NAIROBI, KENYA — In a country where education is still considered a privilege and children beg parents to attend school, Kenyans have been shocked by the latest violence to rock their East African nation: students trying to burn down their schools.
An unprecedented wave of student strikes and riots has closed about 250 high schools over the last month. There have been arson attacks at about half of them. Scores of teenagers have been arrested and thousands more sent home. One student died in a dormitory blaze.
"We don't understand this sudden attachment to burning," said Karega Mutahi, the Education Ministry's permanent secretary.
Students cite poor facilities, overcrowding, abusive administrators and the schools' failure to prepare them for national graduation exams.
But to many adults, the violence seems more likely the result of spoiling young people, who they say are involved in drug use, promiscuity and even devil worship. They say the turmoil is nothing that a good, hard whack with a cane can't resolve.
Their solutions include banning cellphones in schools, restricting television and calling for a reinstatement of corporal punishment. One government minister blamed "foreign ideologies" for a 2001 law against school caning, which was previously common.
Experts say Kenya's leaders seem to be looking at every conceivable explanation except the most obvious: the meltdown that killed more than 1,000 people after the disputed Dec. 27 presidential election.
"In a sense, they are blaming children for their own bad behavior," said Birgithe Lund-Henriksen, chief of child protection at UNICEF in Nairobi, the capital. She said it's not surprising to see a student outburst six months after youths saw the nation nearly disintegrate into tribal bloodshed.
"These kids saw appalling violence," she said. "They're traumatized. You try to hold it in, but it needs to come out one way or another. Now they are reflecting the behavior of the adults."
Nairobi high school senior Moses Ngari, 17, said he has not participated in any school violence, but defended the protests.
"This idea of taking everything to the streets has influenced us," he said. "Teachers strike. Doctors strike. If my parent comes home and tells me he was on strike, who am I not to do it?"
Kenyan sociologist Ken Ouko said the student riots have also exposed a fracture between the country's older generation, which holds political and economic power, and those coming of age at a time of high inflation and unemployment.
