Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Bria McDaniel blog 8 The Young Hopes of Kenya, Laid in the Grave

Kenya recently experienced a devastating tragedy at one of its Universities. This week many families are burying the 142 students that were killed by an Islamic extremist group birthed out of Al-Qaeda. They targeted the christian students at Garissa University College. Many people were not only outraged at the people who did this, but the lack of security that the government provided to the school. It took 8 hours for police to get to the terrorist and 15 minutes for the police to take them down. Many parents also had concerns with their children attending this school to begin with because of the previous relatively minor terrorist attacks that had taken place in this city. However, the government decides what school a child goes to and the parents have little say especially once the decision has been made. Kenyans uphold education to a high regard. People will sell almost anything of theirs to ensure that their child has a good education. Many bright minds were lost in this massacre. One can only hope that this incident will give way to better security practices in Kenyan schools.

This is a problem that has also affected America, but instead of a group or organization committing such a heinous act, it was done by an individual. Never have this many people been killed at one of our schools. Security is often a forgotten component when it comes to discussing education. This is why schools and students are so vulnerable when it comes to these kind of attacks. I believe that it is vital the governments start protecting the bright minds of the future. What makes Garissa a more difficult case is the fact that they are right beside a country that has a collapsing economy and is breeding terrorism. Not only does the government have to take into account security, but they also have to understand the conditions that the attackers and the members of their organization experienced, when making decisions on how to prevent anything like this from reoccurring. When people are desperate, they can also be relentless. Kenya has a lot of work to do to ensure that this never happens again. Since education is valued so much their, they should do everything in their power to protect the ones pursuing it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/11/world/africa/kenya-mourns-students-from-its-generation-of-promise.html

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