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The “Airlift” Generation, Economic Aspiration, and Secondary School Education in Kenya, 1940-1960

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 May 2023

Kenda Mutongi Open the ORCID record for Kenda Mutongi [Opens in a new window]
Kenda Mutongi*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
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Email: kmutongi@mit.edu
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Abstract

This article argues that the “airlift” language often used to describe the eight hundred Kenyan students who attended US and Canadian universities between 1959 and 1963 is misleading. It assumes that the students were being plucked out of substandard education, yet these youth had received some of the most rigorous education in the world—even though it was colonial education intended to inculcate in them British cultures and mores. The students took this education seriously because they knew it would help improve their economic status as well as that of their families. These elite students were not necessarily concerned with the politics of decolonization or the nation-state, as most studies of colonial elites at the end of empire have tended to claim. They were interested in uplifting their economic status. This uplifting was in and of itself a political act—even though it was not politically motivated.

Keywords

Airlift generationKenyadecolonizationsecondary schoolcolonial elitesmemoirs

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Type
Article
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 63 , Issue 3 , August 2023 , pp. 378 - 398
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the History of Education Society

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References

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53 James Odari, phone conversation with the author, Jan. 10, 2018; Mark Akunava, phone conversation, Jan. 4, 2018; Henry Chasia, phone conversation, Jan. 3, 2018. See also Wasawo, We Understand But Darkly, 55-60; Awori, Riding a Tiger, 34; wa Thiong'o, In the House of the Interpreter, 16; and Ogot, My Footprints on the Sands of Time, 51-60.

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55 Wasawo, We Understand But Darkly, 36-40.

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71 James Odari, phone conversation, Jan. 10, 2018; Mark Akunava, phone conversation, Jan. 4, 2018; Henry Chasia, phone conversation, Jan. 3, 2018. For a study of mathematics in Kenyan high schools, see Boniface Njoroge Ngaruiya, “A Study of Mathematics Homework Practices in Selected Secondary Schools in Kenya” (PhD diss., University of Nairobi, 2002).

72 James Odari, email correspondence, Jan. 10, 2018.

73 Wasawo, We Understand But Darkly, 130-31.

74 Hilary Ng'weno, email correspondence, Jan. 12, 2018.

75 James Muse, email correspondence, Feb. 13, 2018.

76 Hilary Ng'weno, email correspondence, Jan. 16, 2018.

77 Louis Mwaniki was born in Nyeri, Kenya, where he was educated in Catholic schools before becoming only the third Kenyan to attend Makerere University's Fine Art Department. Kennedy, Jean, New Currents, Ancient Rivers: Contemporary African Artists in a Generation of Change (Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992), 45Google Scholar.

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83 wa Thiong'o, Dreams in a Time of War; James Odari, phone conversation, Jan. 10, 2018; Mark Akunava, phone conversation, Jan. 4, 2018; Henry Chasia, phone conversation, Jan. 3, 2018.

84 James Odari, phone conversation, Jan. 10, 2018; Mark Akunava, phone conversation, Jan. 4, 2018; Henry Chasia, phone conversation, Jan. 3, 2018.

85 wa Thiong'o, In the House of the Interpreter, 67.

86 wa Thiong'o, In the House of the Interpreter, 67.

87 Wasawo, We Understand But Darkly, 117.

88 Wasawo, We Understand But Darkly, 120.

89 Florida Karani, “The History of Maseno School, Its Alumni, and Local Society, 1906 to 1962” (MA thesis, University of Nairobi, 1974).

90 Ogot, My Footprints on the Sands of Time, 48.

91 John Ogola, phone conversation, Jan. 29, 2018.

92 wa Thiong'o, In the House of the Interpreter, 97.

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95 Wasawo, We Understand But Darkly, 56.

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99 Kipkorir, “The Alliance High School and the Origins of the Kenya African Elite 1926-1962”; Smith, The History of the Alliance High School; Greaves, Carey Francis of Kenya.

100 wa Thiong'o, In the House of the Interpreter, 110.

101 Osogo, “The History of Kabaa-Mangu High School,” 80.

102 Mathew Mukiri, email correspondence, Feb. 3, 2018.

103 Mark Akunava, phone conversation, Jan. 4, 2018.

104 “About Mangu School,” The Mangu Writers Forum, June 27, 2014.

105 Jennifer Muchiri, “The Intersection of the Self and History in Kenyan Autobiographies,” Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies 1, nos. 1-2 (2014), 83-93; Oliver Lovesey, The Postcolonial Intellectual: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o in Context (New York: Routledge, 2015); Gĩchingiri Ndĩgĩrĩgĩ, “Bloodhounds at the Gate: Trauma, Narrative Memory, and Melancholia in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's Memoirs of Wartime,” Research in African Literatures 47, no. 4 (Winter 2016), 91-111.

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107 wa Thiong'o, In the House of the Interpreter, 42.

108 wa Thiong'o, In the House of the Interpreter, 13.

109 For Alliance students, see Roelker, Jack R., Mathu of Kenya: A Political Study (Palo Alto, CA: Hoover Institute Press, 1976)Google Scholar; Ndegwa, Duncan, Walking in Kenyatta's Struggles: My Story (Nairobi: Kenya Leadership Institute, 2006)Google Scholar; Matiba, Kenneth, Aiming High: The Story of My Life (Nairobi: Kenya Leadership Institute, 2000)Google Scholar; Mũngai, Joseph M., From Simple to Complex: An Autobiography (Nairobi: East African Publishers, 2002)Google Scholar; Wasawo, We Understand But Darkly; and wa Thiong'o, In the House of the Interpreter. James Odari, email correspondence, Jan. 10, 2018.

110 Kipkorir, “The Alliance High School and the Origins of the Kenya African Elite 1926-1962”; Smith, The History of the Alliance High School; Greaves, Carey Francis of Kenya; Anderson, The Struggle for the School; Osogo, “The History of Kabaa-Mangu High School.”

111 Cooper, “Possibility and Constraint”; Getachew, Worldmaking after Empire; Milford et al., “Another World?”