13 Jun 2024

Parents should hone and nurture talents and potential exhibited by pupils instead of deciding for the latter the paths to follow as that could be detrimental to their future.

Deciding for and or imposing academic paths, it is said, could breed dissent from the pupils who otherwise bear talent on other fields as athletics and other sporting codes, speakers have said. 

Such dissent from learners, it is said, could render poor performance or outright failure.

Speaking during Bobirwa Education Day, Tuesday, Member of Parliament for Bobonong, Mr Taolo Lucas encouraged parents and guardians to help pupils realise their dreams by developing and nurturing their talents.

“We should identify and appreciate the talents our kids bear or possess and then hone and nurture them. Forcing them into paths that are against their talents could set them to revolt,” said MP Lucas.

The event was held  under the theme: Transforming Education Beyond the Classroom Through Parental Mindset Change.

Mr Lucas called on parents and guardians to change a mindset of harbouring beliefs that the academic path was the only avenue to a greater future.

“We have athletes out there who are wealthier than many of us who pursued the academia,” the MP added saying that children forced into academia might end up positing undesired results and later considered worthless.

While encouraging parents to exercise flexibility in children’s wish to choose own career paths, the Bobonong legislator challenged parents who could neither read nor write to source help for their children from those with the knowhow. 

Such, he said, could be engagement of tutors and mentors.

The MP also spoke against parents who devalued education in the eyes of their school-going children, in a bid to lure them  into falling in love with other fields. 

He said children faced with such parents should be thoroughly defended.

While commending teachers for ‘doing a great work in educating these highly advanced children’, he also warned against problematic parents who gave teachers headaches.

At the same event, where representatives from the 45 public schools under Bobirwa Sub-region, including Bobonong Brigades, partook and showcased their daily operations, Botswana Life’s sales manager, Ms Portia Petlelwane told parents that education was beyond reading and writing. “Be closer to your children, assess them and see how far they can go with their talents,” Ms Petlelwane said.  She reiterated that reading and writing was not the only avenue by which a successful life could be built, and called for unity in transforming education to the one that could best address the needs of the pupils post schooling.

For his part, chief education officer, Mr Moses Tshetlhana appealed to parents to register their children for pre-primary education saying the platform was foundational to proper education.

He allayed fears of parents who thought that children at four years were too young to attend school, saying such institutions were safer and beneficial to children. ENDs