NAIROBI, Kenya, Sept, 20 – Three weeks ago, lawyers seized the imagination of young Kenyans who watched the proceedings of the Presidential Election Petition, 2022 case.
A section of them took to social media to express their admiration for the flawless use of English in arguing for their respective clients.
A few wished that they had studied law. They admired the eloquence, poise, and confidence with which the lawyers articulated their case before the seven Bench judges of the Supreme Court.
Most of them were impressed with the relatively younger lawyers speaking alongside seasoned lawyers, something they said hardly happens in other public or private institutions
I discerned three misconceptions in the young people’s admiration of the lawsuit that took place in the Supreme Court. Firstly that eloquent use of English is peculiar to the judiciary. Secondly that lawyers undertake a special curriculum or course of study of English to acquire this articulateness in the use of English. Thirdly but least, the body of knowledge lawyers take to the Courts is peculiar to legal education and training.
Nothing can be further from the truth. The command of English lawyers displayed during the Presidential election petition 2022 case is accessible to everybody who has had a quality 12 years of primary and secondary education experience.
One time Minister for Education, the late Dr. J.G. Kiano observed that general education, which is the main concern of both the primary and secondary sectors of our educational system, is more embracing than academic education.
“It embraces those bodies of knowledge in the curriculum which are judged by the nation as a whole to be important areas of knowledge which every child should possess. This would include the bodies of knowledge that encourage mental development, those which encourage physical development and those which encourage the development of the soul or if you like the mind,” Kiano said during The Second Conference on Teacher Education in 1968.
In a nutshell, primary and secondary education provides the foundation stone for the intellectual furniture and discipline that post-secondary education, training, and experience required to prepare students for citizenship, work, and the caprices of life.
A keen observer may have noticed: lawyers and even Judges harped on the common stock of knowledge and our human heritage in their discourses. We are all familiar with the references, symbolisms, allusions, and analogies they invoked. We could hear references to familiar verses in the Bible; we also heard familiar references, symbolisms, allusions, and analogies from secular literature and historical events. Our familiarity with all these stems from the schooling we had, and our expansive reading habits. A lawyer invoked a nursery rhyme most of us recited in childhood, making the proceedings look humanlike and not the majestic and intimidating sight it was.
The conclusion from these is that the legal system is founded on a cultural heritage that our school system exposes us to. Apart from the exposure, schools teach us how to read, in the Early Years of Education. It is this reading ability that makes it possible for learners to extend and deepen their reading. Reading competence should ideally enable us to read the best that has been thought and said about the basis of human civilizations in any period, culture, country, and language.
This expectation is not limited to the few who qualify for University education. Still, less is it exclusive to those who opt to study law. It is an empowerment that enables every child to read anything under the sun—to the extent that it is edifying and entertaining.
President Abraham Lincoln didn’t have more than a year’s formal education. Tom Mboya didn’t have a university education either. Nor did the great Wartime British Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill have a University Education. But the three statesmen had a way with words, in written and spoken speech, that puts to shame some of our University Educated people.
In advising Judges on the handling of issues with Constitutional implications, an American jurist, Learned Hand advised them to read by great writers, works that have nothing to do with the legal professions.
This is what the Jurist said: “I venture to believe that it is as important to a judge called upon to pass on a question of constitutional law, to have at least a bowing acquaintance with Acton and Maitland, with Thucydides, Gibbon, and Carlyle, with Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and Milton, with Machiavelli, Montaigne, and Rabelais, with Plato, Bacon, Hume, and Kant, as with the books which have been specifically written on the subject.
For in such matters everything turns upon the spirit in which he approaches the questions before him. The words he must construe are empty vessels into which he can pour nearly anything he will. Men do not gather figs of thistles, nor supple institutions from judges whose outlook is limited by parish or class. They must be aware that there are before them more than verbal problems; more than final solutions cast in generalizations of universal applicability. They must be aware of the changing social tensions in every society which makes it an organism; which demands new schemata of adaptation; which will disrupt it, if rigidly confined.”
So the refined use of English is not peculiar to lawyers and judges. It is ours to acquire. Let’s not make a mistake. It is not so much the opportunities to speak in English that matters as to what knowledge you have and how you can apply it in your personal life, and in your work whatever work or career you chose.
There is so much written communication that flies within and across organizations. The communications address more or less similar tensions, questions or challenges. Institutions thrive on creative tension. Tensions that are properly appreciated in writing or in speech, in speeches, letters, Cabinet Memos, Circulars, Task Force or Commission Reports, and in proposals to introduce innovation or stop a practice harmful to the performance, character, or reputation of an institution.
Institutions require people who have the capacity to use the English language on paper and in a speech in simple, clear, and coherent language in doing all these and many other tasks.
The same stock of fictional and nonfictional works lawyers read for their general education or knowledge are the same stock of fictional and nonfictional works educated people read or ought to read.
English, like any language, is a tool, a vehicle of communication, of transferring or sharing ideas, thoughts, and feelings about a common object of interest. The words we invoke refer to or suggest something beyond the words. They are not just words.
They carry human aspirations, needs, and fears. They carry values, our sense of duty and justice on one hand and our reprobation of dereliction of duty and injustice on the other hand. Our values, our sense of duty and justice, and our reprobation of dereliction of duty and injustice are not the monopoly of lawyers. It belongs to all of us.
The writer is a Communications officer at the Ministry of Education.
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