The religious aspects of secondary school life and their effects on the youth in Nairobi
Keywords:
Secondary schools, religion, youth, social implications, religious aspects, KenyaSynopsis
The world is a "mixed-grill" so to say. It is made of people with varied set ups- geographical, racial, cultural, etc. Each specific community or country's way of life is mainly determined by what the local situation has to offer and the approach taken by the people to fit in. Further still, each persan is expected to play their role in order to survive and to contribute towards the group's sustainance. For this need to be met and to be effective, it has been deemed necessary and important that a system of training through education be adopted to guide the individuals and society on what is expected of them and how to go about fulfilling it. This explains the different for ms and types of education offered the world overinformal, formai, non-formai. Whatever the form/type of education offered, it should be a diversified and all-round entity meeting the physical, mental, moral and spiritual needs of the learner. The emphasis of this thesis is on whether and how the spiritual aspects of the secondary school students are met, and the effects there-of. The area of concentration is Nairobi where 33 sample schools are studied, with a "peep" being taken in 2 peri-urban schools in Kiambu District and 4 rural based schools in Kisii District for comparison purposes. Kenyatta University is used to determine the long-term and post effects of religious aspects of secondary school life. In order to understand the category of people focused on the characteristics and problems faced by the students are looked at and these are found to be determined and linked to their stage of ·development as well as the home, school, and social set-up. It is also recognised that society has high expectations of and for this category of people. The study is concerned about the informai spiritual aspects of school life consequently the general co-curricular activities in the specified institutions are looked at. Those with a religious bias are then concentrated on. The role of the informai activities and the students opinions and attitudes towards these activities have been identified as well as the motivating factors and benefits derived from participating in them.
This is followed up with the products of the sample schools at Kenyatta University, where it is observed that there are informai religious activities. The motivating factor and the benefits are the same but the emphasis shifts. Spearman's Rank Correlation Test (see pp 2s;f·2SS) is used to determine whether the secondary school's religiosity has any correlation to the student's participation in religious aspects of university life. For students to reap effectively from the education system and in order to help them serve society more, ail aspects of the learner, including the spiritual, need to be recognized and satisfied. Variousrecommendations as to how this can be achieved have been given in this study. This study is limited in many ways, necessitating identification of areas for further research.
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