STUDY? HELL NO, GIVE US OUR BEAUTY CONTEST!

At one time, girls in a high school in Nyeri County went on strike. They reportedly almost interrupted the KCSE examinations.

They had genuine grievances if you ask me. To begin with the school principal was just too high handed, what students call strict. Even worse, she had the audacity to cancel a beauty contest. A beauty contest for real? What the hell was she thinking about?

You see, that is the problem with teachers. They assume they know everything. I don't know who lied to them that every child who walks through school wants to pass with flying colours, become a dctor, get married in a colourful wedding and eat bread and butter.

There are many students who go to school to grow. If they had their way, they would quit school and go home only they wouldn't dare because they have already been bribed by their parents to go away for four years and grow bigger.

There are students who were lovingly taken care of by the house help from when they were toddlers. Right up to standard eight, the house help always woke them up, made sure they showered, helped them dress up, pleaded with them to eat and escorted to the bus stop or school.

In primary school, teachers made sure to involve parents in their development by ensuring a diary was signed every night. In fact, the best parents even did their homework for them.

They grew up in an environment filled with democracy, dialogue, tender love, many bonding outings, hugs and kisses and lots of chips and sausages on Sundays. And then they walk into this secondary school and meet a 'high handed' principal who expects them to do their own laundry, hoe around the school farm and spend hours reading when they would rather be watching a soap opera on TV.

Aren't teachers aware that democratic space has been vastly expanded in schools? The right to stage a beauty contest right in the middle of an exam period must be enshrined somewhere in our bill of rights and it is criminally reckless for a so called school principal to cancel it without consulting the stakeholders.

And yet if you think about it, those girls are way ahead of their teacher. Even as she was cancelling the beauty contest so her charges could read and pass exams, university lecturers were on strike and a doctor's strike was looming, all because of poor pay.

Let us, however, imagine that the beauty contest had been staged. The winner would most likely have participated in more pageants later and probably became a Miss Something or other – a celebrity.

In no time, a handsome man, sweaty from years of chewing books, would come knocking, and woo her all the way to Zanzibar or even Caribbean.

Before you get a hint, wedding bells would be ringing, her address would shift to Muthaiga, a heavily powdered baby would emerge and she would stay comfortably and happily ever after while the 'chops' in her class treat boils in distant village market dispensaries and preparing to strike on the dusty roads due to lousy pay.