The Sunday News
THE popularity of peer-to-peer messaging mobile phone applications, such as WhatsApp, which is believed to be the cause of anti-social behaviour and a major contributing factor of low pass rate in schools, is a worry for educationists.
This was noted last week during a public speaking and spelling competition, held at Sizane High School in Bulawayo, where 14 schools converged for the competition.
The schools that took part in the competition came from as far as Binga and Beitbridge.
The purpose of the competition, which was incepted the same week, by a group of educationists from a company called MNG educational consultancy, is to bridge the gap, which has been created by social media platforms, between students and teachers.
In an interview, the co-ordinator of the event — Emmanuel Ncube — said the spelling and public speaking competition was to remind students of the formal method of writing and speaking, instead of the codes and shorthand they had adopted from social media.
“The motive is to improve pupils’ English in writing and speaking. We also want to have them fully participating in class and other academic platforms,” said Ncube.
Running under the theme — Does My Opinion Ever Count — Ncube noted that it was also imperative for policy makers to seek the opinion of school children before proposing and implementing decisions.
“In light of the recent debate on having condoms distributed in schools, we came up with this topic. Do students actually get consulted on anything be it at school or at home?
“Particularly focusing on the issue of condoms being distributed in schools, the issue was only discussed among adults and not school children, they were not consulted on the issue,” he said.
Ncube added that there would be similar competitions to promote the culture of reading and communicating among students in years to follow.
“We are yet to decide where we will hold next year’s competition but it will definitely be held. The normal and traditional culture of conversing has been diminished by social media and it is important to get students talking again. We hope to achieve a situation where we have public speaking and debate competitions, which create platforms for communication. The important fact is to have our students redeveloping courage and confidence to speak among themselves and also their teachers and parents. Social media has indeed fundamentally changed the way we communicate and relate to each other,” he said.
With social media taking centre stage in many people’s lives, particularly teenagers in high school, many institutions have made it a point to ban students from using social media at school or even bringing cellphones although the Minister of Primary and Secondary Education, Dr Lazarus Dokora, is on record advocating for the use of cellphones at schools.
Educationists, however, argue that this will breed a generation of learners with uncontrollable miscellaneous and gross indiscipline in schools.
