The exam season comes with a lot of pressure and anxiety, yet it is the opportune time to assure students that their hard work has not been in vain. If someone read and concentrated on his/her studies, this should be a time to rejoice that he/she has come to the climax of a given level.
However, competition puts schools and students under pressure to the point that they want to cheat exams. We have been reading in the media that the circuit of examination malpractice is big and involves many people including school owners, head teachers, teachers, some police people, security guards, some UNEB officials, parents and learners. All these should be custodians of integrity but instead are the ones breaking the law; leaking the exams, copying for children etc.
Our children need to learn that there is no sweet without sweat. Nothing good comes on a silver plate without any good effort undertaken. Success is made but not bought. Cheating exams is as big as robbery in a bank. The corruption tendencies we see today in our society started slowly in such a manner and are consuming us up. Therefore, let us desist from cheating exams.
If there is a parent involved in cheating exams, this is not any different from teaching children to cheat at the company/organization they will find employment. By supporting cheating, we are vividly telling Children it is normal to cheat and get what you want easily even after spending millions on it.
The same children that engage in exams malpractices are the same people that will be bribing or seeking bribes tomorrow to get/offer a job. They presume that society is all about exchange for what you should deserve to get even when it is your right to have it.
Let us sit them down and urge them to refrain from this mentality. What they are sowing now in cheating exams will be reaped somewhere else at a time when they need real help. They will not reverse the past and this may cost them their lives even.
Your child has been reading for these exams for the last 10 years (primary) or 14-16 years (high school) or more if he or she is at university, but one-minute of malpractice can destroy all those years and time they have struggled hard and invested to reach where they are.
We have seen many cheating schools fail to receive their results. Malpractice in life makes you lose your sense of direction and you can never celebrate your success and achievements.
They need to regularly pray and put their trust in God. It is God who gives us wisdom but is our ability to seek knowledge through our hard work. Therefore, prayer and their concentration make all possible for them to excel in their exams and life. They need to know that you too pray for them and you will always be behind their success.
Encourage your children to control exam pressure and anxiety. It will deny them time to concentrate well. All they need is to be sober-minded and recall what they have been revising. They need to read a question more than once before attempting it. They should not panic.
Desist also from involving yourself in promoting any form of malpractice for your children as a parent. There is a saying that “he who steals while carrying his/her baby is demonstrating to it to do the same.” What you sow in them today is what you reap from them tomorrow.
tumudickson@gmail.com
The writer is a child advocate and a parenting coach, Kampala.
