Lack Of Leadership For Youth

I READ the newspaper nearly every day and the Youthpaper where most schools place photos of learners with their portfolios, so-called SRCs, while they should be (called) LRC, learner representative council because they can only be called Student Representative Council member once they attend tertiary level education.

They also fail to explain their objectives when it comes to results and discipline. Discipline has gone down drastically and this has contributed so much to high failure rate in schools while they have ‘SRCs’..Earlier, as a Regional Youth officer, I conducted some school visits, to find out what the reason was that young people in this country were performing so poorly and why teenage pregnancies were high.Since, I could not meet all of them at once and I did not want to disturb the learning session at all, I decided to speak to the LRC, as representing the learners.Despite their role at schools I tried to find out from the guidance teachers how they were elected and what their responsibilities were.I learned they have been performing teacher’s roles, e.g.like standing at the school gate and punishing those who are coming late to school.Some were just elected because of bad manners with learners feeling such people are better because they will defend pupils who are on the wrong side of school rules.Poor learners have been leading others without any training, and how do you expect these young people to become better leaders if they haven’t received any training on leadership and development? They are no LRC manuals, no code of conduct for learners from their guidance teachers, so that learners can know what they are expected to do while at school.LRCs are supposed to help teachers, advise and help do away with unnecessary behaviour.The question to our people who are in the education sector, especially school counsellors: what they doing if they cannot even develop manuals for thee young people in schools? The blame has been mostly to the teaching staff, but I think they are people who are supposed to do this task so that at the end of the day our country can produce a better pass rate in schools and reduce the high rate in teenage pregnancies and this could be the right platform for this discussion.Bellington M Mabakeng SwakopmundDiscipline has gone down drastically and this has contributed so much to high failure rate in schools while they have ‘SRCs’..Earlier, as a Regional Youth officer, I conducted some school visits, to find out what the reason was that young people in this country were performing so poorly and why teenage pregnancies were high.Since, I could not meet all of them at once and I did not want to disturb the learning session at all, I decided to speak to the LRC, as representing the learners.Despite their role at schools I tried to find out from the guidance teachers how they were elected and what their responsibilities were.I learned they have been performing teacher’s roles, e.g.like standing at the school gate and punishing those who are coming late to school.Some were just elected because of bad manners with learners feeling such people are better because they will defend pupils who are on the wrong side of school rules.Poor learners have been leading others without any training, and how do you expect these young people to become better leaders if they haven’t received any training on leadership and development? They are no LRC manuals, no code of conduct for learners from their guidance teachers, so that learners can know what they are expected to do while at school.LRCs are supposed to help teachers, advise and help do away with unnecessary behaviour.The question to our people who are in the education sector, especially school counsellors: what they doing if they cannot even develop manuals for thee young people in schools? The blame has been mostly to the teaching staff, but I think they are people who are supposed to do this task so that at the end of the day our country can produce a better pass rate in schools and reduce the high rate in teenage pregnancies and this could be the right platform for this discussion.Bellington M Mabakeng Swakopmund