Meta-Ethical Reflections on Kenya’s Transition from Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) to Competency-Based Education (CBE): The Moral Politics of Education Reforms

This paper presents a meta-ethical critique of Kenya's swift shift from the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) to Competency-Based Education (CBE), contending that the reform illustrates policy moralism, the presumption that change is intrinsically beneficial. Utilising Michel Foucault's concept of governmentality and Jürgen Habermas's communicative ethics, the research contextualises the reform within a comprehensive moral economy of governance, wherein ethical discourse serves as a mechanism of state legitimacy. By using moral imperatives like "empowering learners" and "preparing citizens for the 21st century," policymakers create an illusion of progress that hides the fact that implementation is not ready in terms of materials and teaching methods. The paper develops the notion of ethical governmentality to elucidate how reform rhetoric transforms ethics into a mechanism of governance, converting moral persuasion into a modality of administrative oversight. From a meta-ethical perspective, it interrogates the potential for policy virtue to replace pedagogical validity, and if ethical assertions regarding "the learner's good" can endure in the absence of deliberate inclusivity. By critically re-examining government reports, public remarks, and reform documentation, this study elucidates how ethical discourses of caring and progress function performatively to reinforce political power while diverting epistemic and institutional scrutiny. The paper posits that authentic ethical transformation necessitates epistemic humility, recognition of educational constraints, and dialogic accountability, rather than mere moral spectacle. The research reframes Kenya's education reform as an instance of ethical governmentality, contributing to wider discussions on the dual role of moral rhetoric in policy reforms in facilitating and obstructing justice under postcolonial governance.