Education as a Spiritual Journey: The Hidden Story behind the Evolution and Growth of Starehe Boys Centre and School, Kenya

Abstract

In the last few decades we have witnessed a surge in western scholarship in areas of spirituality and education and the unabated debates pertaining to the same. The theoretical and dogmatic wars of whether to teach or not teach “creation theory” or “evolution theory” in the West especially US has been part of these unrelenting debates. Proponents of the need to make the education process spirit-centered underscore that “we are in a spiritual renaissance” or “global awakening” and many people globally are increasingly embracing sacredness and interconnectedness of life. Although the global West has witnessed the dubious dichotomy between spirituality and educational both in terms of theory and praxis, the global South and Africa in particular both its pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial periods has eschewed this ambivalence and synergy between education and spirituality and all research indicators attest the high reverence that has been given to spirituality within the education enterprise in both public and private schools. An African approach to all spheres of life has been spiritual and affirmation of Mbiti (1969) description of an African society as being “notoriously religious”. African deep and virile religiosity was one of the few spheres of African societies that was resilient to the forces of the new order that came with the introduction of Western education and Christianity. It is this religious re-conceptualization that has made both Christianity and Islam to grow beyond measure on the African continent for centuries compared to the global West. / The story of the role of missionaries in the development of education in Africa and its efforts to make education a religious undertaking, its contradictions and mixed effects is well documented and researched and is a subject I will not delve into in this paper. What is absent in the literature however, is the embrace of the same by many private schools that were begun by individuals and not churches in post-independence Africa. This paper sets to discuss the latter by critically examining the hidden story behind the evolution and growth of Starehe Boys Centre and School in Kenya and the centrality of spirituality in its unique evolution, mission and rapid development. Specifically, it examines: growing literature on spirituality and education; the evolution and role of spirituality in the growth of Starehe Boys and Centre and School and emerging reflective educational possibilities. / /