A little too late

RECENTLY, students from Gishoma Secondary School drove me nuts. They exposed their weaknesses when they attributed their poor performance to their teachers. They said that the reason why they would fail their theory papers was because of the unprofessionalism of the teachers who conducted the classes they took. However much the students may have reason, it is very irritating to me that the students had to wait for the year to end to raise the complaint. They may be raising the right point, but its being brought out at the wrong time, when it is absolutely too late. What is most disturbing is that it is the future of the students that are getting ruined and not those of the teachers. Just to put the record straight, teacher professionalism contains three essential characteristics; competence, performance and conduct. It is these three aspects that reflect the educator’s goals, abilities and standards. Question marks are raised if the students passed all their previous years and only remembered to complain after sitting for their secondary leaving exams. What went wrong at the end? Without doubt, a teacher skipping teaching sessions on a regular basis is a sad story. But still, complaining at the last hour, when you are expected to produce the best out of your yield is not helpful. Avoid putting the cart before the horse. This is the 21st century and all it takes is a matter of being assertive. Bad work-men will always blame their tools as the old adage suggests. Before things span out of control, you had a right to talk to your teacher about your grievances. Also, there must be committees working along this line to solve such problems once they arise. If all these interventions failed, the school authorities had to intervene. According to what the students said, nobody raised any point of concern and was never listened to. It sounds so ridiculous. I believe pointing an accusing finger at the teachers right now will not help solve the problem. The key to problem-solving lies in identifying solutions, and not finding fault at a later stage. Even if the teachers were wrong, I can’t go your way at any cost. Parents with students from this school must watch out keenly because these students are bound to use this as a defense mechanism. Just for future reference, every child has a right to quality education and all students deserve that right and so do Gishoma students. However, it is never too late to mend. All you need is to stand strong and pick the broken pieces for yourselves. The author is a teacher at Kagarama secondary schoolshebs10@yahoo.com