BECE Results: Parents must encourage their wards no matter what

I spend a considerable amount of time in my internet café helping some parents, guardians and students access their BECE provisional results online. 

As an attendant, I share in their joy and disappointment, especially as I am, most often, the first person to see the result of their hard work. I congratulate those with exceptional results and assure those with not-so-credible results they will eventually receive placement, and get the chance to prove their academic worth. 

I get particularly infuriated with guardians/parents who tell their wards in the face they are failures for not being able to pluck chains of ‘A’s’ and ‘B’s’

In hard times we look up to our parents/ guardians for solace, when we fall into trouble our first option usually is to call on our parents/guardians for support, assistance and advice, even in times of joy we are most particular to share our successes with our parents/guardians. So any form of rejection that comes from them is very painful, soul wrenching and hardly containable because blood is thicker than water.

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Comparing pupils’ performances with their contemporaries is a way of demeaning their efforts and murdering their self-confidence. 

With time they will begin to look down on themselves. They will begin measuring their successes according to how much better they are than their contemporaries, rather than how better they have become over the years-- self-development, as it should be. 

They will grow with it and will not be able to see themselves as “possible achievers and change makers” and would have to depend on motivational speakers and motivational books to see themselves as “doers”. 

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Demeaning the efforts of youngsters breeds envy and jealousy in the hearts of the children against their peers. This will grow with them and develop into greed and the aftermath is what we witness today as a country; bribery, corruption and dishonesty. 

We fuel it without knowing. 

The truth of failure/poor performances cannot be hidden and should not be hidden, there is, however, a better way of approaching the situation which I admonish all and sundry to subscribe to. 

Appreciate their results no matter how poor or disheartening it looks, give them a hug, a handshake or a pat on the back for surviving their first world war. 

Engage them in a healthy talk, the “boys boys style” share intriguing stories of your past with them, tell them stories of how you failed once but lifted yourself up and worked towards success. 

In the course of the discussion let them access their own results and they will eventually come to a realization that if only they had injected just a little more effort, their results would have looked brighter.

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 Let them know there is another chance to make things better, they should learn from their past mistakes to make their future brighter when they reach SHS. 

Let’s nurture our heroes and stop making it look like failing BECE spells doom. 

After all the greatest achievers did not stay long in the classroom..3de3n nkoaa!