DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION IN THE NAROK DISTRICT OF KENYA

DURING THE 1960s much of the writing on African education concentratedonthe expansion of the system in response to the enormous public demands upon it. While Ministries of Education were involved full-time in attempting to meet popular pressures, little attention could be given to those groups within the populations of many African states who had never seen the attractions of formal schooling. As many countries have relied on local or tribal self-help as the spur to educational and other developments, the decade has impressively widened the gap between the educationally resistant groups and those who have responded with the well-documented fanaticism. Often enough the resisters have been pastoralists of one sort or another, and their refusal has not seemed particularly significant as long as they were defending a way of life in what seemed unenviable stretches of semi-arid country. In Kenya, however, pastoral groups such as the Maasai control, along with much very marginal ground, large areas of land of high potential. In this situation a policy decision of great delicacy is raised: how far should a country where good land is at such a premium continue to leave undeveloped such a productive resource ? Can outsiders be used as catalysts to force the Masaai to a realization that they must themselves exploit their land or it will be exploited for them ? The Narok District of Kenya precisely exemplifies this dilemma of development, with its vast sweep of land from the rich Mau escarpment in the Kenya Highlands down to the low Serengeti Plains of Tanzania. Any consideration of largeor medium-scale development initiatives in this district must take into account the particular educational problems of this part of Kenya. In summary, these are that the district is no longer tribally homogeneous, but has one groupthe pastoral Maasai-the majority of whose school-age children are encouraged by their elders to keep clear of education; and another very mixed group of outsiders from other tribes, many of them by now long-term residents in Narok, who have an acquisitive and ambitious attitude towards education and development much closer to that in the agricultural districts to the north and west.