ones.

Anyway, this good cop, bad cop story, wasn’t even the subject of this thread. I just think the detour offers a good illustration.

People who make assumptions on others’ intelligence based on level of formal schooling should remember that formal schooling came to our shores just the other day. I wonder if they assume that our prior existence as a society was marked with folly and a widespread lack of reason.

It is possible to call out foolishness without always linking it to the inferiority of others’ academic credentials relative to our own.

Yet, when a security guard or a matatu driver give us a hard time, we jump to say it’s cos they did not go to school. We are reluctant to assign the same judgment to the fool in a Porsche who cuts you in traffic and goes ahead to flash you a dirty look.