We are crippled as others lie in wait

IT is understandable that, being humans, we make mistakes now and then. But when individuals or a group of people repeatedly make the same mistakes, it takes away the innocence usual associated to a mistake being innocuous when done once.

Repeated mistakes should be viewed as a character failure on the part of the doer or a very well and meticulously planned pattern of events executed with mastery and driven by sinister motives. Given deeper thought, the perpetrator should be taken to book as either a person with criminal intent or clinically insane. 

 

We all know that droughts almost always lead to famine, or the threat of one, and that heavy rains are likely to cause floods. But should the outcome of having an education system always mean massive cheating of examinations? Now that is unnatural, if you ask me!

When results of the national form four examinations were released early this month, newspaper headlines were very similar to those when the standard seven examination results were released last year. The number of students, like their younger brothers and sisters before them, caught in the act of cheating had increased. 

  

But I have also tried to muse as to how these kids can be capable of cheating on their own. Without any assistance from someone who knows better the students and the pupils, I find it impossible for these kids to succeed in their illegal endeavors if they are not aided and guided by adults.

Allowing the habit of pupils and students cheating in their examinations to go unabated is allowing society to cripple itself. No society has ever made any movement forward, as in progress and not otherwise, by trampling on education at will. 

Let us look at the pupils and students as individuals. The idea of educating these individuals, each to each, is to promote the individual’s innate abilities and to try and develop in the individual a sense of responsibility in and for his community and not just personal glorification.

Considering the ages of these individuals (pupils and students), it is important to strike the rod while it’s hot. We live in a competitive world today; individuals tend to look at acquisitive success as a better way, to some perhaps the only way, to prepare for a future. 

But instilling a sense of responsibility for community (society) and looking beyond individual’s success at an early age in our young lads and girls could be a way of deterring these young individuals from selfish inclinations and to steer them into thinking above acquisitive success.

This would never be accomplished by allowing cheating in our schools. Cheating does not only fail to prepare a child to think correctly and make sound and informed decisions on their own, it defeat the whole purpose of education. 

Albert Einstein once told a group of school children he met: “Bear in mind that the wonderful things that you learn in your schools are the work of many generations, produced by enthusiastic effort and infinite labor in every country of the world. 

All this is put into your hands as your inheritance in order that you may receive it, honor it, and add to it, and one day faithfully hand it on to your children. Thus do we mortals achieve immortality in the permanent things which we create in common. 

If you always keep that in mind you will find meaning in life and work and acquire the right attitude towards other nations and ages.”

If the likes of geniuses like Einstein not only understood but also respected the need for hard work to whatever God-given individual gifts, why would we go and allow our children cheat in their examinations.

We simply are not doing enough to end the problem. As stated, students and pupils must be instilled with the fear of even thinking of cheating. They should be made to loathe the vice and anyone suggesting it. 

That getting a certificate alone is not enough, they should be taught, because one will have to prove himself/herself in later life, and they probably would not have the time to learn again because they never had that interest in them to begin with.

I don’t want to believe that we are a fried fish, not just as yet; we still can go back into the water and swim back to life. But it is going to take more than just a little wriggling to get us back into the fold. From the looks of things, we are too lax a people.

As is it, we already have a number of people in high offices whose capabilities are questionable despite impeccable, outwardly, academic credentials. Then one starts thinking perhaps the cheating in schools started some generations back we just didn’t know it. 

But then again, if that were to be true, we are indeed already a crippled society; we just don’t know that fact yet. And no matter how good we are at concealing our limping movement, others have noted, they are just lying in wait!

And are we not Tanzanians?

IT was an image of the year. On Thursday one Kiswahili tabloid ran a memorable photograph on its front page and it spoke volumes. Its uniqueness was in its simplicity. There she was, a lone Ms Anne Kilango (Same East-CCM) in the august House attentively following proceedings flanked by empty seats.

On a quick count, there were a little over 20 empty seats visible. And that was just as far as the photographer’s scope could reach. There were probably many more empty seats than they eye could grasp.

There are also other factors that may compel one to believe that there were many more empty seats. 

For starters, it was the evening session, a boring one for many who have ever attended Bunge sessions.

Secondly, legislators were discussing the African Youth Charter of 2006, something of little interest to many legislators. The charter was eventually ratified and Tanzania became African country 23 to do so. But that’s not the point.

The timing of the image could never have been better. The legislators had demanded, and their wish apparently granted, an increase in their sitting allowances. The least the public would have expected is a half-empty Parliament now that the MPs have had it their way.

Since it was the evening session when the image was captured, it is very likely that the ‘absent’ legislators had registered during the morning session as present for the day and pocketed the sitting allowance for half a day’s work.

Now imagine you and I doing the same at our places of work. And then imagine asking for a raise, after the fact.Now narrow down your imagination to a single profession, say, doctors. When they reported to work after a strike as present for the day but did not attend to patients it was called a go-slow. MPs do that all the time, no questions are ever asked. 

Yet they get to have exorbitant increases in their perks for all the wrong reasons. That they have more expenses than ordinary citizens, some kind of bull! My understanding is that a Member of Parliament is an elective post which one willingly decides to vie for. 

It is therefore exceedingly unbecoming when you find someone grumbling about the burdens and responsibilities that come along with a post they so bitterly fought for. If one finds it that burdensome, they know they can always leave, but I wonder why that is never considered as an option.

On another note, we are Africans, narrowed down to Tanzanians. We have one very common trait; extended families. If our honorable legislators feel that they should be compensated for assisting their voters, well, who is going to recompense the rest of us for assisting our kinsfolk scattered all over the country. Are we not Tanzanians? 

It was rather repulsive to use the assistance they extend to their electorate as one of the reasons they deserve an increase in their allowances. We all chip in now and then to help a cousin there, a neighbor here, an old friend there and so on, that’s typical African, and we don’t go about demanding repayment. 

And given a deep thought, the legislators are rather suggesting they be given more so they keep giving handouts to their voters, pressing them down deeper into begging, instead of find permanent solutions to their poverty so that they stop asking for assistance from their representatives.

One thing though the MPs would not admit is the fact that they simply brought it on themselves. Most of our politicians are blessed with empty campaign rhetoric; they give people false hope and in the end fail to deliver.

Payback is the mother. 

They are then forced to dig deep into their pockets because they always fail to deliver on their empty promises. They bite off more than they can chew. And when it starts to hurt, they never fail to find a ‘political’ solution.

More reasons have been given to justify the increment in MPs’ allowances; the cost of living has dramatically increased. But if the MPs have to eat, so do we; are we not Tanzanians? If they have to refuel, so do we; are we not Tanzanians? Now who is going to take care of us?

In retrospect, the decision by the MPs to increase their allowances and the fact that it has already been done may not have been a good investment. Doctors too demanded some unthinkable increases in their perks. When told to wait, what ensued was devastating. It’s not hard to imagine who else will follow suit.

It takes a great deal of the nation’s money and time to produce doctors and other professionals, unfortunately it does not always take much to make a legislator because the latter can easily be replaced by people from all walks of life.

The legislators should in the least have shown the public their human side by debating the matter in the august House, just like they want every issue of national interest to be treated. Instead they quietly made sure that they had it their way. 

That was a punch below the belt, but then again, it was the ref who threw it!