“What is education for? Or does it matter what it is for? Exploring the meaning of education for refugee girls in Dadaab Refugee camp secondary schools.

The priority for people displaced during war and crises is to find safety, food and shelter. Once these have been achieved, they look at the future of their children, a process that births diverse educational programs. Education then, becomes a futuristic endeavor by adults towards children. The question being asked by researchers and humanitarian organizations in emergency contexts is “should an emergency education focus on short-term and immediate relief, or be conceived as a long-term objective”? (Kagawa cited in Wright, 2011, p. 29) Should education mitigate or exacerbate the conflict? What is education for, especially for refugees in protracted conflict situations where there are no clear signs or hopes of ever returning home? Moreover, what is it not for? There seems to be a tension between what education should be for and what it is yet to be. That is, to culture and adapt students into the pre-existing orders of society (sociological function) and the acquisition of skills and knowledge that helps students to qualify for jobs or enter the job market, (qualification function); and what education is not yet, that is what it will deliver in the future. The futuristic view seems to be more plausible because of the promises it hopes to deliver. What is missing in these constructions is a correlation of functions and purposes of education in building up a student to become a unique individual capable of being a holistic person. The discussions of what should be or not be the function of education seem to avoid experiences of students going through the same education. I will endeavor to discuss the purposes of education as distinct as they are, that is sociological, qualification and subjectification as proposed by Biesta, (2010), (the process of becoming a unique subject), and while at the same time trying to provide a middle ground of what education is in the tension between the functions. This middle ground shall be explored through a hermeneutic phenomenological study methodology by use of fieldwork interview material and other literature.