Full Length Research Paper

The role of indigenous education in children and youth behaviour modification among the Tugen people of Baringo sub-county, Kenya

Mary J. Chepchieng1*, Isaac Tarus2, Joshia Osamba3

Abstract

World over, elders are the custodians of knowledge and instructors in indigenous societies. Among the Tugen people of Kenya, elders play a role in transmission of knowledge from one generation to the next in the society. This indigenous system of education is both informal and formal. In the case of formal education, the programmes of teaching were restricted to certain periods in the life of every individual, notably the period of initiation or ‘coming of age’ as contextualized by Rodney (1982). On the other hand, the informal education was mainly done through story-telling, riddles and proverbs. In this system of education, parents had the greatest responsibility for imparting acceptable societal morals to their children and the youth. In fact values such as honesty, hard work, respect, truthfulness, obedience and good manners constituted the broad based curriculum of the Tugen youth. These virtues played a role in producing youth who were morally upright and hardworking. This paper therefore highlights the key responsibilities played by the elders and parents in moulding the behaviour of children and the youth. In the modern society, the youth engage in a myriad of anti-social behaviour that include illicit sex and drug abuse among others that could be traced to failure of particularly elders and parents in teaching the virtues of life to the youth as already identified in the forgoing analysis.

Key words: Formal education, children culture, indigenous education, informal education, youth.

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