Few days ago I saw a bus conveying pupils
to school as early as 5:55am. My attention was not basically the time the
children have to be up and on their way to school; it is the fact that the bus
was rather a bit rickety, producing smoke from the silencer and without a
vehicle air-conditioner.
Another thing I noticed was the location of
the school as was written on the body of the vehicle. The school is not located
in my area, where I saw the bus; it had come to pick pupils from my area this
explained why they had to leave that early. I wondered why parents would send
their children to such distant school when it was not an exceptional school. Why
not leave the children in a nearby school since you are not really bothered
about standards.
I consider the opportunity for the
establishment of private schools in Nigeria a positive development. However the implementation appears to have
been derailed because of poor monitoring. Sometimes when I see some private
schools I think about how they got their approval considering the nature of the
structures and the state of the environment. Several of them exist in one or
two- storey building without space for physical exercises for the children. Others are
located in dirty environment and very choked school facility.
While I commend them for providing school
buses, it is worrisome that many of the school buses are rickety and unfit to
carry children, whose minds and body are still being developed. Seeing them
packed in those buses, without air-conditioner makes them look like children
who are being trafficked, instead of those who are being taken to acquire
genuine knowledge for mental empowerment.
Those schools described above should not
exist as private schools because they have been reduced to the state of the
public schools which we had established are not properly funded. They are set
up to rival public schools, yet they end up not even measuring up with some
public schools in terms of quality of learning and learning environment. Many of
them are also known to hire poorly qualified staff that are poorly remunerated
and normally have to leave as quickly as they are able to get another school
for an improved pay. Yet the tuition fees are higher than that of public
schools.
These are indices that show the owners to
be in it for material gain instead of imparting quality knowledge and
maintaining standards. It also shows that they value material gains above the
future of those pupils. Anyone who chooses to go into establishing school at
any level, but especially for between toddlers and teenagers, should bear in
mind that raising those children is paramount in the mind of the parents who
are paying the fees and should ensure that proper standards are kept in
nurturing those young minds. A child who schools in a dirty environment would
probably grow not seeing anything fundamentally wrong with living in a dirty
environment.
School environment should be a standard for a growing child whose parents are not getting things right at home in terms of cleanliness. A growing child should be taught by competent teachers so that they learn the right things as foundation for their formal academic learning experience. How would someone who was not able to grow their minds for excellence help another person grow their mind? The high rate of teacher turn-over in those schools reveals the fact that they are not in the profession for the desire to impart lives and in doing so get financial reward, they are in it for the financial gain only.
Parents should endeavour to properly
inspect schools before sending their children to them because many children end
up adopting their teachers and the standard they see in their schools as
models. Parents should however establish the standard they desire for their
children at home for them to see, so that when they get to school and see the
contrary they would know.
Some people have advocated that poverty is
the reason some parents send their children to such low quality schools. They also
believe that poverty and high rate of unemployment are to blame for the
attitude of the teachers. What then is responsible for the attitude of the
school owners, Greed? The bottom line is that parents, school owners and
teachers place their interests above those of the children and therefore place
priority on what benefits them above what benefits the children in the long
run.
Talks
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