Abstract
Education is key for any form of personal or societal development. Citizens who can read, calculate, and think critically are a country’s great resource as they have better economic opportunities, higher agricultural productivity, healthier children, and better reproductive health. In her drive towards realization of the Vision 2030 therefore, Kenya highlights education and training as crucial components of the Social Pillar. This is with the understanding that knowledge is important for growth and development of economies. Yet, it is not just education for its own sake, but quality education to serve as a lever for personal development so that the capable and active citizens can in-turn be the strongest lever for long term sustainable change. There is however an emerging trend, consumerism, which thrives on pleasure seeking morality and hedonistic lifestyle while promoting intellectual inactivity. One only needs to have money to pay, often, for one’s wants. How this money is obtained is not the issue. This certainly is at crossroads with the ideals of a holistic education which emphasizes virtues such as creativity, honesty and social integration. The purpose of this study was to examine the complexity of funding for quality education in a consumer heightened economy. The method of investigation was content analysis. The paper recommends an overhaul in the Kenyan education award system to ingrain human values of honesty and integrity. This would enhance the policy of quality education for sustainable economic growth.
Highlights
Kenya, like most developing countries, is experiencing a new wave of demand for education basically at all levels and in all fields (Simiyu, 2012)
This section examines the concept of consumerism, the relationship between consumerism and education, and how this relationship has affected the funding and quality of education
Driven by the specific objective to determine the state of Kenyan education in the wake of consumerism, the mode of data collection was basically content analysis
Summary
Like most developing countries, is experiencing a new wave of demand for education basically at all levels and in all fields (Simiyu, 2012). Apart from personal benefits such as obtaining social skills, reformation of attitudes and conferrement of status, education trains in skills that are required by the economy, acts as an integrative force in society by communicating values that unite different sections of society, and promotes cultural heritage (Agarwal, n.d). Commodities of consumption are the objects to meet the needs, but they are symbols of social identity and personality. In the interest of this paper, it is argued that education has become a commodity of heightened consumption value with emphasis on certification rather than knowledge and skills. This poses crucial questions of funding and quality that call for thoughtful discourse
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