allAfrica.com: Mauritius: On Rectors, Pupils and Parents (Page 1 of 2)

Enough of teams and teachers. How about students and their parents? Too often we take a narrowly scholastic view of the learner - as though he was a school unit, raw material to be converted into a successful graduate by the school, which is a large impersonal factory.

Indiscipline is the result of a school attitude that makes the pupils believe studies are for exams only. Can you imagine that, when Mauritius was struck by a tsunami, 14 out of 25 students, had not heard about it until the 3rd week of January though the calamity occurred in December. Scholastic education makes the learner apply concepts blindly. I obtained One in calculus in Maths in HSC. I still don't know the meaning of dy/dx. Scholastic education gives part of the reality - the theoretical. Its application in the child's mind is blurred.

My replacement periods were periods when the Physics teacher would talk to the absent French teacher's pupils about the living world of quantum physics; the French teacher would talk of Literature to Science students. I wish I had been longer in schools to revive the genuine understanding of art or science.

Students are young, emotional and highly impressionable. During the first few days in a new school, I got an opportunity to win the sympathy of the whole school, which I am still proud of. There was a girl who was expecting to collect Rs 60,000 for a cornea-graft. I noticed during one of my peripatetic rounds that she was reading with one eye abusively close to the text. When I approached her, she said her parent was a fisherman and was doing her best to collect money to send her to South Africa.

I met my senior management team (SMT) and we determined to collect that sum through personal contributions, corbeille menagere, tombola, etc. - which we did. The ophthalmic surgeon came to Mauritius with a cornea and the girl today is enjoying good health. I shall never forget how this act struck gold. I was taken unawares because I had not thought of a benevolent act as strategy - though, at times, even spontaneity must be allied to strategy by a calculating leader. Once I had won the sympathy of my students, my social reengineering started.

"Even the most refractory child is cherished by his parents. The school cannot view such a child as a pest when he may be his parents' darling. Teachers and rectors cannot view pupils as adversaries." What did it imply?

a) Raise their self-image and make them feel they can achieve.

b) Ensure parity of treatment. An educationist is neither Hindu nor Muslim, nor Christian.

c) Seek the support of students to solve student indiscipline.

d) Inculcate leadership skills in all, but particularly in the students' council members.

e) Be here and everywhere with SMT. Nether think you are the one to solve problems.

f) Gives students a voice. Let them share their problems. Some would complain against incompetent teachers. With their permission, I attended classes and offered advice.

g) I visited bus stands at undue hours, entered pool houses to check whether my students were there.

h) I promoted reading by ensuring that every fortnight every pupil gave a summary (2pages) of a novel he/she had read to the teacher.

i) The first success at SC was celebrated with pomp - we had reached 97% from 83. The most resounding success was when HSC results catapulted from 48% to 83% within two years. This exploit was not mine, but that of the whole school.

My confessions would be incomplete if I do not mention the role I played vis-à-vis parents.

If parents do not come and meet you, go and meet them. I did this successfully in two villages. I speak Bhojpuri and I made the apparent alienation of the school evaporate by speaking the language of parents in their homes. This carries a risk because you may be refused by an alcoholic father who neglects his family, by a father who is committing adultery to the knowledge of his daughters...

Parents are not excuses for the setting of a school. In fact they are the main cause. Parents go by the place of a school in an undefined league. Today national colleges take the lead. Other SSS, specially the new ones, are vying with one another for precedence. The 2% of failure at Sodnac SSS has detracted it from its expected place from the league. Therefore, the school leader's major responsibility is to ensure that parents reach him mid-way. The following have been tried:-

a) Induction meeting for parents on the day their wards are admitted. The rector talks about: children's diet and eating habits; the need for the home to be a learning organisation - when to study, forms of leisure, etc.

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