The value of mentorship in schools

Over the last three weeks, I have engaged in several events that have left me piqued by the value of mentorship. First was a discussion, as part of some assignment on sexual and reproductive health rights. In the process, I listened to interventions about career and guidance clubs in schools.

A lot of assessment of schools focuses on subjects and performance in exams, an issue that this column highlighted last week. However, the future of children is based on not just their performance in exams but also their character formation and career choices.

This task is invariably performed by guidance and counselling departments in schools. Their role, though is never given the due recognition and attention that is required.

The second experience was university student elections. I had the privilege of chairing the commission that conducted the University of Nairobi student elections this year. As we announced the final results and witnessed the swearing-in of the new student leadership for the university, I was excited about the talent that existed within the student population.

It was fulfilling to watch them take oath of office and prepare to serve their fellow students and engage in solving the myriad challenges that the institution and the sector faces.

I got to reflect on the fact that these ladies and gentlemen would in a few years be occupying national leadership positions and the experience that they go through at the university will determine how they behave when they transit to the national stage.

The last one was a meeting with a group of friends celebrating some personal event. We discussed the role that adults play regarding children and youth.

One of the members of the audience shared a personal testimony about how just a discussion during a prize giving day changed her life and led her to aspire to and eventually get admitted to a leading girls national school and eventually pursue a successful career after university education.

For a girl who had initially dropped out of school in primary, got married and had two children before going back to school, her story drove part of the audience to tears but again demonstrated the importance of mentorship.

A few years ago, there was debate about the software of the country and the need to engage in addressing it. Within a certain circle that I have, we continue to discuss the need to inculcate a culture of humanness, described as utu. While there are many spaces to develop this culture, one of the critical avenues is through mentorship.

This task requires deliberate effort and commitment. Learning institutions are an important space to help shape the future of the next generation.

It is important that every teacher recognises that his or her role in the classroom and in engagements with students is not just to pass technical content but also guide the next generation. It is from these acts, that the quality of our nation and its social fabric will be shaped and improved.

On many occasions, we complain about the nature of our society and the contribution of the political class to deteriorating standards of living.

However, we forget that as citizens we may not be playing our role and thus easily passing the blame to the political class. Time is ripe to introspect and take deliberate steps to change the state of our society.

We have become a society that has outsourced all our problems to politicians and the law. A few days ago there was a post in a group of lawyers from my high school. A lawyer had been invited to speak to a group on the place of law in fighting corruption.

The answer he got was that he should tell the audience that we use the wrong tools to fight the vice. The place of software rebooting, and building is one that is beyond legal approaches.

Mentorship is critical in reengineering our society and setting the future generation on a solid path of utu and prosperity. It is high time we invested both within educational institutions and other spaces on deliberate structures and mechanisms for mentorship.