NOT so long ago the National Examination Council of Tanzania announced results of Primary School national examinations. More pupils are said to have passed this year than last year. That’s encouraging. But just before we got too comfortable with the good news; we had to be taken aback, true Tanzanian style.
It was also reported that several pupils were caught cheating in their exams and thus their results had to be annulled. And that some teachers lost their positions for either assisting the pupils in their cheating or having been too lax not to note cheating children.
I have tried stretching my imagination to understand how a primary school pupil could even think of cheating in exams to no avail. It just does not sink in.
These are either very smart kids who are using their gifted minds for all things bad or someone is failing in his or her role as a caretaker, guardian or parent. Either way, something is not right and quick remedy is needed.
The Standard Seven national examinations are largely viewed as the first hurdle in the process of educating our children in the country. It has significance in the sense that it determines who goes where, or nowhere, when it comes to the next level, secondary education.
The dangers of having people starting to learn about cheating in academics at a tender age are obvious. We are about to create a society of people who would love shortcuts. Because for one, they would not be actually as qualified as their certificates would want us to believe.
And the result would be a future workforce that cannot do without shoddy deals, from those who would assume the top echelons of power to your ordinary clerk manning a desk in a government office.
Cheating in academics is a vile that has far-reaching consequences. In fact it defeats the whole purpose and process of learning. To be certified as a person of certain academic qualifications one must also be able to espouse such credentials by acts that befit a person of knowledge.
I doubt if a person who has been cheating to pass in school could claim to have acquired the best of knowledge of whatever it was that he or she was pursuing. We may take some things lightly and for granted but try to imagine a doctor with dubious qualifications operating on you.
Unless one has a clandestine inclination to commit suicide, no one in their right mind would allow such a thing to happen. And that is the danger of cheating; it keeps professionalism at peril and to allow such malpractices to go on in our schools will only lead to mediocre products, at best, who cannot compete in the job market.
At worst, we will be heading for doom as a nation since we will never be able to do any good for ourselves. It is disturbing to also note that the number of cheating pupils has increased tremendously in just one year.
While last year only 124 were caught cheating and their results cancelled, this year NECTA annulled the results of 9,736. It makes you want to cry for the country. Again, imagine half the future leaders of this country being the product of such schooling.
As it is, we still have a serious problem on our plate. We have members of parliament who have already started believing that they are a special breed who deserve royal treatment. It doesn’t seem to bother most of them that in their quest to have more, they are actually milking those who already have very little to go by.
To suggest a rise of 185 per cent in MPs' sitting allowances is like a nightmare of Kafkaesque proportions. And shall the government grant the MPs wishes, then we would be living that nightmare, never ever to wake up from our horrid sleep.
From the look of things, we shall continue to be inextricably intertwined in this web of poverty. It is made evident by ridiculous demands by selfish people who should otherwise sympathize with the difficulties an average Tanzanian faces every day and by a future generation that already shows its penchant for the easy life.
If things remain the way they are, then there certainly will not be any sunshine wherever it is that we are headed. As a matter of fact, the future might be far worse than this hideous present because we don’t seem to be too willing to accept the fact that we brought ourselves to this point.
We are just too selfish and care less about the consequences of our misplaced acts and demands. Most importantly, because we are selfish at heart, we also tend to be oblivious to the harmful effects of our deeds on others.
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