OF SMART PHONES, FORM FOUR EXAM RESULTS AND APPEALS

Good, there is an interesting information on the National Examinations Council of Tanzania (NECTA) this time, there are results of 2012 form four examinations results appeals. I went through the list (impressively long) and all I found was “HAIJABADILIKA” against all, not some, all names. HAIJABADILIKA means hasn’t changed. And this is just “AWAMU YA KWANZA” (first batch) can’t tell how many batches we are going to have eventually!! The exam council charges a fee to re-process a candidate’s exam papers and so there should be a proportionality in the number of appellants and NECTA’s income. This massive magnitude of appellants numbers leaves one wondering why there wasn’t as much an uproar regarding the original results, if all the parents of the appealing students had raised hell then they shouldn’t have gone unnoticed but where were they? The problem lies with most parents’ traditional belief that theirs is somehow a different child, they have an opportunity to notice at close range and continuous exposure their child’s little achievements and add them up as a sign of genius. As to what happened to our ‘little George’s’ form four exams results, well, you know, I am sure he performed quite wonderfully but there may be a problem somewhere within NECTA, maybe too much work during exams marking season, or maybe plain laziness, our son’s performance should match what we know him to be capable of, don’t you think so?, he can operate a smart phone, he can ride a bicycle, he rides even a motorbike for that matter. As for the English language, doesn’t he follow up and translate for others the “shades of sin” and “isidingo” shows on TV?, this matter should be taken care of by way of an appeal to the examinations council. It escapes most parents that the little “knowledges” they witness their offspring displaying here and there for them to assess at leisure does not count as formal education taught systematically in class by professional educators and quantified as well as tuned to match with what is recognized globally as education. The day to day mini dramas that your kid displays at home may be geared to impress you to admire him and may even be the source of their distraction from actual learning which he proves on officially recognized ways of assessment that he fails. As for the smart phone that you yielded and bought for him/her, it has nothing positive to do with in-school learning at his/her age, in some cases they could have stretched the request to have a “several gigabyte memory card” included, for music when relaxing!!, you as a parent should know better. These gadget crazed bozos can not solve a simple quadratic equation when in their fourth form or interpret the molecular weight of oxygen gas from the periodic table, which is what matters in school not the storage size of smart phones!!,also phone memory is home to images, still and video, porn not excluded. Go appeal again.