I will want you dear reader to read the above two letters and make your conclusions. Now the notable thing about the two letters is that they are actually the flip of each other. One is from a parent to a teacher, while the other is from a teaccher to another. However both are pleas of sorts. Each speaking on behalf of the students that pass under the tutlage and guidance of these teachers. That is as far as i will want to go in this analysis. The rest is left to you to conclude upon.
Dear secondary school teachers and school owners, please, help the students and the public by ensuring that students in your school write examinations by themselves and merit the grades they brandish on their SSCE results.
We are tired of seeing students with A1 in Mathematics but cannot resolve the smallest of fractions. A student with distinctions in Physics and chemistry but knows next to nothing about chemical reactions or energy conversion. Students with distinctions in Literature, Government, and CRS, yet blank on the differences between Drama and Prose Fiction, the forms of Government, and the significance of Religious stories.
I had to ask some year 1 students to look for a tutorial teacher to help them with JS 3 and SS1 mathematics recently. The whole 16 of them in my Engineering class with excellent SSCE results are visibly confused at the sight of any arithmetic work. Their last semester’s performance betrayed the several A1s and B3s on the WAEC they carry about.
These students you help acquire grades they can’t defend are usually frustrated in the ivory tower.
Save them a voyage of pain and regrets in the future by ensuring they are well tutored and allowed to prepare and write their examinations unaided.
A Letter From Abraham Lincoln To His Son’s Teacher
My son starts school today. It is all going to be strange and new to him for a while and I wish you would treat him gently. It is an adventure that might take him across continents. All adventures that probably include wars, tragedy and sorrow. To live this life will require faith, love and courage.
So dear Teacher, will you please take him by his hand and teach him things he will have to know, teaching him – but gently, if you can. Teach him that for every enemy, there is a friend. He will have to know that all men are not just, that all men are not true. But teach him also that for every scoundrel there is a hero, that for every crooked politician, there is a dedicated leader.
Teach him if you can that 10 cents earned is of far more value than a dollar found. In school, teacher, it is far more honorable to fail than to cheat. Teach him to learn how to gracefully lose, and enjoy winning when he does win.
Teach him to be gentle with people, tough with tough people. Steer him away from envy if you can and teach him the secret of quiet laughter. Teach him if you can – how to laugh when he is sad, teach him there is no shame in tears. Teach him there can be glory in failure and despair in success. Teach him to scoff at cynics.
Teach him if you can the wonders of books, but also give time to ponder the extreme mystery of birds in the sky, bees in the sun and flowers on a green hill. Teach him to have faith in his own ideas, even if every one tell him they are wrong.
Try to give my son the strength not to follow the crowd when everyone else is doing it. Teach him to listen to every one, but teach him also to filters all that he hears on a screen of truth and take only the good that comes through.
Teach him to sell his talents and brains to the highest bidder but never to put a price tag on his heart and soul. Let him have the courage to be impatient, let him have the patient to be brave. Teach him to have sublime faith in himself, because then he will always have sublime faith in mankind, in God.
This is the order, teacher but see what best you can do. He is such a nice little boy and he is my son.
