Children Growing up without the Influence of Schools - By: Alvin dos

The schools in Sierra Leone were closed. Some took up arms and joined the war out of patriotism; others were silent victims of the on-going violence in the country. These child recruits as soldiers were to be the future of a war torn Sierra Leone. In short, while the other children across the world were playing around and having fun or studying at schools, these children had chosen to take a different route. Their land was in trouble and there was nothing much they could do.

Many children in Sierra Leone are not attending schools anymore and many of them were recruited into violent activities or are in detention. Most of the children lacked the basic services and many of them show psychological symptoms due to acts of violence that they witness daily. A ten year old named Jamal was seen to have been confronted by a few locals with guns outside his house and the next day he didn’t come back home.

In an interview with the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflicts, on the role of schools during the war in 2004, he replied, “Since 2004, the number of teenagers who were recruited by many rebel groups to carry out attacks, and suicide missions, had grown immensely and about 1,500 children languished in detention facilities. What did the schools do at that point of time? The result of schools not being there was that when a young boy was told to draw a picture, he drew the scene of war- with battle tanks and hand grenades. He drew well, but he only drew the colors of the military camouflage uniform, brown, green with lots of red to show splattered blood.

In the year 1977, a class teacher named John Holt created the word un-schooling. According to him, schools weren’t the only mode of learning. After all the royal family children that were tutored at home learnt more than those that went to school probably because the tutoring was exclusively on a one to one basis. With people like Bill Gates making it big without schooling, the roles of schools have been questioned. The world must know is that the inverse of school is possible.

That we can depend on self-motivated learning instead of employing teachers on bribe or compel the student to find time and the will to learn; that we can provide the learner with the Internet, instead of continuing to funnel all educational programs through the teacher. Yes, that prior to schooling the home can make a big difference- and more, that the home can supplement the school, if it wanted to! Schooling will never die. But schools just might! Even though it is hard to visualize a de-schooled society or an educational institution in a society which disestablishes school, it is possible.

About the Author

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