Thousands of Junior Secondary School (JSS) leaners in Embu County failed to acclimatize to their new lessons after weeks of idleness compounded by lack of teacher’s experiences which could have affected their mental status.
Amidst the shortages, students also face lack of ideal books expected to have been delivered to schools under the new curriculum with teachers from the primary school being forced to sacrifice time to handle the idle, lonely and bored students.
“The students have been idle and would be normally huddled in groups inside quiet classrooms without teachers, in most instances it was empathetic teachers who volunteered to at least teach the boys and girls and give them assignments to keep them busy,” said a teacher of a school in Mbeere South.
In connection to this situation, child rights and mental health experts have asked the government to launch systems to have mental wellness campaigns targeting the pioneer JSS students to forestall what could be serious mental health ailments among the learners.
Child Rights Crusader and High Court Advocate, Lukas Matiko Chacha termed the adoption of the JSS systems of education as too affront on innocent children with fragile minds as specimen used to experiment on a new curriculum.
Teachers in schools hosting special units, the Education News learned, have resorted to empathy before they decided to offer lessons to the JSS students who they realized could have been undergoing mental crisis due to idleness and loneliness in classrooms without tutors or books.
Tutors handling special needs’ learners in various stages are able to discern any tension, depression and other mental issues among learners because they are trained to do so and that placed them in an awkward position in which they could not just leave the JSS student to suffer.
“When I realized that the JSS students continued to be idle and lonely, I volunteered to start teaching them even without the directions from my head teacher” said Njoka Thaara who teachers in a special unit in Embu County. He added: “I could not stand watching innocent boys and girls slowly collapsing into depression over the long wait for teachers they had been frequently promised and who took too long to arrive at the appointed stations.”
The weeks of idleness and the fact that, one teacher finally reported to tackle all the lessons towards the end of first time, Njoka said, could have had unresolved mental crisis on the children and perhaps a national programme to guide and counsel the learners is urgently required as a matter of an emergency.
When Education News visited various schools in Manyatta and Mbeere South, a month before the closure of the schools for the first term holidays, the JSS students looked idle and disoriented with the excitement of being promoted to secondary seeming to slowly fizzle away.
School heads speaking confidentially termed the JSS class as a burden to the school managements and expressed the need for streamlining of the same.
By Robert Nyagah
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