KCSE Literature questions no one dares to ask, but should

In last week’s installment, I argued that our teaching of literature at all levels of education is wanting. While we test students’ ability to identify themes, stylistic devices, and authorial inventions, we hardly help them create literature. Since then, I have received an avalanche of comments and a fair share of abuses. My Facebook profile shows that over 150,000 people engaged with that article. The conversation it sparked tells me that literature still stirs the nation’s soul.

Today, I wish to advance the argument further by examining how we test and assess literature. I do this by imagining the questions that should be asked but never are. Our candidates will soon face the following set texts: Fathers of Nations, The Samaritan, The Artist of the Floating World, and Parliament of Owls. They will answer the same predictable questions: identify themes, explain irony, describe character traits, and comment on authorial intention.

They will do so with precision, armed with well-rehearsed phrases from teachers and revision notes. Yet when the last paper is done and the red pens have had their fill, one question will remain unasked—the most important of them all: What has literature taught them to imagine? Our examination system measures comprehension, not creation. It celebrates those who can explain stories, not those who can tell them.

Yet literature is not merely about interpretation—it is about participation. It invites us to enter the text, feel its heartbeat, and reimagine its world. If the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) were to awaken creativity instead of rehearsing criticism, its questions might look very different. Let us imagine, for a moment, the KCSE Literature questions that will never be asked.

 On Fathers of Nations, suppose we asked: What if the leaders tore up the Guiding Document and began to write a new one for Africa? What would its opening line say? Or imagine you are a young activist in that grand conference hall—write a diary entry describing what you see and feel. Or rewrite the ending so that one ordinary citizen changes the continent’s destiny. Such questions nurture imagination and empathy.

On The Samaritan: Write a monologue by Miss Nicole after discovering the truth. What haunts her more—the corruption she exposed or the silence that followed? Or imagine her as a journalist in present-day Kenya. What challenges would she face, and what truths would she still dare to tell? Compose a short poem capturing the moral storm at the heart of The Samaritan.

 On The Artist of the Floating World, we could ask; If you were to paint the moral decay of post-war Japan as a mural, what colours and symbols would you use, and why? Write a letter from the young artist to his master, confessing what he has learned about guilt, pride, and forgiveness. Or recreate one scene in modern Nairobi, how would the same moral tensions unfold amid our skyscrapers and slums?

On Parliament of Owls, imagine this: You are one of the owls. Write a speech addressed to African leaders today. What would you tell them? Or turn one satirical episode into a short radio play, how would you use sound, laughter, and silence to expose hypocrisy? Or, if that parliament were a reflection of your school or community, what motion would you move to save its conscience?

None of these questions will ever appear in the KCSE examination. They resist marking schemes. They cannot be graded with a ruler or captured in a grid. They demand empathy, imagination, and risk, the very qualities our education system fears because they cannot be quantified.

And yet, this is precisely where the spirit of literature dwells. Our students can explain the thematic concerns in Fathers of Nations, but can they imagine the kind of nation they wish to build? They can analyse Miss Nicole’s courage in The Samaritan, but can they tell their own stories of courage? They can define “symbolism,” but are they ever invited to use it?

 We have mistaken the ability to explain for the power to create. In doing so, we have domesticated literature, stripped it of its music, its mystery, its daring. We have turned a living art into a mechanical exercise. True literary education must ask not only what Adipo Sidang means in the play Parliament of Owls, but also what story burns within you after reading the play. It must stir imagination, not just memory. It must nurture the mind to think and the heart to feel.

 Our universities, too, must rise to this challenge. For too long, they have privileged theory over creativity because theory is easier to assess and to justify to administrators. One can grade an essay on themes; one cannot easily measure the soul of a poem. Yet, the immeasurable is often the most essential. It is where genius hides.

 If we truly believe that literature shapes humanity, then our examinations must test not only what students know, but what they can imagine. We must dare to ask the “unmarkable” questions—the ones that awaken voices, not silence them. Until then, the most important questions in literature will remain the ones the KCSE will never ask, the questions that call upon our students not only to remember, but to dream.