Education matters

SO, here’s an all too familiar story. A child in a school on the island is only in the early grades and he has a limited home life built around endless tutoring.

When the boy gets home from school, after a snack and a shower, the learning begins again because that is when he is drilled by his tutors. His family expects to see progress since they are paying for his tutors and want value for their money. It is a classic example of ‘paid for’ parenting. 

This grueling timetable of school all day and tutoring all night leaves the boy in a state of constant pressure.

The idea of what constitutes parenting in this case is built around the misconception that if the child is in lessons then he is learning and he WILL learn because the parent is paying for it. Besides that, the child is busy, therefore, from the parent’s perspective, they are doing their job.

Let’s look at the same scenario from the child’s perspective. Because he is a child and full of the childish sense of awe and wonder, he also wants to play so he has to make a choice. Should he fulfil his need to play at home or at school?

At home it is far more difficult to play because he has one tutor after another and all of these tutors report to his parents, therefore, the only real option he has is to play at school (because at least there his parents aren’t watching) and that’s exactly what he does. 

He plays the fool in class, breaks the rules, spends more time out of the classroom than in it and generally spends the hours he has in school in a state of carefree abandon, knowing as he does that when he gets home, the real work begins.

Now, from the school’s perspective, this of course is unacceptable. He doesn’t conform and so they exercise the discipline policy and in time the parents will be called in to discuss what is happening.

The boy is just exercising his right to a childhood since, because he cannot play in the place where he is supposed to, his home, he plays at school. 

The parents, however, feel that as long as the child is in a school or a tutoring centre or stuck with his head in a book he is somebody else’s problem and they are fulfilling their duty of care by paying someone to care for him. If he misbehaves therefore it’s the school’s problem, not theirs.

It is a classic endless negative cycle irresponsibility. In this case, however, there is a twist, one of the family members works for a ministry and as a result, should the child’s parents be called into school or put on to any level of the discipline policy, he is wheeled in and because private schools are generally afraid of the authority, any decision made by the head regarding the child is overturned and he returns to school with the same carefree attitude as before, ever so slightly more aware that he is untouchable.

You can picture the scene in a few more years time when the boy realises the power that his family member yields. He will be intolerable and his behaviour will go from bad to worse all because the member of the family who works in a position of authority has failed in his civil and professional duty by abusing his power in the interests of his own family.