Mr. Anthony Dzoboku, the headmaster of Seventh Day Adventists (SDA) Preparatory Basic School in Salosi, a suburb of Somanya in the Yilo Krobo Municipality, has made a strong assertion that pupils and students’ poor performance at schools could best be associated to parents’ lack of parenting now a days.
According to him, some parents are careless about their children’s education and have even at certain times involved them in irresponsible habits.
“Some parents are uncaring about their children’s education and even involved them in irresponsible habits such as sitting with their children to watch television programs especially in today’s era of telenovelas, at the expense of their studies,” Mr. Dzoboku said.
Rite FM’s DEOP II Community Scorecard research conducted in September and October, 2017 revealed among other things that children (pupils) now a days forego their books and school activities for telenovelas such as Kumkum Bhagya, Veera, Johda Akbar, Tashan, etc.
The District Education Observer Project II has had interface meetings with parents, teachers and pupils to find out challenges militating against the success of school and pupils. The STAR-Ghana supported project is being funded by Ukaid, DFID and DANIDA.
Speaking in an interview with Captain Adabugar during the Rite Morning Ride, Thursday, the headmaster chided parents for their neglect, saying that parent no longer disciplined their children as it used to be in the past.
Child discipline and training is part of society’s culture. Children in the olden days were brought up in the extended family background and their upbringing was a duty for every member of the family including the community.
However, human right laws and activities of human right activists have faded out these systems of the all-inclusive duty of child upbringing.
Teachers find it difficult to punish pupils who go wayward, a situation that can be partly blamed on the attacks suffered by teachers and school heads when certain pupils were caned. Under such circumstances, parents and some community members organized themselves into mobs to attack the innocent teachers, creating fear, panic and phobia in them.
Pupils come from school with home works, projects, craft works, etc. but instead watch television during the night only to return to the school the next day to either do it in class or fail to do it altogether.
Under such circumstances, parents neither supervise their children nor enquire from them if they have brought any homeworks from school in order to supervise them.
Source: Prince Paul Amuzu/ritefmonline.org/princeamuzu667@gmail.com
