Every child is a Tabula Rasa; a blank slate. We help in coding their personalities and moulding them into the Adam and Eve they do become.
Our words and actions get imprinted in them as part of the factors involved in their design.
This is the reason for my intense disgust at a school close to where to stay. I could hear the teacher announcing during assembly his intention to embarrass some students that morning.
Why?
They were yet to pay some money other students had paid.
He went about calling out the 'defaulting' students and lecturing them, in the presence of others, how ashamed of themselves they should be.
Utterly disgraceful! Yet, that wasn't all.
To add to my disgust another teacher said, "they are daft, they won't listen"
Oh I felt like walking to that school to give them a piece of mind, educate the teachers on how things are to be done.
I get the ideology behind what they were doing. Embarrass the student, he/she cries to the parent and the parent is pushed to pay up. Viola! Problem solved!
Rubbish!
These students, despite being young, are humans. I wonder how much that teacher would enjoy being embarrassed in front of others. Maybe, just maybe, it would make him realise the backwardness of his actions.
If you have a problem with a parent, sort it out with the parent. Desist from taking it out on the children.
It seems like many teachers in Nigeria do not fully understand the great responsibility that comes with being a teacher. For some reason, the only solutions to problems they know are the cane and embarrassment; major tools for incompetent teachers.
God bless those teachers who are careful to write excellent coding on a child's slate.
God bless those teachers who seek means of resolution that does not affect the child or does minimally.
God bless those teachers who are not quick to raise insults or curse on a child.
Let us be mindful of what we do. They might be young but are functional humans.
Be good.