Smoke signal from schools is spirit of our age, students want to be heard

School burnings are not new. Students have, over the years, torched their dormitories or other buildings to express their anger over a range of grievances. Tragically, school administrations, parents and even the government are always caught flat-footed.

But the current burnings are striking: even iconic schools that have always been considered beacons of student discipline and academic excellence have not been spared the national wave of billowing smoke. What's going on?

Some observers have argued, quite persuasively, that the outrage reflects the state of the nation. Who isn't groaning under the growing burden of the national economic crisis?

Aren't the students reacting to the choking pressures of the gross mismanagement of the country? And this is not to excuse violence. To try to understand is not to condone. Despite endless glorious rhetoric, people are suffering in very basic ways.

There is no money. Everyone is struggling. Are we to assume that Kenya's high school students are completely unaware and unaffected by the runaway corruption, a fat elite seated on the backs of the majority poor, a distracted political class that is blissfully out of touch with the sufferings of ordinary mwananchi, deepening poverty, high cost of living, mass unemployment, economic stagnation and widespread hopelessness? 

Other observers have cited congestion in public boarding schools, strained and dilapidated basic facilities, poor quality of food, outdated authoritarian systems of school administration or even rampant indiscipline due to the ban on corporal punishment. Return the cane, many suggest.

The phasing out of boarding schools has also been proposed as a remedy. After all, no fires have been reported in day schools. The frantic and desperate search for any solution underlines the enormity of the crisis.

Without a doubt, all the stated factors play a role. But on a broader scale, we are on the cusp of a major societal shift. We live in the Digital Age. In a world saturated with information like never before, inherited normative structures of authority are collapsing right before our eyes. It's not a moral problem. The issue is bigger than the structural failings of the school system, poor parenting, drugs, indiscipline, et cetera. 

This is an existential crisis. The world is changing. Or in the language of Gen Zs, "The fear is gone." A young man creates and publishes the image of the President in a coffin. Another announces his readiness to wear a bomb and assassinate a prominent politician. Teen girls burn their dormitory, killing 16 of their sisters inside? Think about that for a moment. 

It is not just in schools, the streets or social media. Marriage, for instance, is, for all intents and purposes, dead, particularly among the younger generation. Church/religion is collapsing, replaced by innovative spiritualities or none. Nothing is sacred anymore. Not the Pope. Not Jesus. And certainly not the school teacher. Or the President. 

Young people are questioning old certainties everywhere. They are rejecting old, dogmatic frameworks in favour of seeing truth as their own direct experience of reality. The fear is gone.

As Lenin posed, what's to be done?  It's difficult to say. The ongoing conversations are important. Education (and life itself) is being radically redefined by new imaginations and technologies like AI. Everywhere our individual and collective experience of reality is being reshaped, as old frameworks and certainties crumble under vigorous contestation.

The ultimate existential question is: What does it mean to be a human being in the world today? What kinds of politics, spiritualities, schools, media, jobs, bosses, personal relationships, economies, everything, do people want?

The way forward seems to me to be continuous sincere dialogue, instead of imposing inherited dogmas, unworkable authoritarian posturing and entitlement. No one cares about your title or label if you can't hear them out.

We must LISTEN honestly and keep talking to each other. The level of consciousness today, especially among the young, is revolutionary. Nothing is going to reverse or stop this. 

Society must restructure itself accordingly. Authoritarian systems built on inherited beliefs, fear and threats must fall. New relationships must be built on: Openness. Accountability. Participation. Listening. Restraint. Empathy.