by Tunde Adelakun

Created on: March 24, 2008

Relationships between school teachers and classroom students in recent times have deteriorated fast. While lots of teachers hold the belief that parents are not doing enough to train their kids at home, others believe that teachers are not doing their job properly in instilling both moral and educational discipline in school children. This has continued to raise lots of controversies over how the student-teacher relationship can be improved.

For instance, it was reported in news media that a teacher was put on paid leave while police officials investigated the case of a student who urinated in a lunch box in her class while hiding behind a classroom book case. According to statements collected from some other members of her class, the boy had initially asked for permission to go to the restroom but out of annoyance, the school boy was ordered to either hold himself or urinate in his lunch box. The boy allegedly took his lunch box,hid himself behind a bookcase, urinated in it and returned it to her teacher. The next morning, the school boy's mother complained to the principal of the school as well as a local television station that his son's teacher would not allow him to use the restroom.

In most African countries, beating a school pulpil has for long believed to be the best form of school discipline. However, this form of instilling discipline has failed over the years to achieve its aims. African school children are getting more wild and unruly, and with the prevailing economic conditions,things are just getting much more complicated as many African children are either forced to leave the school or they abandon schools for the streets to either hawk foodstuffs or join street urchins and get involved in criminal activities.

In developed countries on the other hand, most school children are over pampered . Many of them showing disregard for basic classroom and school rules and regulations and parents also look helpless in salvaging the situation.

A collective approach to this situation will be the best possible means of salvaging the problem. There should be a continous meeting point for School authoririties; teachers and parents of school pulpils on modalities of curbing the growing trend which can sometimes in the nearest future become a global calamity.

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