D. Molefe, O. Pansiri and S. Weeks
30 July 2007
'The Schooling Of Orphans' HIV and AIDS pandemic has an impact all over the world. One consequence has been a rise in the number of orphans and the need to house, clothe, feed and educate them.
Botswana has a high proportion of orphans and many of them are of a school going age. Most organisations in Botswana that try to care for orphans, like the SOS Children's Villages in Tlokweng, Francistown and Serowe, do not take responsibility for their formal education.
The government of Botswana is, through the Social Welfare Officers, providing needy members of the communities, including orphans, with food rations, items of clothing and especially their school uniform. This is in an effort to subsidise the extended family members who are left in charge of the orphans. All orphans who are registered are entitled to assistance.
This should take care of the children's physical and material needs: food, toiletry, clothing, paying school levies and transport to a boarding school where the children stay in hostels. The other responsibilities for the care of the orphans remain with the extended family. They have to see to it that the children actually attend school, are punctual, are clean and have clean clothes on, that they are emotionally and mentally prepared for learning.
Interviews with teachers in junior schools suggest that adolescent orphans need more help. The teachers note that orphans at that stage of child development seem to really be in need of a mother and/or father figure. When adolescent orphans misbehave, teachers are found to be less tolerant of their acting out and causing trouble. They can, therefore, be harsher in their treatment of them. They expect them to be grateful in ways that are unrealistic.
It is as if teachers expected the orphaned teenagers to be different from other teenagers, and as if there is an expected set of behaviour held out for orphans. The teachers were surprised by their conduct. Not only were they puzzled by what they referred to as troublesome behaviour, truancy, experimenting with drugs, petty theft, and association with others who had bad reputations. They felt orphans showed more manipulative behaviour. They would want to use their "orphan status" to try and win the sympathy of the teachers who wanted to punish them for breaking school rules and to get away with bad behaviour. They claim orphans use their situation as a bargaining power to win favour and sympathy.
They give teachers the impression that they are not treated well at home and they have needs that force them into bad groups and bad behaviour because their parents are dead. On the home side the orphans also depict their guardians as unsupportive. They do not know why they are not treated equally as other children in schools and they attribute this to their orphan status. Many adolescents who refuse to do chores at home accuse their guardians of turning them into housemaids.
They may not want to help with domestic duties so they take the argument further and say they are being asked to work because they are orphans. This shows that their orphan status is thrown about in almost every situation where they are being asked to show responsibility. This is despite the fact that children have been told that they have rights and responsibilities. Generally, they are happy with their rights, but with responsibilities they tend to manipulate to postpone any acceptance.
In schools, many of the teachers are not trained in counselling and they believe in punishment. The teachers believe in the use of corporal punishment and are not patient to find out and understand the root cause of a child's behaviour and assist him or her. The school teacher-counsellors are generally perceived to be taking away the power to use corporal punishment from the teachers and school heads. This may result in some antagonism between them (counselors) and disciplinarians. The increase in the number of orphans in schools, without the subsequent increase of counsellors and more in-service to empower teachers with skills to handle them is a problem. Orphans as a vulnerable group have added to the complexity of the school dynamics. Communities need to be prepared to make the welfare of everyone in the school, including orphans, meaningful.
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