In schools, there exist two categories of students. The first category is of students from well-educated families who lack motivation to learn, while the second category consists of students who not only show learning difficulties but also behavioural difficulties.
In principle, children whose parents are well-educated have a higher propensity to learn since most conversations at home are about achievements, destiny and what they should make of themselves in the future.
Most probably, their home libraries are well stocked with high-value books of varying ages and sophistication in knowledge and facts. They also have TV and ICT gadgets that stream materials relevant to formal education. Their parents create time for discussions with them, mostly in the evenings, hence these kids learn from the way their parents speak.
It’s worth noting that some of these children don’t ride on the background knowledge they bring with them to school to learn with the required motivation.
Secondary school principals have come across cases where a child from a well-educated and rich family background lacks the motivation to learn.
All the children seem to need is a grade to enable them to move to the next level of education. They don’t have the drive to develop their potential to the greatest extent possible and make something of themselves in the world.
Most principals can manage the learning and behavioural difficulties of learners from humble backgrounds but have serious challenges dealing with children with learning and behavioural difficulties who come from elite backgrounds.
Alliance Girls High School former principal Dorothy Kamwilu says such children can pose serious challenges to fellow students, teachers and the whole school.
She argues that such students see their parents and guardians as highly educated or rich and, hence look down upon people around them.
Education doesn’t seem to make sense to them since they have already experienced the things that education makes for those who work hard. They also feel that such benefits will be at their beck and call when they come of age.
“Why trouble ourselves when everything is laid out for us?” Kamwilu recalled one of her former students teasing a fellow student.
Kamwilu, now a senior education officer in the Ministry of Education headquarters, reveals that when such incidents were brought to her attention, she had a little trouble reorienting such children to appreciate education.
At some point, fellow principals asked her how she dealt with students from rich family backgrounds, who had little disposition to learn.
“I held sessions with the students and talked to them about self-actualization, the fulfillment of one’s greatest potential and why they should not gloat about the achievements of their parents,” she recalls telling them.
She reveals that most students were shocked when she told them that some of her colleagues who had sterling performance and great educational experience would feel intimidated after realizing they had nothing to put on the table.
Truancy means children staying away from school without permission. Without a doubt, a negative disposition to schooling creates emotional and cognitive truancy.
Both interfere with the attention a learner needs to follow instructions while being taught and thereafter manage self-directed learning as prescribed in the school hours stipulated in the Basic Education Regulations, 2015.
Children with learning and behaviour difficulties create additional workloads for teachers. They are like lost sheep who need help.
Most schools celebrate students whose prospects of doing well were dismal yet they excelled.
Why? Because these are the souls the mentorship and coaching programmes by the school reclaimed from oblivion. Perhaps, the highly motivated students who excel didn’t need the input of the school as much as the difficult students.
Society should exert its energies to develop the abilities of learners to the best possible extent since ultimately; it’s the society that suffers when it doesn’t take pains to reorient its children to the path of what is good and desirable.
By Kennedy Buhere
Buhere is a Communications Officer at the Ministry of Education.
buhere.kennedy@education.go.ke
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