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When children don’t learn well and hence perform badly in school, who should we blame: parents, teachers, or students?
Gone are the days when the home was overflowed with children, of all ages and sizes! Uncles, aunts, cousins, friends, visitors were all welcome, as enormous amounts of food were prepared in the smoke-filled kitchen, and served with affection.
Children went to neighbouring homes, eating breakfast at one place and lunch anywhere else.
Amazing was the rapport between cousins, as also between adults and children.
The parents often didn’t even really know what their kids were up to, and when they were naughty, anyone of their uncles or aunts had a free hand to discipline them and set them on the right track!
The discipline would drop over like water off a duck’s back, and off they will go, back to their tracks again!
During those days children were taught to face challenges with a smile.
At times, canes were brandished at the backside, but after the first torrent of tears, they would be back to playing with their cousins!
Sulks never lasted long as playtime was precious, and no one wanted to miss out on the fun!
Thus, kids grew up tough, unspoiled and intrepid!
But today, So much has changed since the Nuclear families are now nests with just the parents and one or two children.
‘Personal attention’ has become the catchword, with young parents reading books on parenting, trying to bring up their kids according to the written word.
Grandparents are too far away so that it becomes difficult for them to offer nuggets of wisdom through wonderful memories of the past.
So children grow up as loners, depending on their own devices, turning into latchkey kids.
They learn to twist their parents around their little fingers.
Because the parents are both working, they had no time to stand and stare.
Schools also have revised their rules from the “Spare the rod and spoil the child” to “Strictly no corporal punishment!”
No more can a teacher scold a student, or lay a finger on him, for the fear of damaging the sensitive psyche of the child.
Of course, back in the days, there was clearly no such thing as a sensitive psyche, which was actually a good thing.
For, kids grew up well able to handle themselves and the tough world beyond!
Today, kids are overprotected to the extent that they are scared to death by any difficult task — exams, competitions, a strict word, a rebuke before his peers, any kind of failure!
Anything can make him go over the edge, which is mortally frightening.
This explains why suicide has become all too common among young ones.
Again, who is to be blame — the parent for poor parenting, the teacher for bad mentoring or the students for not taking up responsibilities?
In this lesson, we are going to look at:
The Stakeholders of education
Role of a parent in education
Role of a teacher in education
Role of a student in education
Who rightly deserves the blame?
This is Part One of our six different series article on who is to be blame for the poor academic performance in school with the goal of improving students’ performance in school.
