Parents, not teachers, should be blamed for students’

From Obinna Odogwu, Awka

The Director of Divine Wisdom Schools in Awka, Anambra State capital, Chief Amaechi Obiesili, has blamed poor parenting for the low moral standards and behaviour among today’s young people, particularly the students.

He argued that it was unfair to heap the blame on teachers when parents have failed to bring up their children properly at home. He also spoke on a number of interesting issues in this interview

How has it been running this school? What have been the challenges and the success stories so far?

It has not been easy. This school started in 2011. I established it because of my love for children. I had always wanted to be in a position to guide and nurture them to greatness. Today’s children are tomorrow’s leaders. And I hold the view that our future leaders should be brought up properly today. So, that view and love for children made me establish this place. Incidentally, my father liked my idea and supported it. He encouraged me to go ahead and establish the school. But before then, I was selling cement and blocks. And my business was doing very well. I had a block industry. And I was getting two trailer loads of cement that time. That’s to tell you how big the business was; and it was progressing. But I sold off everything to establish this school. When I eventually started, I encountered a few challenges. Trying to establish a school is not a small journey; it’s not an easy thing at all. That time, there was a small building here and I rented it.

Shortly after, I started the fencing of this place using part of the money I realised from my previous business. Later on, I started building one structure but couldn’t complete it as quickly as I had expected because I ran out of funds. However, I kept pushing. The next challenge I faced was getting approval from the Ministry of Education. When officials from the ministry came here, they said that I must fence this school compound. It was a dwarf fence at the time, so I had to move it up with more blocks. I also renovated the small building to make it better and comfortable for teaching and learning. I did other things too. Those were the things I did to register the school and get approvals from the government. If you look at this wall, you can see when I got my approval for Day Care in 2012; you can see that of nursery; the other one is for primary. They have different certificates. You get approval for Day Care differently; the same for primary. This other one you are seeing there is for upgrading. Then I had to go for CAC. These are processes that were not easy.

From the story you just told, it’s obvious that at some point, you encountered serious financial challenges. How were you able to pull through them?

Yes, I encountered serious financial challenges at the early stage of this school. I started this school with only 11 pupils. And I had workers that must be paid every month. I had new building projects to execute. There were so many things that needed to be done to make this place better and you need money to be able to do that. So, how could 11 pupils provide money for the payment of staff salary, fencing of the school compound and the building of new classroom blocks? The situation became so tough that at a point I had to take loans. From that 2011, sometimes I took bank loans just to make sure that everything is moving well here. I took loans many times from the banks. Sometimes, I took two to three years’ loans just to make sure I financed this place. Running a school requires a lot of money. When you came here last, this place wasn’t like this. This time around we have started computer studies and opened a music department. Every term we must bring up something new. What makes me happier is the performance of our kids in external examinations. They get high scores. My daughter just gained admission into UNIZIK. She wrote St. Patrick’s exam and got over 90 per cent. She wrote UNIZIK’s entrance exam and passed very well. I had to choose UNIZIK. One got admission into the Nigerian military school in Zaria.

What do you consider the biggest challenge facing Nigeria’s education sector, particularly at the basic level?

There are quite a number of challenges facing Nigeria’s education sector. But I’d single out the issue of teachers’ welfare. In this country, we don’t take care of our teachers. No, we don’t. Someone that is taking care of children should be happy. They are not well paid. Teachers are poorly paid. When you place the work they do, side by side with the money they’re paid, you would see that they are not well paid for their services. It is even we that are in private schools that are trying. These are the people that train doctors, engineers, lawyers and others from the basic level. They lay the academic foundation upon which they will build to the university level. But they are not well paid. For me, government should increase teachers’ salaries. That would make teaching jobs enticing; people would rush into teaching jobs. That way, the best brains will be in teaching. Most people that are teaching now don’t even want to teach. It is just that there is no job; that’s why they are holding on with teaching while looking for another job. If the teaching job is paying well, why are you finding another job? Some will like to be posted to the village where they can only go once in a month while doing their businesses in the urban centres. This is so because their salaries are poor. So, the government should do something about the teachers’ welfare.

Secondly, schools need packages; anything that can make schools and teaching profession to be enticing. Sometimes, government can finance some projects in schools. It could finance the building and equipping of libraries in schools. Government could supply computers to schools. That way, you’re encouraging the schools to do more. We are employers of labour. So, there is a need for the government to support private schools. There was a time Emeka Offor gave some select schools some books. I was one of them. These textbooks you see here are from Emeka Offor.

A video of parents assaulting a teacher in his classroom in Abuja trended on social media recently. The teacher was said to have slapped their child over an undisclosed offence. Has any parent ever assaulted any of your teachers for correcting their child in this school?

Parents are fond of that, especially the female parents. They over-pamper their children and they think it is love. Most times, this kind of problem comes from the women. If you see a man doing that kind of thing, know it that she was pressured by his wife to do that. That’s why most times in private schools we don’t flog children; which is very bad. But in our school, we discipline children; though we discipline children according to their levels. Apart from that, parents nowadays don’t like teachers flogging their children. Only about 60 per cent of parents would say okay, discipline that child. They will even encourage you to flog their children when they misbehave. Forty per cent of them don’t like it. They would tell you if their child does anything bad you should tell them. So, we will keep reporting to you every time your child does something bad? The beautiful thing about this place is that you can’t enter here anyhow. You will pass through some security checks; the gate is always locked and we have CCTV cameras everywhere. So, everybody coming in here is mindful of their conduct. Again, we have standards here and we’ve set boundaries too. There are certain things you are not allowed to do here. Some schools in this Awka, parents go to the school and beat up a teacher for disciplining their children. Some go inside the school premises, some wait for them outside the school. I lost a wonderful teacher here because of the inappropriate conduct of a female parent. It happened that this teacher didn’t have a child of her own as of the time she was here. She had been married for three or four years. Incidentally, her friend when they were in school had her three children here. One of them was in her class, Nursery 1. That teacher took that woman’s children as her own, particularly that one in her class. You know, if any one likes your children, if they gave other children a stroke of cane over an offence, they would give yours two. To me, that is liking. They would be monitoring your child to ensure that they maintain good behaviour at all times. The canes we use here are very small and tiny. That woman used inappropriate words on this teacher, saying that she wanted to kill her child because she didn’t have one herself; that she took the child to hospital, this and that. That teacher cried like never before. She was heartbroken. She cried for hours. And that day was her last as a teacher. She left the teaching profession. I don’t know where she is right now but I know she stopped teaching. I think she later started a business. I felt very bad when I heard what transpired. If your child did something bad, and I, as a teacher, fail to discipline him, it simply means that I am wicked. It’s my job to correct or discipline that child for their own good. A teacher that corrects your child loves that child.

Another thing is the issue of assignments. In some schools, parents do assignments for their children instead of allowing them to do the assignments by themselves. Here, we always advise parents to allow their children to do the assignments by themselves because that’s part of the ways they can learn. It’s for their own good. It is not all about scoring high marks or taking first position in class. It’s about that child learning what they were taught. You can teach them that subject or topic at home but allow them to do the assignments by themselves.

Earlier, you mentioned that you give your own children extra punishment when they commit any offence here. Can you tell us more about that?

My four children are in this school. One just got admission into UNIZIK High School. She passed both St. Patrick’s and UNIZIK. The other three are still here. I called all my teachers in front of my wife and told them to give extra punishment to my children when they do something bad with their classmates. That is, anytime any of my children does something bad with their classmates, they must single out that my child and punish him or her more than others. And I prayed on it. I said any day any of my children does something bad and they don’t punish them enough, that God will punish that particular teacher. If, for example, five pupils made noise in the class and one of my children is among them, that my child should get double punishment. If the teacher gave the offending pupils five strokes of cane, my child should be given 10. That’s the instruction I gave them and I re-echo it to them every two weeks. If you spared the rod, you would spoil the child.

What was your experience as a child growing up? Did your father do similar things to you?

When I was at Igwebuike Grammar School, Awka, my father made friends with the principal and all the male teachers we saw as bad people but they were not actually bad people. In fact, now, I love them more than those we saw as good people. That time, we had Game Master, Ezeonu, Tallest, and others. These were male teachers that if they flogged you, you wouldn’t come out the next day. But my father would go and make friends with them. They would break kola nuts, chat and he would introduce me to them, telling them to discipline me very well. He told them to multiply my own punishment by five. That time, I had it in my mind that my father hated me, his only son. It is now that I realised that it was love. And I must tell you, I saw hell. And it was that hell that made me who I am today. I now understand that those people love me. When you get good experiences, use them on your own. That’s why I called all my teachers and told them, anytime my children do anything bad here, double their punishment.