13 May 2008
Port Louis — 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.
b) Creation of class PTA for greater proximity with teachers.
c) Ad-hoc discussions on nagging issues at school.
d) Parent-motivated actions involving the school - excursions, talks, seminars on issues relevant to child care.
e) Involving parents in the celebration of successes.
f) The school leader's availability to meet parents at defined times - respecting emergencies when he cannot impose his meeting time.
g) Rules of meeting parents, protocols of meeting have to be shared understanding. A few rectors com -plained of the irascible and violent nature of a few parents. I have had to brook such misdemeanours too. Much depends on the rector's character, in fact there are humiliating situations that a person in full possession of his dignity may not digest. But for me a situation brought with violence is but a test of my character. How calm can I remain? How much can I swallow that will ease off the situation. An angry or aggrieved parent needs and invites confrontation because only his victory can vindicate the injustice to his child. Are school leaders good negotiators?
I have found many caught in the web of a wounded ego and retaliate, thus exacerbating the situation. Parents are hungry for guidance and, in fact, it is high time we asked ourselves what parents want:-
1) Their ward's academic success.
2) That their wards should learn to be, to behave and to act responsibly in society.
3) Moral supervision, which at times they themselves cannot provide.
4) Parents find in the school an institution that will provide corrective orientation to their wards who are unruly.
5) Make no mistake. 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. This is what is most shocking in the inflammatory words of a union leader who recommends "corporal punishment". How far does such a punishment go? From mild to severe? What is mild? And how severe is severe? We cannot take delight in antediluvian attitudes simply because we are incompetent in the face of crisis.
Parents cannot be unacknowledged legislators of an institution. They are but important stakeholders.
6) Parents want their wards to be competent in languages. How often have I found faces of parents blossom when they hear their children eloquence on the stage. The ability to speak English and French well is a tacit virtue everyone wants one's child to acquire, whether one is a Hindi or a Kreol lover.
7) Parents want their children to be able to assume social responsibility. Can he do community service? What does he know apart from academics?
8) They want their children to be potential conveyor belts or transmitters of their traditions, values-universal or even sectarian. The Hindu parent wishes his child to know his prayers and respect his sacred book etc, and respect the old and elderly.
9) Parents want their wards to be good sportsmen.
10) Though some parents are highly ethnocentric, a large majority would wish the school to develop a national ethic.
I had no time to fulfill this mandate but I am convinced any school must be guided by these parental ambitions. Most of our schools, even the best, have miserably failed to live up to these expectations.
Finally, what is the profile of a school leader? He must have been a reflective practitioner as teacher.
a) Highly knowledgeable without being a narrow, parochial specialist who says "I am a teacher of Physics. I don't know what they teach in Literature."
b) Sound management skills with very sound communication skills.
c) He should love children.
d) A problem solver and a facilitator, an astute negotiator and a person endowed with the vision to see both the whole and its parts. He should not be so obsessed with parts that he forgets the whole.
e) A sociable person, ready to abandon his personal pride in favour of saving a situation.
f) He has no ethnic denomination as school leader.
g) Leadership skills with the ability to make teams adapt to diverse personalities and fix into a variety of situations, at times, unexpected ones.
By Santosh Kumar Mahadeo,
former director of Curriculum, Ministry of Education
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