24 Sep 2019

Deputy director (strategy and projects) at Botswana Communications Regulatory Authority (BOCRA), Mr David Serojane has encouraged teachers to stay true to their profession.

He said the teachers task was a difficult one in that they were expected to try to develop and nurture talent, yet the people harbouring it were seldom aware or were not mature enough to appreciate why they were being pushed.

Mr Serojane said this in Serowe during a prize giving ceremony for Ranokanyane Junior Secondary School.

He said teachers should not despair because they were also parents, as such they understood the challenges of developing children into responsible contributors to society. He said teachers also knew the conditions under which they were expected to groom pupils into responsible adults.

He pleaded with parents not to leave their children’s upbringing solely to teachers, stressing that moulding the behaviour of children was a parent’s God-given responsibility.

Mr Serojane said parents might not understand what their children do at school, but they must instil discipline in them.  He said as long as the child was disciplined and had the right behaviour and attitude, he or she would carry that to school and teachers would find it easy to help such a child.

He said students must tell right from wrong because whatever choices they made would determine their destiny in life.

He pleaded with pupils to avoid making choices that they would regret later in life, but to focus on their schoolwork and pass so that they could one day look back and be happy that  they enjoyed their youth.

Mr Serojane told the children that disobeying elders was ‘just wasting a stage in your life that you shall never recover’.

Coming from the ICT regulatory environment, Mr Serojane proffered some advice regarding every young person’s favourite occupation and pleaded with students not to spend every available opportunity with their headsets on playing loud music.

He said there was a real danger that most young people would have hearing difficulties later on in life because of the choices they make now.

He said besides that, a lot of young people had been involved in accidents, owing to distraction by the use of headsets and loud sounds.

Equally, he said, the internet is a good resource of information, but it can also be a bad influence if the person using it is not disciplined enough.

Mr Serojane noted that cyber bullying was one common menace that young people were exposed to and people led miserable lives because of threats and abusive messages sent to them online, sometimes from people they had never even met in person.

He thus advised the pupils to ensure responsible use of ICT.

He congratulated those who received awards, saying the awards represent the outcomes of their hard work. Ends