Sunday, September 21, 2008

The crap that we put up with...

As educators one of the things we have to put up with these days is absenteeism from school. Rules have it that after a certain number of days of being absent from school one can be expelled. In the meantime, the task falls on the class teacher and the PK HEM to try to salvage this oblivious student. Very often this would mean phone calls or visits to the said student.

But how do you get a student to come back to school if the parents are not playing their part? An example, a teacher arrives at the student's house at around lunch time to see the parent. He knocks on the door and is greeted by the father who is still clad in sarong and looking as though he has just awaken from his sleep, who then hastily mumbled something about hoping to be excused so that he can get dressed. And when you talk to him about his son/daughter being absent, he looks at you sheepishly...sometimes mumbling a silly excuse or something of no bearing.

Or have a 'waris' come and ask the school to take a student back with excuses like the student is an orphan or has no parents... asking us to pity him/her. There are many of this 'pity the child' pleas. The joke is...we pity the students but they can't really be bothered to do something for themselves. At that age, I guess they can't really think straight for themselves...

At the end of the day, I realized this...just as they are so many parents who truly care for their children's welfare, there are also equally many who just don't seem to care or don't know what they should do. So, many of the young people who could otherwise have had a better level of education end up with so little of what they are capable of. My two sen this morning!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

let them rot then... there is only so much an educator can do without the commitment of the parents and the gomen.

better to focus your energy on those who 'has hope'...

AJ7 said...

Yup...that's what I do... I think that's what most of us do. These days we pamper the young too much and life is really too good for them. As a result, they don't see the consequences of their actions now.

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