At Kooki Central High School, Uncle Rwamiti asked a room full of parents a question nobody had put on the timetable.

By the time Uncle Rwamiti arrived at Kooki Central High School, the Parent-Teacher Association meeting had already been going on for nearly two hours.

The parents had discussed examination results.

They had discussed discipline.

They had discussed school fees.

They had discussed uniforms, mobile phones, late-coming, teachers, holiday assignments and the mysterious ability of teenagers to consume enormous quantities of food while claiming there was “nothing to eat.”

Then the new chairman of the Board of Governors was invited to speak.

Uncle Rwamiti walked to the front.

He looked at the parents.

Then at the teachers.

Then at the students sitting quietly at the back.

“I have only one question,” he said.

Several parents looked relieved.

A man who promises only one question at a PTA meeting is immediately popular.

Uncle Rwamiti picked up a piece of chalk and wrote on the board:

WHAT ARE WE PREPARING THESE CHILDREN FOR?

A parent raised his hand.

“The future.”

“Excellent,” said Uncle Rwamiti. “What will they find there?”

Nobody answered.

And that was where the trouble began

The Boy Everybody Was Proud Of

Uncle Rwamiti told them about a young man he would call Daniel.

Daniel had been the sort of child parents enjoy discussing at weddings.

He was disciplined.

He did his homework.

He passed examinations.

He went to university.

At graduation, his mother wore a magnificent gomesi and his father temporarily became a photographer.

There were photographs beside flowers.

Photographs beside the university sign.

Photographs with aunties.

Photographs with people who had contributed absolutely nothing to Daniel’s education but nevertheless positioned themselves prominently beside the graduate.

There was cake.

There were speeches.

One uncle announced:

“Now the future is secure!”

The future, unfortunately, had not attended the graduation ceremony.

Daniel discovered this six months later.

He had a degree.

He had good grades.

He could answer examination questions.

But nobody was asking him examination questions anymore.

People were asking different questions.

What can you do?

What problem can you solve?

Why should we employ you?

What have you tried?

Can you work with difficult people?

Can you communicate an idea?

What happens when nobody gives you instructions?

Daniel had spent nearly twenty years becoming very good at giving correct answers.

Then adulthood handed him questions for which there was no marking guide.

The Parents Became Uncomfortable

A mother near the front raised her hand.

“But surely education is still important?”

“Extremely,” said Uncle Rwamiti.

“Then what are you saying?”

“I am wondering whether we sometimes confuse education with preparation for life.”

That produced silence.

The head teacher shifted slightly in his chair.

Uncle Rwamiti continued.

“A school can teach mathematics without teaching a young person what to do when money is scarce.

“It can teach English without teaching her how to have a difficult conversation.

“It can teach computer science without teaching him how to recognise when technology is manipulating his attention.

“It can teach biology without teaching a teenager how to handle rejection.

“It can teach economics while a student has no idea how value is created outside an examination.”

A boy at the back smiled.

The parents did not.

This was becoming a dangerous PTA meeting

Then a Student Raised Her Hand

Her name was Aisha.

She was seventeen.

“Sir,” she said, “adults always tell us to prepare for the future.”

Uncle Rwamiti nodded.

“But you people don’t know what the future will be like either.”

Somebody laughed.

A teacher tried very hard not to.

Aisha continued.

“You tell us to study hard, get good grades, go to university and get a good job.”

“Yes.”

“But some graduates don’t have jobs.”

“Yes.”

“You tell us not to spend too much time online, but some people make their living online.”

“Yes.”

“You tell us to choose careers, but AI is changing careers before we even enter them.”

“Yes.”

“So what exactly are we supposed to prepare for?”

Now Uncle Rwamiti smiled.

“My dear,” he said, “that may be the most intelligent thing anybody has said here today.”

The chairman of a school board probably shouldn’t say that immediately after the head teacher has spoken.

But it was too late.

Perhaps We Have Been Preparing Teenagers for Certainty

For generations, the path appeared reasonably clear.

Study.

Pass.

Qualify.

Find employment.

Work.

Build a home.

Raise a family.

Retire.

The map wasn’t perfect, but at least people recognised the roads.

Today’s teenager is growing up while somebody is moving the roads.

Artificial intelligence is changing work.

Social media is changing friendship, status and identity.

Technology is changing how people learn.

The cost of housing is changing independence.

The internet has created occupations that didn’t exist when many parents were choosing careers.

Young people are simultaneously exposed to more opportunity and more comparison than perhaps any generation before them.

Yet listen to many conversations about preparing teenagers and you will still hear the old instructions:

Work hard.

Pass your exams.

Choose a good course.

Get a good job.

None of these is bad advice.

It is simply incomplete

What If the Future Doesn’t Need a Finished Teenager?

Uncle Rwamiti turned back to the board.

Underneath:

WHAT ARE WE PREPARING THESE CHILDREN FOR?

he wrote:

UNCERTAINTY.

A father objected.

“That sounds pessimistic.”

“Not at all,” said Uncle Rwamiti.

“A child who expects certainty may be frightened by change.

“A child who learns how to navigate uncertainty may become curious about it.”

Perhaps teenagers don’t need adults to predict the future for them.

We can’t.

Perhaps they need opportunities to practise what they will require regardless of what that future becomes.

How to think.

How to ask good questions.

How to recover after failure.

How to recognise nonsense.

How to disagree without destroying relationships.

How to learn something without being forced.

How to turn knowledge into action.

How to manage attention.

How to handle money.

How to make decisions when all the information isn’t available.

How to create value.

How to ask for help.

How to change one’s mind.

How to sit with disappointment.

And perhaps most importantly:

How to continue learning after nobody is giving them homework.

But There Is Another Problem

Adults frequently complain that teenagers aren’t independent.

Then we organise almost every important part of their lives.

We wake them.

Transport them.

Tell them what to study.

Choose tutors.

Monitor their homework.

Solve disputes with teachers.

Replace lost items.

Provide money.

Remind them of deadlines.

Arrange holiday programmes.

And sometimes even choose their university courses.

Then one morning, somewhere around twenty-one, we become irritated.

“Why can’t this child think for himself?”

Uncle Rwamiti looked at the parents.

“If we carry a child’s schoolbag for eighteen years,” he said, “perhaps we should not be surprised when he reaches university and asks who is carrying it.”

The students laughed.

This time even the head teacher did

Preparation Requires Practice

You cannot teach independence entirely through lectures about independence.

A teenager learns judgment partly by being allowed to make increasingly consequential judgments.

Responsibility requires responsibility.

Money management requires some money to manage.

Problem-solving requires problems adults resist solving on the teenager’s behalf.

Decision-making requires decisions.

And resilience requires experiencing manageable disappointment without an adult immediately arriving with a bulldozer.

This doesn’t mean abandoning teenagers.

It means changing the adult’s job as the teenager develops.

When children are very young, we appropriately hold their hands.

Adolescence presents adults with a harder challenge:

knowing when to loosen the grip.

Not completely.

Not recklessly.

But gradually.

Aisha Had One More Question

The meeting was supposed to have ended twenty minutes earlier.

Nobody seemed to be leaving.

Aisha raised her hand again.

“So should we stop caring about grades?”

“No,” said Uncle Rwamiti.

“Should we stop going to university?”

“No.”

“Then what changes?”

Uncle Rwamiti looked at the board.

“Perhaps nothing needs to be removed.”

He picked up the chalk again.

“Perhaps something needs to be added.”

Next to EXAMINATIONS, he wrote:

LIFE.

Next to KNOWLEDGE:

ACTIVATION.

Next to SUCCESS:

MEANING.

Next to CERTAINTY:

ADAPTABILITY.

And beside CHILD:

EMERGING ADULT.

“Your examination results matter,” he told the students.

“But they are evidence of something you did under particular conditions at a particular time.

“They are not a prophecy.”

He put down the chalk.

“You are going to enter a world that will occasionally reward you for knowing the answer.”

He paused.

“But I suspect it will reward you even more for knowing what to do when nobody knows the answe

The Question We Should Take Home

At the end of the meeting, parents collected handbags and car keys.

Students retrieved phones they had supposedly not been using.

Teachers gathered papers.

And Uncle Rwamiti looked once more at what he had written on the board:

WHAT ARE WE PREPARING THESE CHILDREN FOR?

Perhaps that question belongs in more homes and schools.

Not because examinations don’t matter.

They do.

Not because universities have become irrelevant.

They haven’t.

And certainly not because teenagers should be left to figure everything out alone.

They shouldn’t.

But education cannot merely prepare a young person to succeed in environments where the questions are known, the timetable is printed and somebody else decides whether the answer is correct.

Eventually, the bell stops ringing.

There is no teacher at the front.

There is no marking guide.

And life hands the young person a blank sheet of paper.

Perhaps our job is not to make sure they already know everything to write on it.

Perhaps our job is to make sure they aren’t frightened by the blank page.

We have become very good at preparing young people for examinations.

The bigger question is whether we are preparing them for the day when there is no examination—and they still have to decide what to do next.

— Uncle Rwamiti
Making sense of change through ethical storytelling.