ARE UNIVERSITY PREP SCHOOLS RESPONSIBLE FOR HELPING THOSE WHO CAN’T KEEP UP OR FAIL?

     The dream of every young person in a developing country such as our own is to enter a good university both for the purpose of receiving an education and for the purpose of getting ahead in life. Not being able to achieve this aim relegates young people to a sphere in life where they will likely receive a basic salary and struggle for the rest of their lives. This prospect being rather grim, no stone is left unturned in an effort to enter through ‘the pearly gates’ of good universities.  Having achieved their aims, students are once more thrust in the deep end in the prep schools of major universities. The punishing schedule in these prep schools is manageable naturally assuming students are on the ball 24/7. Yet humans are complex creatures and by the age of eighteen, they have all accumulated plenty of baggage.

     Assuming that every student who enters the prep school is an intelligent, well adjusted individual whose only concern and responsibility in life is learning English is a grave mistake. Intelligent they certainly are but taking the rest for granted leads to unfair treatment of students. First of all, many students come from all over the country and from all walks of life; some come from working class families, some from lower middle class families and some from families that have better prospects. Parents make huge sacrifices to put their children through university and the resulting economic burden is often shared by students who have to practice thrift on an industrial scale. That all this creates a serious undercurrent of anxiety that permeates students’ life goes without saying. Second of all, many of these students have left their hometowns and their families and friends for the first time and grapple with serious adaptation problems on being unceremoniously dumped into a program where they either sink or swim. The problems don’t end here.

       Big cities are very different from close knit agrarian communities where families have known each other for generations. The anonymity of big cities and the resulting alienation is radically different from the ever present safety net available in small communities where friendship, support and help are values that are deeply embedded in the culture. Efforts to disperse the loneliness may lead to the adoption of unsavory habits like drugs and alcohol or the befriending of undesirable characters. They could also lead students to anxiety disorder and depression. Assuming that everyone who enters the prep schools of universities is a happy-go-lucky extrovert who can be uprooted from one location and replanted in another is unethical to say the least. Blaming these students for having ‘issues’ and blithely moving on with the syllabus leaving the victims stranded by the wayside is grossly unfair. 

     There is also the issue of waste of human potential. That these students who manage to successfully pass the university entrance exam and enter university are assets their country needs to exploit for the greater good goes without saying. The engineers, medics, teachers and economists of the future to list a few are these young people who have entered prep schools. Developing countries cannot afford to waste human talent that can carry this country forward and benefit society as a whole. Who knows what they will be capable of once universities have furnished them with the necessary tools to do so. Waste not, want not declared our ancestors and they weren’t just referring to household goods or money. In short, helping these students in their quest to become professionals is our ethical and national duty. Giving them just one go at the hurdles they face is an attitude that just will not wash.

        Another issue to be considered is the pass and failure rates. All administrations like the statistics at the end of the year to reflect a high success rate and a low failure rate. Soaring failure rates, whatever the reason, reflect badly on the institution. The university must grapple with a double edged sword by trying to maintain high pass rates while at the same time trying to maintain the high standards it is renowned for. The university has another issue as well: it may have to answer to a central body. The international standing of the university is also influenced by the standard of teaching and success rates. All this being the case, even if all ethical and national concerns are ignored, it is in the interest of the university to reduce failure rates. It goes without saying, therefore, that prep schools should take certain steps to increase so called ‘through-put’ for the good of the individual, the institution, the country as a whole and the world in general. After all, what could be a more worthwhile endeavor than contributing to the betterment of humanity?

      The last aspect of the problem that needs to be faced up to is the fact the students are not the only actors on the scene: there is the syllabus, the material, how it is implemented in class by teachers and the teachers themselves as individuals and professionals. There is plenty of blame to go round and laying the whole blame at the door of the students is a suspiciously blinkered approach to the problem. The pace could be too fast or creep forward at snail’s pace to begin with and then pick up speed like a cheetah on the hunt. The material could be dull, inappropriate or badly handled. Teachers could be wrestling with a variety of personal problems, be disillusioned engineers for example who have had to dial back their ambitions or they could just see teaching as a job and a means to pay the bills. None of the above will contribute to high pass rates and ultimately, the institution is responsible for addressing these issues and picking up the slack. Arguing otherwise constitutes a most irrational and unethical form of escapism.

       When problems emerge with their software, Microsoft will design a patch to fix the problem. Some institutions mistakenly suppose that the same system will work with those who for one reason or another have thrown in the towel. The so called patches in the form of booklets hurriedly prepared and distributed to students, organizing classes for students and begging for volunteers to teach them and similar ventures are stop- gap solutions which will never bring a long term solution to the problem despite looking good on paper and enabling the administration to tick the relevant boxes. What is required is a formal and institutionalized approach involving the setting up of a support center which is accessible from the word go to lend a helping hand to those who fall behind and to those who fail. This institution should have a mission statement stating its responsibilities and aspirations. It should be staffed with experienced professionals just like other departments in the school. It should present a report of its activities to the administration at the end of the term and remain in close and continued contact with teachers, the curriculum committee and the testing office if they exist in the university. In short, the only answer to the problem is a concerted, continued and official one.

      In conclusion, students, unfortunately for teaching establishments, are not androids. They cannot have code uploaded into their brains and be expected to absorb it. They are complex creatures as are we all, and need to have other areas of their personality and past experiences to be factored in.  Only in this way can we help the next generation achieve their full potential.