Chronicle Editor
Stephen Mpofu
THE ban on teachers caning students, as effected by recent amendments to the Education Act, was no doubt applauded by most if not all Zimbabweans as the move accords with a progressive, democratic nation that we have become since the attainment of independence and freedom in 1980 from an oppressive, racist ruling culture.
However, granting carte blanche rights to pupils who fall pregnant to continue attending lessons must have raised eyebrows as can be deduced from negative comments in public by those who apparently think that the move is retrogressive in the sense that it might promote promiscuity among pupils who must of necessity concentrate on the sole purpose of their being at school — getting an education and skills for both self and national development of the motherland.
The saying “charity begins at home” suggests in the matter regarding the caning of students, that homes are responsible for instilling discipline as part and parcel of the behaviour that pupils display at school.
Children allowed by their parents to “get away with murder”, as it were, at home will obviously thumb their noses at school regulations under the belief that no harsh sanctions by school authorities will become their portion.
Indeed the kind of discipline instilled among pupils is intended by school authorities to prepare students to become responsible citizens in the various roles they play in their society in future.
Corporal punishment, such as caning, executed in the presence of other students psychologically tends to create an antagonistic attitude towards school authorities by those punished as a boomerang effect of the derision the offender receives from fellow students.
As such, this communicologist says kudos to effecting the ban on caning of students whose illicit conduct, as deemed by the law in question, indicts parents of the guilty pupils for their failure to properly bring up their offspring.
Granting pregnant girls the right to continue with their education is, on the other hand, a kettle of fish altogether, so to speak.
Credit is to be given to both parents for running their offspring through effective socialisation at home.
It is however, not a traditional or cultural norm for mother and father in Zimbabwe or on the African continent to sit around a table with their daughters and tell them not to get pregnant during their schooling or else . . .
Which suggests that mothers are the principle role players in providing protective counsel to their daughters about the dire consequences of indulging in sex before marriage.
In the circumstances, therefore, some people will wag angry fingers at mothers for not playing their role effectively here.
But delinquency, such as that by girls who play wife at school and end up with a baby in their womb should not be wholly blamed on mothers who, as a matter of fact, do not referee the sexual act between their daughter and her boyfriend.
It is probably in the knowledge that most, if not all mothers, are not party to gallivanting by their school going daughters that murmurs have been heard in public by this scribe, and no doubt by other people also, against the move to allow pregnant girls to continue with their education on the grounds that expelling them is tantamount to discrimination against the girl child.
People who winge privately instead of openly expressing what they consider to be genuine concerns for the powers that be are dangerous to society as they are likely to fuel public dissent or opposition to the Government which, as everyone knows is a Government of the people by the people for the people who must help it with progressive inputs for sustainable peace and stability to continue in a country.
The old Education Act allowed the expulsion of school girls made pregnant by fellow students or students elsewhere or even by sugar daddies while the males in question remained untouched.
The amended Act, which allows pregnant pupils to continue with their education might, in the opinion of this writer, excite school girls to poke their curiosity in the rights and privileges enjoyed by older women behind the conjugal door and in the process cause a proliferation of pregnant students in the knowledge that expulsion will not be applied as just deserts for their premature, matrimonial indulgences.
Now, with pregnant girls allowed to remain at school, discrimination or isolation by class and schoolmates cannot be ruled out and the affected students will certainly not be insular to the effects of isolation verbally or otherwise which may affect her performance at school.
Online Reporter