It is something that might have happened to all of us at some point in our education but we could be deliberately pretending that it never happened. Think about the day you were punished for coming to school late. Did your teacher ask why you got to school late before punishing you?
The situation is mostly like this. A rainstorm blows part of the roof of your house in the middle of the night. In the morning, you take part in moving household items to drier areas before going to school. Your teacher will rarely listen to your story before punishing you.
Catalysts for positive change as they might appear, such punishments have rarely yielded in stopping coming to school late. Instead, they have performed exceptionally well in ensuring that pupils do not come to school at all when late.
“In the end the pupil suffers and the pupil’s suffering impacts very negatively on the quality of education. It is very simple: a pupil who does not attend all lessons does not complete the syllabus. As such, they fail in examinations,” says Joseph Nyondo, Desk Officer responsible for primary schools in Karonga.
Punishing a pupil on the basis of their coming to school late is a national issue. And the fact that it succeeds in denying a pupil an opportunity to quality education makes it a human rights issue.
Elsewhere, such an issue might walk alone. But, in Karonga the vice is further lifted aloft by equally perilous human rights issues. They include sending children into business at a tender age and thrusting them into a booming fishing business. This makes the situation worse there.
Gracian Mbewe, Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation (CHRR) District Coordinator for Karonga, says the district’s location heavily worsens child rights.
“The northern part is close to the border where a lot of hazardous things that include child trafficking happen to children; the boma at the centre is conducive for all sorts of business and the southern part has a booming fishing business,” says Mbewe.
In one way or the other, says Mbewe, everything has led to the pupil getting to school late. And getting to school late has affected the pupils’ education. The punishments that come with late coming to school scare the pupils instead of correcting their situation, he adds.
From this background must, therefore, come ways of dealing with this situation. Education qualities have to remain high at all costs. After all, education is the only investment that can never be snatched away.
The people of Karonga are fighting the vice in a peculiar way. CHRR has brought a very strange marriage to the area. In this marriage that is the Learn Without Fear programme, human rights and sports tied the knot and the two expect just one child – quality education.
It is believed that human rights violations lead to pupils getting to school late. As a result, they get punishments that only worsen the situations as they are kept out of class.
“Pupils themselves will take a leading role. As they involve themselves in sporting events, notably football and netball, they will display messages against various forms of human rights abuses,” says CHRR Executive Director Undule Mwakasungula.
“Similarly, as they watch the sporting events, members of the community will learn about human rights abuses. The messages regarding children’s rights and responsibilities will, thus, be passed on.”
In the end, he says, communities will create a friendly environment for children; one that is free from human rights abuses. Such an environment will see pupils concentrate on education rather than things that would compromise their education.
Currently, the programme runs in Traditional Authority (TA) Mwakaboko’s area in the northern part of Karonga where the infamous Kupimbira is very rampant. Kupimbira is a traditional practice by which older males make arrangements to marry girls of their choice with the girls’ parents.
The practice infringes on the girls’ rights as such marriages are often arranged without their consent and knowledge. Consequently, they are forced to be in a union they did nothing to be part of.
The same programme also ran in the areas of TA Mwilang’ombe and Kilupula.
In TA Mwilang’ombe, boys often spend their time on Lake Malawi fishing. Girls are often forced into early marriages with businessmen who dangle their money at them when they come to buy fish mainly at Ngara. In TA Kilupula, both boys and girls are forced into business.
Mwakasungula says this marriage – which CHRR implements with funding from Plan Malawi – targets three components, namely the communities, teachers and pupils.
“Teachers must understand that much as punishments are something that will always be there, they must be pregnant with lessons. And these punishments must be handed after engaging the pupil on why they came to school late,” said Nyondo, a teacher by profession.
“Since pupils are likely to tell teachers what their parents do to them, the teachers can in turn engage parents on the pupils’ rights and responsibilities. As such, the parents will not send their children into something that will affect their education. In the end, the quality of education will improve.”
He says teachers should realise that they sometimes wrong the pupils, and adds that once they appreciate this, teachers shall only give punishments whose size corresponds with the affected pupils’ age and not otherwise.
Children that are less occupied with household chores at home, Nyondo says, will likely come to school early. When they come to school early, they will avoid punishments. And they will complete the syllabi leading to them passing their examinations well, hence improving the quality of education, when they avoid punishment.
Sending children to perform duties that violate their rights and punishing them merely for coming to school late is a combination so deadly for quality education. But when human rights marry sports, quality education becomes the offspring.
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