Last week we went to visit a nearby school. It was part of the Banani school service program. The students are taken to nearby schools twice a week to conduct sport lessons and tutorials for the students of the hosting schools. It was the first time I accompanied the girls on these trips. Our group was appointed to conduct sports at the nearby Shalubala School. The moment I stepped out of the bus laughing and playing around with my girls I was stricken by a scene that deeply disturbed me. It was a long line of girls waiting their turn to be beaten by a blackboard eraser by the schools head teacher. These were girls of all ages and the man beating them must have been in his forties. I was mad, frustrated, angry and above all disgusted.
It shouldn’t have bothered me this much since coming from the Middle East there were many schools in which the beating of students was a common practice of punishment, although I don’t think it any longer is an acceptable behavior anywhere in the world. Even in my own old school I remember our head supervisor who was an elderly man always carrying a stick which he swung around at the cheeky boys. However, I never ever remember him to touch or hit a girl or even raise his voice at one of us. Even when it was the boys he was punishing he would always give them the choice of detention or one hit on the hand by the stick and surprisingly the boys always chose the stick! The big difference for me though between these men was that we used to look at our supervisor as a father figure. We respected him, obeyed him and above all loved him. Even when he was punishing it was out of love, he was not enjoying the act, he was not trying to get back for all that he had been through as a student.
But this man it was not love or care that pushed him for this act. You could see it in his eyes. You could see it in the fear you saw in the eyes of the students. If they weren’t being beaten they were punished to work on the fields, to pull out weed from the lands, to gather water, to dig up the ground. Everywhere you looked everyone was being punished. I wondered what could have they all done? Can a whole school be punished? Are these students ever learning anything if they are always being punished outside? However, it seemed normal for everyone else around me. No one seemed to mind, no one seemed to find it out of the ordinary, as though any other treatment would be the questionable one. I became curious after this scene whether there were any sexual harassments and abuses as well, as it shouldn’t seem surprising in such an environment. And to my further disgust I found out that there have been girls who have been selling their bodies for a guarantee of not getting punished, for not being hit, for a little sum of money and for the love and attention of their head teacher. I asked my girls what they thought about it, their reply was that this was the norm around here and that we (Banani) are one of the only few schools that don’t physically punish students. Here at Banani the punishment is not getting a merit for good behavior for the week or the worse case a demerit!
Looking at this story and getting to know students that actually graduated from schools such as this I came to one conclusion. All these campaigns held worldwide for increasing the number of schools in Africa and the underdeveloped countries are all being looked at in numbers. In quantities. No one bothers enough to actually spend the time and the effort to give these children an education. A quality education. When we are donating money we are donating to schools. To buildings. To chairs. We should be spending money on teachers. On educators. On knowledge. On character development. NGO’s, governments, companies, individuals, religious groups all take pride in starting up X many schools in X many countries. They take pride in the number of children they put through school. Well a pat on their back. But have they ever visited these schools to see their conditions? Have they counted the number of graduates? Have they counted the number of children with a positive change in their lives after school? Have they asked them a science, math or history question? Have they morally affected these children? And most importantly have they bothered to raise a generation that will be able to make a difference? Is it enough to merely give books and pencils, build schools and playgrounds and think that that’s education? No. it is not.
Our campaigns should be targeted not at sending 100 kids to school. It should be targeted towards the education of the mind, body and souls of 100 children that are capable of making a difference in the world. Donating money merely for the benefit of our self conscience is no longer good enough. We must be spending time and effort for the development of curriculum's and for the training of suitable educators. The real challenge lies in that. In the number of children we successfully educate and train in morals. In the number of children who later on move on to make a difference not only in their own lives but also in their communities. The quantity no longer matters. We should be spending on quality. Even if all these children go to school there will be no difference until the quality of this education has been adjusted. It will always be the same cycle. Just like the little boy we were playing with. When he is always being beaten and punished during school hours, instead of being educated and encouraged for good behavior, what more could we have expected from him than to be showcasing the same behavior towards his fellow school mates and what other behavior do we expect from him as a future member of our society.
