READERS' CORNER: Teachers can determine the self-drive of their students

Teachers can determine the self-drive of their students

by Kennedy Buhere

The Principal of Kisumu Boys High School, Mr Denis Abok, believes that parents and teachers should focus their time and energy towards nudging that student who is not effectively exploiting his potential to learn.

That was the essence of the inspiring speech Mr Abok delivered at Sigalame Boys High School in Busia County last Saturday. The principal had been invited by his counterpart, Mr Mr Joseph Were, as the chief guest during a session with parents, staff and Form Four students of Sigalame Boys.

“Turn the child or student who has learning difficulties into your personal project,” Mr. Abok said.

Truth be told: One of the most trying experiences parents and teachers ever face lies in bringing up or teaching students who have behaviour and learning difficulties. Parents and teachers may not determine the exact cause of the stubbornness they see in the children who, for all practical purposes, have the capacity to learn.

The temptation for most parents and teachers is to give up on the child. The temptation for many parents who have elder children who have not had behaviour or learning difficulties is to write off the child. The same applies to experienced teachers — those who have in the past helped students do well in national examinations.

However, as Brother Abok, as he is referred to by his students, counsels, every child counts.

It is his philosophy that the moulding that parents and teachers undertake is a far greater and more defining work than anyone can possibly imagine.

If a structural defect is discovered in the process of building a bridge, nothing is lost, save for the cost of pulling down the bridge and rebuilding it. “But the life of a child cannot be repaired once destroyed,” Mr Abok said.

Child development is a fragile process. It calls for understanding, care, patience, and empathy. Beyond the instructional role that society knows a teacher to be, he/she is also a mentor, a guide, a coach, a role model, and a leader to his/her students.

The roles apply, with equal measure to the parents. In more ways than one, the parent and the teacher are the primary community builders.

Perhaps, one of Mr Abok’s most important statements was that parents and teachers should at all times speak hope to their children. It called to my mind Napoleon Bonaparte’s statement that a leader is a dealer in hope.

Students face very many frustrations with the complexities of modern life and the pressure to post good grades.

Majority of learners in high school are in the developmental stage psychologist Erik Erickson called the identity vs confusion stage in his theory of human development. This is the age that adolescent children explore their independence.

According to Erickson, those who receive proper encouragement emerge from this stage with a strong sense of self and a feeling of independence and control. Any thoughtless or rough handling of children at this stage when they appear not to meet the expectations of the school makes them lose the self-efficacy.

This is the moment when the child needs a little more understanding, a little more care, and a little more empathy.

Faced with this scenario, parents are wont to adopt the carrot and stick approach to effecting the desired behaviour. It never works other than creating fear and confusion in the children. Writing them off in fact helps to destroy them.

Children look to parents and teachers for support, affirmation and inspiration. The Principal invoked the mother of Ben Carson who, despite the early learning difficulties Ben Carson had, believed in him. Mr. Abok similarly invoked the mother of Thomas Edison.

If Mr. Abok had time, he could as well have touched the life of another great personage, Sir Winston Churchill, whose mother also believed in him.

We, too, can shine like the evening star to that child who is grappling with life and learning. Who knows, that child and that student may be the next great scientist or statesmen.

The child with behavioural and learning difficulties should be our project.      

The writer is a communications officer at the ministry of Education, Science and Technology in Nairobi

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Tutors must earn honour, not demand it

by Collins Musanga

Oumah Otienoh recently launched a scathing attack on the Teachers Service Commission, accusing it of leaving teachers to their own devices. ‘Teachers must be treated with respect and honour,’ screamed the article (Saturday Nation, March 5, 2016).

While stating the grievances teachers have against TSC, the failure by TSC to honour the 50 to 60 per cent salary increase drove him to pen the article.

Indeed, teaching is a noble profession. However, to argue for a preferential treatment for teachers, more so monetary, is to miss the point. It is not possible to put a price tag to the work of a teacher. Teachers mould children, impart values and guide them to become responsible citizens.

Instead of agitating for a salary increment, critics like Oumah should look for ways to redeem the glory of the teaching profession. In days gone by, teachers were a source of inspiration to many. Back then, teachers getting goods on credit from the local

shopkeeper was not a big deal. In funerals, weddings and churches, a seat was reserved for the teacher. For these reasons, we all grew up desiring to be teachers.

However, perennial strikes, unrealistic salary demands and extracting exorbitant holiday tuition, ‘motivation’ fees from poor parents and involvement in immorality with learners has eroded the respect pupils had for teachers.

Today, teachers no longer buy newspapers and books. They rely on social media for news. Teachers cannot engage in mundane discourses and still demand honour; honour is earned, not demanded.

When Oumah talks of “we teachers occupy these pages,” the question that begs is: What percentage of teachers write on this platform?

Teachers, like doctors, can be consultants on education matters. Poor parents are willing to spend money to have their sons and daughters educated. Teachers can guide school leavers on career choices at a small fee. It must be understood that a school is not limited to the fence.

It is time our teachers learned from Jesus, Socrates and Confucius. Jesus spared no chance to teach people. He taught in synagogues, on mountains and in the streets. Confucius left a mark with his aphorisms.

Unlike the Sophists who gave lectures for money in the ancient Athens, Socrates walked the streets imparting knowledge without pay.

It is a pity that our university professors, leave alone primary or secondary school teachers, are nowhere near what great philosophers like Plato stood for.

The writer is a literary critic based in Kakamega County. [email protected]

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Why guide books should be banned

by Oliver Oloo

The Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education examination results have been released and the gainers and losers are either chest-thumping or looking for a place to hide.

Subject teachers have had their day before their principals exonerating or bearing the blame. Definitely, quality grades in English have drastically reduced in spite of the claims that these exams were leaked excessively.

What could be attributed to this drop in the performance of English?

When the mandate of the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development was expanded to include selecting and vetting text books, many hoped that quality and conformity would be enhanced and that books in circulation would be verified to accurately interpret

the syllabus. The fact that KICD would no longer be writing books opened the field for authors and publishers.

In exercising this mandate, KICD cobbled together the Orange book, in which all the approved titles would be included for schools to choose from. This has been done, but it has done little to tame the backstreet profiteers.

For fact-based subjects, there has been little variance, if any, and even texts used in the previous curriculum have remained relevant. But for English, the market is now awash with texts that hardly apply the essence of the syllabus: integration.

Teachers and their students have taken to guide books with unparalleled alacrity. These guide books are never submitted for vetting but have found their way into the market. The quick-fix teacher has taken these books and regurgitated them, leaving the

learner baffled at the time of examination.

Why have these guide books remained popular? Their authorship oozes experience, mostly having been written by university dons. Some teachers of English identify with these authors, having been taught by them.

These guide books are the death knell of integration. They have sized up literature teaching into four — plot, theme, style and language use. Episodic and epithetic approaches have been ignored and with it analysis, evaluation and synthesis, the realm in which KNEC questions thrive, have been side-stepped.

Lets us have integration-oriented textbooks because the reliance on the teacher’s ingenuity to come up with novel integrated approaches in their methodology has failed. Let integration be introduced at university level.

Integration as envisaged is the solution to language teaching deficiencies already here with us.

Guide books, many which are dished out during seminars, must be discouraged. Our performance in English will sky-rocket if they are outlawed, banned and burned from our classrooms.

Guide books are subjective interpretation by the author and should be superimposed in high school literature classes.

The writer teaches English and Literature at Booker Academy in Kakamega County

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Why I envy the tutors in Tanzania

by Ali Dayib

Oumah Otieno’s article titled ‘TSC should treat teachers with honour and respect’ (Saturday Nation, March 5, 2016) made me dash for a pen and paper to reply.Teachers have given TSC a nickname — Teachers Suffering Centre.

Indeed the commission appears hell bent on frustrating and humiliating its employees.

The general feeling among teachers is that they are an orphaned lot who are under the custody of a harsh step mother. Orphaned because the government, the father, has totally neglected them.

The step mother treats them as she wishes.Teachers do donkey work and earn peanuts. To add insult to injury, the TSC withheld the September 2015 teachers salaries. It was a very painful experience that teachers will never forget.

Juxtapose this with the scenario in our neighbouring country, Tanzania, where president Magufuli the other day issued a decree that teachers enjoy free rides in buses as they report for duty in the morning. I envy Tanzanian teachers.

The writer teaches English at Sabunley Secondary School in Wajir County

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We must take a second look at our exams

by Timothy Muchunku

We are still shocked by last year’s massive cheating in national examinations. Some students, who in their four years of secondary school, had never attained the prerequisite university entry grade, are now smiling all the way to university.

Painfully, deserving students have been locked out.

How is it possible for a single school to get over 100 As while some counties could not get a similar number? Is this fair or equitable, and does it meet the threshold of a normal curve in any given exam?

KNEC is perpetuating and encouraging the culture of institutional superiority, a practice that the ministry of Education has tried to curb by abolishing ranking of schools.

The writer teaches English and literature at St. Massimo Day Secondary.