Life Skills, Sexual Maturation and Sanitation: What's (Not) Happening in Our Schools? An Exploratory Study from Kenya (review)

This valuable exploratory study from Kenya, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, examines the teaching of "life skills" at the primary school level and its relationship to girls' enrollment, retention, and academic achievement. Life skills refers to basic learning competence and issues of girls' sexual maturation and menstrual practices. The hypothesis is that girls' perennial low enrollment and level of academic success are linked, perhaps causally, to how factors often shrouded in secrecy and silence at home—sexual maturation, sanitation, and life skills acquisition—are (not) addressed in the primary school curriculum or the wider educational context.

The book consists of six case studies and several tables, and an introduction and conclusion by Peter Mutunga. The researchers found "great gender disparity in access to education and performance at all tiers of education" (23) linked to several factors: infrastructural shortcomings, an examination-oriented curriculum, inadequate teacher training, insufficiently implemented educational policies, and negative cultural beliefs, attitudes, and practices surrounding girls' puberty both at home and school.

Kenyan girls tend to start school older in age than boys, have higher primary school dropout rates than boys, experience sexual maturation while still in lower grades even though "family education" is not taught until the middle school years, are prioritized lower than boys in the wider cultural context, particularly where education is concerned, and receive education from policymakers and planners who are predominantly male (22). Macro-level variables shaping gender disparity in education include Kenya's high fertility rate and population growth, drought and economic decline in the late 1990s and early 2000s, ethnic, geographical, and cultural diversity, and poverty, as well as what rural parents often experience as the exorbitant costs associated with education—school fees, mandatory uniforms, and supplies.

Institutional problems loom large: underequipped infrastructures with severely inadequate sanitation systems make girls' modest management of personal hygiene an imposing if not impossible challenge. Unable to manage menstruation with dignity at school, many simply choose not to attend when having their menses and so fall behind in lessons.

Problems stemming from infrastructural shortcomings are compounded by an examination-oriented curriculum into which life skills are not sufficiently integrated or adapted to local contexts and conditions. The simultaneous lack of teacher training in life skills pedagogy and support systems such as counseling to help primary school girls cope with the physiological, psychological, and social processes associated with the "tremendous bodily, emotional and social changes accompanying sexual maturation, including understanding their sexuality" exacerbates gender disparity (191).

Researchers report that both female and male teachers and male pupils have negative attitudes toward pubescent and prepubescent primary school girls. The study also reveals "the serious gaps and anomalies between government policies, especially in education and health sectors, and what actually happens on the ground," and concludes that "many of these gaps are due first to a general laxity and neglect in the enforcement of policies or legislation and lack of accountability among some of the managers and policy makers of education and health systems" (89).

The researchers recommend institutional solutions. The in-school acquisition of life skills, including knowledge about the process of sexual maturation, menstruation, and effective coping strategies can be improved if teachers are better trained to teach about them and if guidance and counseling programs are made available to pupils at the primary level (191). This exploratory research report provides current, empirical data and prompts timely questions about the role of health, the body, culture, and the significance of bodily practices in the construction of social identities and life trajectories through schooling and educational processes.

The volume is dedicated to Ben Makau—who tragically died before the books went to press—as "a true and rare...