Dad, mum,
How can I not dislike school when you decided to substitute taking me to school with hiring a house help? Every morning, you drag my tiny frame to school before the sun fully reveals itself in its easterly abode. There is that pat or hug that mum gives me as she ushers me into the gate. That’s not bad. There are the snacks you pack in my bag. Biscuits today, fruit tomorrow, popcorn the day after tomorrow. Not bad at all.
There is warm clothing you put on me, ensuring almost every inch of my diminutive self is covered, otherwise, the menacing morning cold will drill into every fibre of my being and freeze me motionless. That is also good. My problem is that I am barely four years old. I think I am better off at home than in school, with someone to attend to me.
Yes, I get a chance to play and make friends as I look forward to either dad or mum coming for me after the sun has gone past the forehead. The journey home, with my uniform splattered with food stains or dirt accumulated from playing, seems like a journey back to ground zero; a ground where a rethink should be done on how old I should be before I am subjected to the regimentation of reporting hours, break time and such. I don’t like school too much because of that, and you must have noticed how much of a ball of energy I am on Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays when there is no school.
***
My dear parents,
I wish you knew how low I feel that I have to chase after matatus every morning and evening. They do not like us too much, these matatu people, and we will get to board or not depending on the conductor’s mood. I do not enjoy the chasing, and the being turned away at the door. I feel like a criminal. Like a flea-infested dog. Many are the days I have had to walk the whole distance from school to our home, and it is not an easy task for my nine-year-old legs. Yet you keep telling me to be tough, that that is the life children have been subjected to for years and they emerged tops.
You do not know how relieved I get when there is no school, because then I do not have to compete with other schoolchildren at bus stops every day for a chance to board a matatu. The matatu people tend to carry us more readily in the mornings, where I have to contend with the sneers of other passengers who hate the way our springy feet sometimes step on their shoes. But what can you do when you are packed on the aisle like sardines in a can? Passengers hardly like the way we fill the matatu aisles with our packed bags in tow, but what else can we do? It gets worse in the evenings because matatus don’t quite like stopping to let us in. We, the uniformed lot, are not a very profitable proposition. It is always a hassle getting a bus home, and I hate it.
***
Mum,
In school, they know me as the late one. I am the last to leave almost every day because I have to wait for you to finish hustling to pick me up on the way home. I stay there, bored, feeling like a burden to the teacher on duty. Sometimes teachers ask me to clean the whiteboards or do some other activities to keep busy. I detest that feeling, mum. I hate the fact that I bid farewell to every classmate every day.
***
Dear dad and mum,
My dislike for school is because of the distance. Yes, I go to a good school but I don’t like the fact that I have to travel about 20 kilometres across town to school and back, making it a 40-kilometre round trip every day. The motorcyclist who transports me to and from school rides quite recklessly and I consider it a miracle that nothing bad has ever happened in these past three years. I don’t know how many times I have muttered a prayer to God as the man manoeuvres through thick traffic, darting here, dodging there, making a 90-degree turn here, coming perilously close to running over someone’s ankles here, braking sharply there.
I have witnessed him trade expletives with other drivers who accuse him of tempting fate, of not knowing the traffic rules. All that while, I will be clutching at his dusty black leather jacket because my life depends on it. In those moments when my thoughts wander, I keep musing whether his orange helmet can protect both of us in case the unexpected happens.
My teacher says it takes sacrifice to get an education but I think this is not sacrifice but teasing the Grim Reaper every day with my pre-teen body on a motorbike, cold wind wheezing past my ears. Dad and mum, I understand you mean well for me, but I often think I need to go to a school that is closer to home like most of my friends in our neighbourhood.
***
My dear parents,
School to me means chilly mornings, and sometimes rain falling on me. Sometimes scavenging dogs running about, poking their noses into the garbage left at the doorsteps for the collectors to pick. I have to be up by 4.30 am, and outside waiting for the school bus by 5 am.
I don’t know why the other day, in my moment of solitude, I drew myself with our house help, waiting for the bus in the darkness, the street light flickering above us as flies danced around it. I made sure to illustrate that the flies were the only ones enjoying the moment. For the other mortals in the scene, it was a morning of yawns and hot eye bags due to lack of enough sleep, and in me was the dread of staying on the bus for quite long and picking up bullies along the way. I am in Grade Five and can’t wait for these early morning nightmares to end.
***
We fleshed out the above sentiments after engaging various parents and teachers on the topic: “Does your child like school?”
As children report back to the third term this week, the tough mornings of children not wishing to go to school will play out in many homesteads. It is not all gloom, though, as some of the parents said their children are surprisingly enthusiastic about school.
“My young one in Grade One loves school and ‘homefun’ aka assignments. She finished hers within the first week of closing. The brother, on the other hand, is dragging a week to schools’ opening,” said JL, a mother in Nairobi.
“My son, 6, and daughter, 11, both love school. They make me wish I had loved school when growing up,” said RO, another city mother.
However, there is the other side of the spectrum where the very thought of going to school makes some children sick. According to Maurice Odindo, a high school principal who has studied early childhood education, one of the top reasons why children don’t like school is the reporting time.
“Children in (pre-school) and Grades One, Two, and Three should be given ample time to report, a little bit past 7 am. But I think what makes them go as early as 6.30 am is that the parents also want to prepare and leave (for work), and if they are not preparing to leave, the parents take their children far away from the normal environment and this one makes the boda bodas take them quite early, and this makes them feel there is some bullying from their parents, and they hate school,” reasons Mr Odindo.
The children who detest school will pretend to be sick or give false information like some fees being demanded by the school. He adds that the child might also come up with negative stories about some teachers, saying they don’t like them and such.
Signs that a child does not enjoy their schooling, Mr Odindo says, include a sudden change in behaviour, a sudden drop in grades, intense anxiety, low self-esteem, high levels of anger, or too much aggression.
Mr Mose Ariga, who has been a teacher for 24 years and has taught in some of the top private schools in Nairobi before becoming a government-employed teacher, says that scenes of children sleeping inside school buses on the way to school and back home are commonplace. He attributes this to sleep deprivation.
“The distance from home to school is where the problem is. Why should I not take my child to the school in my neighbourhood?” he poses.
“Because we must beat the (traffic) jam, we must wake up children early. In the process of waking them early, we end up affecting even their attention span in class. The other thing about sleep deprivation is that it makes children develop antisocial behaviour. Some develop aggressiveness (and) antisocial behaviour. It makes children feel that all this is a punishment,” adds Mr Ariga.
He goes on: “Imagine a playgroup child who wakes up at 4:30 am to catch the bus to school. How much does that affect them? I was once taught about comparative studies of education at the University of Nairobi. In developed countries, their education is designed in a way that children go to school between 8:30 am and 9 am.”
“The policy-makers need to have a framework either to compel schools or learners to learn near the proximity of their home or to provide an alternative means of transport to school. Sometimes you find children on the road at 4:30 am, waiting for a vehicle for an hour, being hit by the cold. What do you think goes on in the mind of this child?” poses Mr Ariga.
Mr Ariga advises parents not to be too hard on their children when they start expressing signs of disliking school.
“There could be more behind the behaviour. You may dismiss them with ‘huyu hatakagi kuenda shule’ and then you start saying you were like that. That was your time. Things have changed now,” he says.
“These children need a lot of psycho-social support from the caregivers. That would be from the parent or the teacher. Sometimes some children are bullied by their peers even when going home, actually when they are using the school bus,” notes Mr Ariga.
One parent also raised the issue of incompatibility with the teacher. “I had to remove my daughter from one school in Nairobi because she could not get along with her teacher. It made her hate the thought of going to school, and it did not help matters that her speech had not fully developed,” said MM, a parent based in Nairobi’s Westlands.
Read: My daughter hates school
So, how can schooling be made fun for the children?
Ms Christa Ndege, an early childhood education teacher since 2013, says one of the tricks is by offering incentives. “We need to motivate them. When a child excels or fails, you should motivate them so that they can improve next time,” she says. “If, for instance, they did not do well in maths, you encourage them by saying that if they score a certain grade next time, they will get some gift. In the process, the child will improve and develop a liking for schooling.”
She also encourages teachers to make their classrooms attractive through colours and charts, especially for learners who are just starting school. “When a child finds a decorated class and is given playing items, they cannot even sleep. It makes them love school,” advises Ms Ndege.
