‘Radical Focusing’ as the ideal conceptual framework in addressing substance abuse

Abstract

The article seeks to philosophically introduce “Radical Focusing” as a new concept in fighting drugs among the Kenyan youths and in the rest of the tropical Africa. By “Radical Focusing”, it means, employing the whole armour for combat in our bid to dismantle this destructive trajectory that principally threatens to wipe out the youth, and the boy-child in particular. The concept of radical focusing is largely inspired by Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s concept of the “Costly Grace.” In this concept of the costly grace in Nazi Germany of 1930s, Bonhoeffer fought injustices to the point of his own physical destruction during the era of Adolf Hitler. Owing to the sad scenarios of the day, Bonhoeffer inspired us to fight vices to the very end, and radically focus on the noble agenda throughout. The data in this article has been collected through the use of questionnaires and interview schedule. Questionnaires were administered to the interviewees, most of whom sought anonymity owing to the sensitive nature of research. Apart from the interviews, existing commissions of investigative inquiry on education such as the Ominde commission of 1964 which proposed that the government should take over from churches and eventually manage schools; and Kamunge Commission among others, have provided resourceful information to the research that gave birth to this article. It is hoped that the research findings will go a long way in reconstructing our broken society for the better, and eventually bring remedy for drug abuse to masses of people who have lost direction in this endeavor.