How to make a School Great. March 22, 2015

School Can Rock?

Young people usually say  ‘This singer rocks’ , or ‘ That guy rocks’.  Rocking is what older persons would call great or wonderful.  School can definitely rock.  School can be a lot of fun. Many children enjoy the camaraderie of age mates, recess and the noise. Indeed school can be a wonderful place for many.  In a place where the school administration takes care of their  business, school can be a wonderful lifetime experience. A well run school will take care of its students and of its teachers.  Good Teachers are the world’s nurturers, helping millions to go off to illustrious careers and helping mold many thousands from tiny little babies into well rounded knowledgeable adults who can not only write an essay but can make new discoveries in science and literature.  Important things that a good school can take into account include;

Safety in and Out of Class

A good school will institute safety in and out of class. This means the compound, the halls, the bathrooms and the classrooms are all places where a child feels safe and not threatened by anyone.  The compound should be clean and spacious; large enough for children to run and play happily with minimum falls and a soft landing when a fall does happen.   Not threatened by teachers or by fellow students whether younger or older. This means a place where bullying of any form from anyone is not tolerated.  A place where corporal punishment is not given to anyone, where adults treat little children and big ones too the way they would like to be treated in a just world. A place where prevention of bullying is effective and where if any happens the culprits are handled in a timely and just manner to maintain safety of the child.

A clean spacious school.

Strong Academic Programs

A good school will also need an academically rigorous environment. Children want to be inspired, challenged and educated. They need to be taught to learn better and seek for knowledge by themselves. Their efforts should be recognized and applauded where necessary.  That means wards, honor lists and all that.  An academically strong institution will build a child up for intellectual challenges and help bring the discoverers of the future to a love of reading and learning. This means that a healthy competition should be maintained while at the same time encouraging each child’s unique potential.  The schools students should be able to compete equally with any students in their area and in the global environment. A good well stocked library, access to e-learning tools and a peaceful orgainzed atmosphere for life long learning should therefore be created in a good school.

Sports, Music and Theater

A good school should also provide students who are highly physical with the facilities (sports fields, equipment, theater halls and arenas) and the time to enable them to be involved in sports, music and theater. Even those who are not naturally inclined to sports should be encouraged to take up sports. A variety of games should be taught and opportunities for competition be sought for and followed up by the school. Clubs for different games and skill possibilities should be set up; language, drama, music, dance,art, craft, philosophy, debate… the list is endless. Exploring outside the school is exciting. Children can learn about nature and their environment at school.  All these give the child room in which to explore their gifts and maybe find out an area of strength and even if they do not find one, still the variety will make the child develop into a  more knowledgeable and rounded individual who can educate others about the choices they had at their school.  Even better,  the child can involve him or herself in these activities. Good for the body, soul and mind.

School Trips to Explore Nature Can be Exciting. Kungu Rock, Uganda

Leadership and Community Involvement

A good school will also encourage their students to learn about leadership. Some people are natural born leaders. Others can be taught leadership. After all, there are schools for leadership and people do learn leadership at different stages of their lives. So leadership grooming is important. Several positions of leadership can be appointed at the school and children encouraged to take up leadership in different capacities. For example; prefects, club captains, class captains, community leadership in school councils and other such. Maybe leadership in choirs, drama groups and dance groups. The school administration can encourage these roles so children can grow into them and be trained in leadership. At the schools, these young leaders can be given training in ethics and leadership and those that are not ethical may be guided better in  leadership. In the same way they can be led to reach out to their communities. To involve themselves in projects that improve their lives in the communities they live in. They can be taught to look beyond themselves. It is a very  important area that schools need to pay attention to. Community service and involvement.

Overall , for any child there are many areas in which the school experience can be a wonderful one. The school environment will contribute immensely to this experience that the child goes through. Parents need to be wise in their choice of the best school for their child, taking into account the above issues and individual child needs.There are many things that a child can learn in school and which can make school as the young people say ”Rock”.

Dom Joly does not like boarding school April 14, 2014

I was very happy to find someone who does not like boarding school online. Thrilled actually. In my country, boarding school is the abnorm with more than 80% of children especially among middle income earners in Uganda taking their children to boarding schools after the age of 12 years.  Many so called rich people send them away as soon as they are six years.   Dom Joly  in an interview on metrouk and Hugues Leander  on his  wordpress blog  have expressed a dislike of  boarding school and have written about it.   Glad to see a shared opinion.

We can help change the world for the better by encouraging more parents to actually parent their children and not send them off to strangers in boarding school at such a tender age.

On another note, I was saddened to read of the death of Peaches Geldof,  early in April 2014; she was a mother of two who had a very kind heart for children.   Peaches encouraged attachment parenting  (AP) and spoke out in support of mothers loving their children as much as they could rather than making them into little soldiers, kind of like what they try to do to kids by sending them to boarding school. Many say they send the children to boarding schools to ‘make’ them  into ‘someone’ whatever that means.   May Peaches’  lovely soul rest in peace and may God grant her children someone to love them deeply and honestly, now that their mother is gone from this world.

 

Dom Joly’s interview  on how he hated boarding school can be found at;

http://metro.co.uk/2013/09/30/dom-joly-i-really-hated-boarding-school-and-would-never-send-my-children-there-4125879/

Thanks Dom for speaking the truth you know.

 

I wish you a great week and the best of times to you and the children in your care.

Bye for now,

Norah

Letter to Mummy March 6, 2014

Dear Mummy,

How are you? Hope you are OK.

How is Daddy and Peter and baby Esther. We are fine at school and i want to tell

you that i scored well in the beginning of term exams. I got 1 in English, 1 in Maths, 1 in Social Studies and 3 in Science. I was happy.

How is Aunty Julie now? Is she better?

For us we are fine. My friend Vanessa did not come back to school after the holidays.

Joy says she is in a new school. I want to go and see her in the holidays. Please tell Peter

to keep my books well. I left them on the table. Please come and see me on the visiting day. It is on March 24th. When you come, please bring me Cheers Orange juice, splash mango, glucose biscuits, pin-pop, yogueta sweets, biscuits, pop corns, groundnuts and pizza. Also pilawo rice and spaghetti.Greet for me Daddy and Jajja Grace.

Yours Loving daughter

Sarah Nalumansi

P.S

Do not forget the visiting day on 24th March Mummy.

Bye again.

 Sarah

Little Children Burning to death in Boarding Schools in Uganda November 28, 2012

Five children as young as 4 Years old Killed in a school fire in Uganda

The New Visionof June 27 th 2012 reported that five  primary and nursery children were killed when fire burnt their two dorms in Leos Junior Primary School, Masaka Uganda.  Most of these were aged between 4 and 6 years. They were not orphans and probably came from average to middle income families.  You cannot imagine the terror those sweet babies met in their last hours away from home.  May their beautiful souls rest in peace.

Some of the children Who Died in the Buddo Fire in 2008. Who has been held Accountable so far? No One.

This is not the first time it has happened. In another case in 2008,  19 children under the age of 10 died in another school fire in a boarding school in Uganda in another poor facility with no fireproofing, inadequate monitoring and no means of escape. Some people like the Ritchiesare starting to take note of the poor standards in Ugaanda’s  boarding school facilities and questioning why children are burning to death while no one is held accountable.

Inspection of Buddo Building after the Fire that Killed 19 girls. Court exonerated all Suspects. No one has been punished for this Crime.  Source; weinformers.net

In Uganda many of them have lost their lives in the poorly built dorms from fires.  We see in this unending tragedy  year after year in Uganda, many little ones continue to lose their lives.  There are  many more  uncounted and unreported children dying of poorly treated malaria, pneumonia, asthma and other diseases in our poorly built and staffed boarding schools in Uganda. The schools continue to mint money, the children continue to die.

I maintain that the boarding school system in Uganda (and all over the world), is a place of increased risk (fires, hunger, death due to malaria, sexual assault, corruption, loneliness) to children. The Boarding schools also may  produce the most sad people or the  worst crooks in the world.   In recent Ugandan history, students are joining the university with all AAAs and failing the basic tests given as entry exams.  Why? maybe because they cheated.    Sometimes they may  have organized cheating as a school. This is much easier done in a boarding school.  The crooked teachers and directors, who are interested in their schools cheap popularity and in making a dime;  give them the scripts in the dead of the night in advance.   Any dissenter may then be strictly punished and caned so they wont expose the crooked system…and no parent will ever know this till their dissenting caned child comes home or their all A child is flunking with all  F in Law school.

In many boarding schools, what matters is not whether you do right or wrong but whether you get caught or not.  What you have in the pocket/wallet or grub case matters, not so much your character (some students even loan the teachers money!).   Many boarding schools try to highlight character development but with the big numbers, this is not  easily taught or enforced.  One teacher will look after a dorm of 100 teenage boys or one old matron will take charge of 150  six to seven year olds.  How can they even do so?   When you do the maths, it is even a miracle that more harm has not come to pass; or maybe it has and we are just not aware of it.  There is no way they can take care of all these children.    Sometimes the overwhelmed teachers will try and use a cane to beat the children into order but since when did beating teach character?

There is also a very sad code of  silence, in boarding schools  much more than in day schools.  The rule is  to protect the others  and not to be a ‘snitch’ by telling.   Even when the very child/person you may be protecting by your silence is the very person you need protection from!   Upside down world indeed.   I bet you the percentage of children with psychiatric illnesses coming out of boarding schools is higher than that among those coming out of day schools.

I know for sure is that abusers  (physical , verbal, sexual)  do get away with it a lot in boarding schools (even if they also exist in day schools).  Teachers who are sexual-abusers, students who are sexual abusers get away with it better in the BS system.   When reports of abuse are made to the headmasters, they let it continue; Parents a re made to shush and bribed not to spoil the reputation of the school.  In some boarding  schools sexual abuse by teachers  is supported  and condoned. In a boarding school this is even more difficult to track or report.   Physical abuse; beatings, pushing, caning, slapping is too common even in schools all over Uganda according to Raising Voices.    In boarding schools it is even worse , no one ever questions it. It is the norm.   In one of Uganda’s top  boarding schools even guards are allowed to beat students to get them to go for night classes!  In fact i know two boarding schools where children have been crippled because of physical beatings by teachers.  One never recovered, she is in a wheel chair, one recovered and the school paid two million for his care.   In many catholic primary schools,  male teachers sexually abuse little kids and the children even get sent home because of the damage… they receive treatment form home paid for by their parents and the same parents continue to load their children in cars every three months to take them back to those schools?   Wake Up everyone.  We can do better for our children.  We need to see what is going on.   Harm may still come to children everywhere whethe in day or boarding schools or at home  but at least we will know we did our best to reduce the risk of this harm. Please take your child out of the boarding school system.  Raise Your Child if You Can.  It is Hard but Can be Done.

Till then…

Nakibogo

Why send Away Children to Strangers? To be Independent? You are Dead Wrong July 31, 2012

The usual rant and rave.   Why send away children; young and helpless ( or even older and teen-like)  to strangers who don’t even know them or love them?  Why send them away from families that already love them and that they have been living with? When it is not a time of war or suffering?  Or even at all? Really beats the imagination but I guess many of us have been convinced over time that sending away a child from its parent before she is grown enough is the best thing to do.   I call it mass delusion.  I got into a conversation with a young lady in a red and black outfit who laughed her pretty head off  when she heard that i consider boarding schools a terrible place. She said she went to a lovely school outside her country and enjoyed it so thoroughly.  She said “Boarding school teaches children to be independent. The things i did at school, my parents would never have allowed me to do”.   That is independence… as described by this twenty something lady.

The last time i read, Independence meant “Not subject to control by others”.   As far as I am concerned, the last place to learn independence in in boarding school. You all wake up at the same time, eat by the bell ( ever heard of Pavlov’s experiments?), lights out at the same time, are forced to sleep at the same time, wake up all at 4:30am…this leaves very little room for independence! You will not learn independence from boarding schools. You will  learn dependence instead. You will also learn to smile when you don’t feel like and to act facetiously because, you have to survive and you learnt these self effacing survival skills because your mama and papa dropped you off to strangers when you were all of five to six years old.  If you were a little luckier, when you were thirteen years but maybe even what happened to you then was even worse. I really hate boarding school. My opinion; BS  is a place people created to allow parents to be selfish while convincing themselves they are doing their best for their children by packing them off.  Or it could be a very good tool for mass indoctrination about class and the nonsense of it, or a good place to create similar persons to serve the civil service or to buy those goods from the brands and names supermarkets and tell each other all about their new Donna Karan shirt or whatever.  When you think about it, what else do kids in boarding schools talk about? Things. Stuff. Who has what.   There is happily no one to guide about meaning of life and the unimportance of things and stuff.   So out come these ‘independent’ girls and boys who all speak the same and all want to look the same,  buy the same things and fawn over so and so’s great new car or their new job in Roca Rola.

An experience in boarding school does not create independent thinking. Or Independence. In fact it does the opposite.

If it is so Good, Why do Children Cry when Taken To Boarding School? Some Parents Too? July 9, 2012

If boarding school is so good, the obvious question arises, why do children cry when taken (abandoned) there?

I say; because it is a big loss to them. You may argue differently and say that children cry when they are immunized as well. It is true, most children cry when pricked with a needle during immunization. It is good for them to be immunized. However, boarding school does not immunize children against the world and its hardships, as some parents try to convince themselves. Boarding school actually takes children away from the real world and disables them from competing in it. Boarding school puts children at a great disadvantage.  Placed behind high fences, in long prison like dormitories, in battery-cage-like-triple-beds,  the little child cries alone at night, with no one to comfort, no mother or father or grandfather to reassure, no one to give personalized care or guidance as is natural even to the animals. Left to themselves, or to the guidance of their fellow children, day and night, the little children grow withut a parent. At night,  their little fertile minds are filled with nightmares, terrible imaginations of ghosts, bukalabanda, wraiths and night dancers walking the corridors, coming to get them. No loving hand to comfort, sometimes a hating hand to hit or a cruel  voice to shout at them. With one old, tired, underpaid man/woman who may or may not, come out to tend to the sixty or so little voices when they cry out in fear.  Not a candle will light their darkness till morning, when lights-out ends according to the bell. The boarding school serves as an escape to parents and a trap and mind numbing hell for children. I contend that many young minds have been damaged, in boarding schools in Uganda and all over the world. Please consider and think before you take your child; of any age, to boarding school.

July 8, 2012

www.boardingschoolsurvivors.co.uk

Great site with well researched information on boarding schools and their effects.

Hello world!

Hallo World.

Welcome to ihateboardingschool.wordpress.com

I do hate boarding school. I am now out of boarding school and would like all sane people to get their children out of boarding schools and to convince them never to take them there. To help those that have been in boarding school to overcome the trials and losses they experience(d). Unless someone is really hard pressed;  say in times of war or other dire circumstances, a child should never grow up in a boarding school.

This blog would like to share the woes and sadness of boarding school, help people talk, share and laugh about it (if they can).  This blog invites you to a room and a space to discuss, vent and heal from boarding school. We will also celebrate the joys there are (were) in boarding school. In my estimation though, the sorrows overwhelm the joys. Welcome to ihateboardingschool.wordpress.com

Nakibogo.

Let us tell the world.

Happy blogging!