OPINION

By Dr Myers Lugemwa

At the risk of being demonised and called names, I will go ahead and jot something down on the current trend of some parents’ recent conduct of wishing candidates “Success” in their exams, with honour. Summarising a common statement from most parents.

“My child should not suffer at school the way I did” and they are right.

No parent would want their child to face the same experience some of these parents went through during their school days; sometimes walking to school barefooted every morning, using half a bar of dimi soap for both bathing and washing a khaki trouser for the whole term or even going all the way up to Primary Seven with, if lucky, one underpant made by the local tailor from Jinja material (Nytil) unlike the present-day boxers.

At university level, “reconditioning food” from the 70s onwards was no surprise because gone were the days where bread, meat, jam and marmalade were in abundance in the halls of residence or even in schools like Ntare, Mengo, Mwiri and many others, while use of ‘suicide wires’ made from bed springs to boil water to make sugarless tea, etc, etc. was taking form.

Certainly, no parent would wish their children to experience this because children are innocent creatures and should not fall victim to adult-created situations.

In spite of some of us going through such difficult times, we always passed exams as evidenced by positions held by senior citizens in government, private or public and even at international level.

Ministers, religious leaders, ambassadors, professors, name it, are but a small proportion of this class, not because their parents did not love them or were too poor to buy them bouquets and expensive success cards. They wanted them to understand that life is not a film and that experiencing tough times without any pampering would prepare them for all future challenges.

Memory will exonerate me that a day before we sat for our Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE) at Mbarara Junior School, the best success card we got were prayers by the late Bishop Shalita of Ankole Diocese and a few coins from our parents to buy a kabalagala (pancake) to eat during the intervals between the examinations.

We made it without our parents throwing extravagant pre-exam orgies.

Recently, a new but dangerous trend among the ‘rich’ and even the ‘poor’, has engulfed the nation; parents not only mollycoddle or pamper their child candidates but hand them bouquets adorned with bizike (sh50,000 notes) among other valuables.

In this regard, a few fundamental questions arise:

1. What sort of love do such parents have to make them think that by indulging in such extravagance their children will pass the exam, if they did not read?
2. What the examination results return and such a child has failed? What psychological trauma will both the parent and child suffer? I believe stress, embarrassment and one cannot rule out suicide.
3. God forbid, what if a lavish parent was to pass away having accustomed their child to such expensive and non-frugal life? You think such a child will find life easy? No!
4. Where does a parent who spends that lavishly get that money from during this period of economic hardship that most Ugandans are going through? I think the Inspector General of Government, Beti Kamya, was right to audit people based on their lifestyles.
5. How will such a child behave once they are in an office and their remuneration is not commensurate with their expectations? Corruption, bribery, abuse of office most probably!

The Bible says that a child should be trained in the way they should go so that when they grow up they will not abandon it.

I therefore, wish to opine that if the country wants to have good leaders in future, the need for parents to moderate their approach when giving success cards and other goodies to their children has to be taken seriously.

If the Ministry of Education and Sports has to bite and that of national guidance to guide the nation into a better future, the time is now.

The writer is a medical doctor and senior citizen