IntroductionThe aim of this paper is to analyse the educational needs of one small community in Kenya in terms of its changing socio-economic patterns, and to show how attitudes towards the school system have their roots within this setting. The data are drawn from a nineteen-month study in South Maragoli Location of Kakamega District, Western Province. As part of a larger study concerning the effects of labour migration upon agricultural enterprise, a tracer project was conducted on 139 Standard VII leavers from three primary schools, situated within a one-mile radius, to learn the leaver's employment expectations, his family background, the network connections by which he enters into the labour market, and finally the way in which the community interprets and manipulates the school system to suit its particular needs. The statistical data presented have so far emerged from the school study and from a larger sub-location sample of 159 households. While several questionnaires, intended as cross-checks were administered to students and parents, the qualitative material results from an intensive study utilizing anthropological field techniques in the schools' constituent villages.
The study of biological processes and the study of human agency have not developed interactively within modern agricultural research. Rather, research has principally been the preserve of the biological scientist, while social sciences were late arrivals to the enterprise and have had to justify and articulate a role within international agricultural research institutes. This chapter (i) briefly charts the history of that process within the CGIAR, (ii) evaluates the role of the Rockefeller Foundation's Social Science Fellowship Programme within a rapidly changing research environment, and (iii) looks forward to how social sciences might be developed within CGIAR in the immediate future.
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