Saturday, August 16, 2014

BOOKS AND HONEY
Lots of effort have been done by our government in developing the education sector especially in building ward secondary schools. Yet  more needs to be done to ensure that students  get quality education so that learning becomes a great experience amongst our schools. The cries of teacher’s salary delay, poor teaching and learning environments , improvement of the curriculum have always been the order of the day. . Mass failure has been an issue that all education stakeholders are concerned with and much has been spoken on what to do in order to solve such problem. When students fail most the blame is pointed out to the government and teachers.

There has been less time taken to investigate the problems within students that hinder their academic performance. One neglected issue that people have turned a blind eye on  is love relations amongst students. Most schools prohibit love relations amongst their students but less measures have been taken to address the issue. Nowadays, it’s a normal thing for a standard five student to have a boyfriend or girlfriend. Students are engaging themselves in sexual relations and the matter is worse enough in secondary schools. Students at higher learning institutions show  no sign of being good examples to their young brothers and sisters. In this current globalized era where social networks have caged the minds of most Tanzanian youth, it becomes difficult for students to concentrate in the development of their studies. Most of them will spend their time chatting on cellphones even in classroom hours.

The media has played the number role one in spreading bad  moral behaviors to students through music, newspaper stories, movies and drama. Students like spending much of their time in such forms of entertainment  and this builds a mentality in their mind that having a boyfriend or girlfriend in school is the most prestigious thing. A student who does not engage in love relations is turned into a laughing stock and labeled with a lots of nicknames. It’s therefore not surprising to meet such students in guest houses and night clubs doing things that even adults become shocked when they realize that their child had been involved in such acts. It is undeniable that students engage themselves in love affairs and this greatly contributes in lowering their performance at school.
Parents spend most of their time in finding money to provide material support to their children like buying them school clothes, books and paying their school fees. Less time is being invested in what is running around in their children’s minds and molding their character. A  bell would ring in a parent’s mind when their girl child becomes pregnant  or when their boy child impregnates a certain girl in their school. When things are too late to handle that's when a wake up call rings at home, that their child had been naughty and  sneaking around. Students nowadays have less interest in their studies and love issues have taken over and rule their world.

It’s high time we spend most of our in shaping our students character at the early stages of primary school. The society, especially parents should stop pointing fingers to the government when their children have failed their exams but some of the causes of failure are in the control of parents themselves.