Thu, 25 Jan 2018 13:28:41 +0000
By Augustine Phiri
EMERGING from a prolonged holiday caused by the current debilitating cholera, school authorities are aggressive in sensitising pupils about the disease and how to prevent catching it.
“Don’t put money in your mouth you can catch cholera if you do,” a teacher yelled at the pupils on parade.
“Money is very dirty. It passes through many hands and gathers germs including those which carry cholera,” he added.
“Is that why they call people who have a lot of money ‘filthy rich’?” shouted a first grader on his first day in school. He had listened intently to the speech.
Time is up for children to start trooping back to school after a stretched holiday caused by the cholera epidemic which has so far claimed the lives of more than 70 people mostly in Lusaka.
Once again, parents and guardians alike would surrender their children to the teachers.
As the old adage has it that ‘willingly given, willingly received’, parents are willingly giving their kids and the teachers are equally willingly receiving the children.
Therefore, the givers should refrain from crying foul of amorous parties each time a teacher tries to be a willing sponsor of a feast for his or her pupils.
You see, parents are very good at risk management. They refer to teachers to do the dirty work they themselves have failed to do at home.
For instance, a child with the unbecoming habit of turning sofas at home into a jumping castle may do the same on a school desk. It has to take a teacher and not a parent to straighten up such an insolent child and stop it from the bad tendency.
Children are leaving home to go to school with back bags full of English language errors.
Six year Clever Mulenga, for example, had trouble figuring out when to use I instead of me. Then one day, while creating a sentence in front of the first-grade class, Mulenga haltingly said, “I … I … I shut the door.”
Realizing that he was right, he jumped up and down and shouted, “Me did it!”
Again, a teacher has to work on blundering Mulenga and correct him how to speak good English.
It is common to hear the kids and some adults say “You’re eating what?”, “You’re going where?” and “You’re doing what?” instead of “What are you eating?”, “Where are you going?” and “What’re you doing?”
The errors are more pronounced in Mathematics.
While reviewing Mathematics symbols in a fifth-grade class, a teacher drew a greater-than (>) and a less-than (<) sign on the blackboard and asked, “Does anyone remember what these mean?”
A boy confidently raised his hand. “One means fast-forward and the other means rewind,” he answered.
You see, it has to take a teacher to correct these and many similar mistakes made by the learners handed to them by their own parents and guardians.
However, as the late folk singer, P K Chishala put it in one of his songs, a child is counseled at the point of departure and teachers too must be counseled at the point of receiving the learners as they are now doing.
Last year, reports emerged about teachers having inappropriate relationships with pupils of the opposite sex, not of the opposite gender.
It was reported that a male teacher was caught at a boarding school in Eastern Province pants down with a female pupil.
It was alleged that the named teacher had been stalking a female pupil for a long time and that she reported to the school matron to stop the stalker but that the practice persisted.
Eventually, the pupil in question was said to have yielded to the teacher’s advances and the two arranged to meet in the school football ground at night.
But unknown to the randy teacher, the girl child had mobilised her fellow pupils who hid themselves nearby and when the two ‘lovers’ eventually met to the point of starting to make love, the concealed ‘army worms’ sprung up from their hiding.
The teacher was suspended and it is not clear what other punishment was meted out on him.
A female teacher in Southern Province was also reported to have fallen in love with her own school boy who, according to reports, was good at playing football.
In the process, the boy was forced to drop out of school after impregnating his teacher lover.
Frowned at by society, the teacher/student “relationship” is something that has been happening for decades. While most people see it as some kind of perverse fantasy, others have lived it.
However, apart from ruining the two lives involved, there is also the possibility that perpetrators could actually go to jail for crimes like this.
Although some school authorities try to sweep something like this under the carpet, some culprits have not been lucky as the two incidents cited in Eastern and Southern Provinces have shown.
Zambia may not be alone in this matter.
A recent research report says the number of students exchanging sexual favours for high grades is not known but it seems to be a common practice like corruption in most African countries such as Ghana, Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria.
The problem is who is at fault or starts the whole thing, is it the students or the teachers? While the teachers might be the culprits, lazy female students may not be faultless either.
Although most cases of sexual misconduct in schools involve male teachers, authorities in South Africa are seeing a number of female teachers engaging in sexual relationships with pupils.
The South African Council for Educators (SACE) says it barred two women recently at a Free State school from teaching for an indefinite period after they admitted to having sexual relationships with two male pupils.
The women, in their early 30s, one of whom is married, pleaded guilty to having sex with the 17- and 18-year-olds, who were in Grades 10 and 11.
Recently a young teacher at Grey College in Bloemfontein tendered her resignation letter after details surfaced of an intimate kiss with a boy of the same school.
There were 14 complaints of sexual misconduct involving women teachers that SACE had received in recent month.
Across the Zambezi in Zimbabwe, teacher Steward Makoni is serving a two year jail term for sexually assaulting a 15-year old schoolgirl. He was convicted in a court of law late in 2016 for having canal knowledge of his girl child pupil on several occasions.
The Ministry of Education and Skills Development in Botswana recently fired four male teachers at Shakawe Senior Secondary School for their involvement in love affairs with their own school girls.
And overseas in the United States of America, when people there talk about a prominent student/teacher relationship, they normally think of Mary Kay Letourneau and her very public relationship with Vili Fualaau.
She ended up in jail for seven years and five months in addition to a pregnancy. After finishing her stint in jail, she resumed her relationship with Faulaau, got married and had one more child.
Twelve (12) years later they are separated.
Wesley Ellis was 34-years-old when he was caught having a relationship with a student who was reportedly 16-17 years-old. Even though he was married he would pick up the student and drive her to a parking lot where he would hook up with her.
When he was caught, he justified his relationship by saying that he had very strong “romantic” feelings for her.
The list is endless and as schools in Zambia re-open for the delayed 2018 academic year, caution should be sounded to all randy teachers – both males and females – to keep away from the girls or and the boys in class.
The tutors should tame their eyes to reading only and not to, at the same time, scan the vivacious body of that learner called Mary.
Let us do something and let God save the children from those randy teachers.
Contact: kapenyatheobserver@yahoo.com
caution for teachers:
Read only don’t scan Mary
