Saboi Imboela wrote:
When my daughter started her degree programme, she brought her first assignment to me. Knowing that her mother was not only a lecturer, but someone who had done Development Studies (the course she was doing) she somehow thought that I would do the assignment for her.
So when she brought that assignment, I taught her one critical lesson that I think I have endeavoured to teach her all her life- that I don’t believe in spoonfeeding my children, especially when it is actually to their own detriment. Better to give them a fishing rod so that they learn how to fish than give them fish that they will eat in one day.
I told her I was not going to help research or write for her, but I was going to point her in the right direction as she did her research and assignment. Then I told her that the only favour I would do for her was to check her work before her lecturer did, so that I showed her were she made mistakes. I could see the pain in her eyes like I had let her down. She really felt betrayed and probably even unloved by her own mother. But this is something she later came to appreciate very much when she actually acquired very good writing skills.
Like any first year student, she made very common mistakes- incorrect citations, very long sentences and paragraphs, no proper punctuations, wrong spellings here and there, no Bibliography, etc. I walked her through the entire assignment and taught her how to write a good assignment.
Being the intelligent and quick learner that she is, the second assignment she gave me was well written with very few mistakes. She actually shocked me with how near perfect it was. She had learnt so much just from the first assignment. By the time she was writing her third and fourth, I told her that I didn’t need to check her work anymore and she continued getting her distinctions as she always presented very well researched papers. That was first year and I think the next time I helped my daughter with school work was only one paper in her last year. Yet again telling her her mistakes and where to touch.
Interestingly, in her third year, we met one of her lecturers at one of the malls in Lusaka and she told me how impressed she was with my daughter’s writing skills. Her exact words were that ‘when I’m marking the assignments and I get to your daughter’s work, I even know that it’s hers before I look at the name. This girl is so brilliant and a PhD material. Her writing skills are exceptional.’ With that, I knew that indeed my work on my daughter was complete as confirmed by this doctor.
So, it shocks me to hear ZIALE say that some of the people that are admitted there can’t write or spell properly. How do they get their degrees without learning how to write? And law is all about writing properly and very good English. U can lose a case just by incorrect punctuations or spellings. What are we not doing in our education system for us to have such a huge crisis- a huge embarrassment of only having one person passing the exams from 395? This can’t continue. Let us look at what has gone wrong with our education system and also ZIALE as an institution. We can’t continue ignoring this drama year in and year out because it is getting worse. From four people passing now we are having one. These are jokes that shouldn’t even be normalised.
And ZIALE behaves as if the only time they see the work of their students is at that final exam stage. So doesn’t ZIALE correct these students at continuous assessment level so that as they progress they know what is expected of them? Either the learners are failing to learn or ZIALE is failing to teach. Either way, one of the two is failing lamentably and I have a feeling that it’s ZIALE that is the failure.
Saboi Imboela
NDC President/ Lecturer/ concerned citizen over the continued ZIALE