In the world of academia and pedagogics, the didactic situation is made of the learner, the subject matter and the teacher. For many centuries, the teacher had been at the centre of this triangle. Scholars like Quintilian, the Roman rhetorician and Dewey, the American pragmatist, advocated that education should be child-centred. Trousseau, a French educator emphasised that the curriculum and the teaching method should be governed by the nature of the child, not by examinations and syllabus.
Later on, many education systems embraced the learner-centred approach in the classrooms, and Namibia has not been left out. The approach poses some challenges, especially in situations where teachers do not comprehend the system and have scant resources. The adoption of the learner-centred approach in the Namibian education system might have improved the performance of learners in some schools. However, whatever is taking place during the didactic situation, teachers must go the extra mile and find out about the social background of the eighty pairs of eyes innocently staring at the hovering gigantic figure of the intimidating and to some extent terrorising facilitator in the classroom and on the school premises.
Some teachers have the tendency of taking things and learners for granted instead of addressing the real issues affecting the learner as the main component in the didactic situation.
It is important, therefore, for any professional teacher to always look at factors which might impact the performance of learners.
Many teachers are sitting with learners who come from families with severe social problems, without their knowledge. In some of those classes, there could be learners from broken homes, learners from single-parented families, learners from homes which serve as brothels and in some cases non-stop shebeens. In some extreme cases, learners might be serving in the ‘ladies of the night trade,’ with or without the knowledge of their parents, let alone teachers.
This could be exasperated by the dire economic situation in the country where the majority of families both in the rural and urban areas cannot afford three meals a day. In the event of the learner performing poorly, the teacher does not see beyond the internal factors, but might even go to an extent of canning the learner despite being unconstitutional to execute such punishment.
In addition to social background challenges, issues of poverty in the families can be added to factors which might not augur well for the learner-centred component of the didactic situation. It is a truthful fact that most of the families where some learners come from are riddled with poverty scars which might not be visible to the ordinary eye of the teacher.
This could be serious, especially among female learners who might be struggling to afford to buy pads for sanitary purposes. Strangely, even female teachers may not understand the agony these learners go through during that difficult and uncomfortable period of womanhood.
But for many teachers, it is school business of the day as usual. There are times when teachers are presiding over learners who look physically healthy and fit, but who are having challenges in one or another form in terms of intelligence, emotions and personality.
If these aspects are not functioning properly in the didactic situation, then the teacher will be facilitating learners who are impaired in one way or another. If impairments are not addressed, these might lead to learners performing poorly. Impairments may not only take the form of physical disabilities, but a learner might have a disadvantage either in walking, seeing or talking properly.
This means that one of the body organs has received a restriction in its “normal,” use. Normally, a handicap is a result of impairment and it greatly affects or interferes with the way an individual normally behaves, performs or acts. In fact, it is a hindrance to proper functioning in society if no corrective measures are taken to improve it. Four areas and types of handicaps have been identified and these include social, physical, personal and resource.
Resource handicaps would mean a limitation or hindrance toward accessing resources which any other citizen has a right to.
Learners with handicaps have problems which others do not have and they, therefore have problems in learning and finding jobs, even in fitting in society or being accepted therein. If the teacher and community members where these learners come from, do not detect these impairments, the affected child might find it very difficult to perform very well at school.
Unfortunately, for many years, the Namibian education system only saw the learner sitting in front of the teacher, whether the latter had issues at home or was merely impaired was not the teacher’s concern.
Who knows, maybe the high failure rate we are experiencing in our schools could be attributed to some of the social backgrounds and undetected impairments.
That is why Life Skills teachers must be equipped with skills to enable them to handle all learners from all walks of life.
They should be equally exposed to Inclusive and Special Education, which is being offered by many universities to simply accommodate such challenges. But alas, in many schools, Life Skills is just a timetable subject and not taken seriously. It is time that Namibian educators and policymakers look beyond the classroom in finding out the cause of the inability of the main component in the didactic situation to function properly.