Students, Violent Protests and the Process of Self-Realization in Kenyan Secondary Schools

Secondary schools in Kenya have occasionally exploded into orgies of violence often resulting in destruction of property and, sometimes, loss of life. But despite the much inquiry and the subsequent body of knowledge this phenomenon has inspired, such occurrences still persist thus raising some fundamental questions; for instance; what are the ultimate causes of this behaviour? is the students’ destructive behaviour to be seen merely as a result of pure chance, their nature, their circumstances or all these, and whatever the case, what is their nature? While part of the discourse has tended to dismiss such behaviour by students as merely ‘the way students have always behaved’, this paper views it as that of ‘conscious individuals continually searching for “who” they are through their actions in school life as they make choices based on their experiences, values and outlook’. The paper starts by seeking to discover the underlying causes of this phenomenon by analyzing students’ ‘lived’ concrete experiences, in 31 schools selected from fi ve of the eight former provinces of Kenya, within the existentialist paradigm. This analysis reveals that to them, violent protests constitute a means to their self-realization, a position which though seemingly sound, this paper finds it to be rather limited as it only serves to promote the vicious cycle of violence. Accordingly, the paper recommends recourse to approaches that necessarily entail the humanization of both the students and their perceived oppressors in their schooling process.