What are the responsibilities of being a good student? Ask most pupils that as an examination question and they wouldn’t make the grade. What are the rights of a student? Put that as the compulsory interrogative, and everybody scores at the top of the class. Better yet, using Section C as the optional part of the examination, include the question, ‘what are the responsibilities of a teacher?’ Everyone would pretend the other questions are invisible, and would pick up perfect points to go with their tally. But back to the top, what are the responsibilities of a student? As a teacher, I propose to give full details so that parents and their kids have a proper understanding of the kind of relations that exists between a teacher and a student, now that the responsibilities of the teacher is on everybody’s tongue.

A student should always be prepared for class. Preparedness means that the student is ready with the necessary tools that will foster learning, keeping in mind the operative word ‘learning’. For, learning is the principal reason that the school exists in the first instance. And to make things clearer, a student is to learn as a teacher is to teach, (not that there isn’t the possibility of a little bit of both taking place vice versa at opposite ends – a teacher can learn from the student too). The basic tools are books, pens, pencils and other apparatuses that the teacher might request for a particular class from time to time. Failure to be prepared with these basic ingredients of the learning process could create discrepancy between teacher and student, which in turn hampers learning. All of what already described belongs to physical preparation. However, something else that tells the teacher that a student is ready to learn is mental preparedness. Once a student is in the class, a teacher expects proper focus, and that is shown through an undivided attention. Let’s make a formula out of the above environment. A teacher is ready to teach and a student is ready to learn, then mission should be accomplished. The teacher makes a timely assessment in the form of a test or an examination to ensure that learning takes places to a certain level. If the student never learned, then the teacher never taught, and so it’s back to the drawing board, where the teacher cuts and pastes methods and objectives, for a repeat of the process.

Quite often, the teacher is prepared to teach but the student is not ready to learn. The tutor has to be ready because he is a paid personal governed by a set of job descriptions, and is accountable to higher authorities. At the same time, the student gets a free run from both parents and educators so that the student forgets his responsibility to be prepared for learning. The case now looks like a heifer that’s tethered to a post, while the bull goes on the loose to take advantage of her at its whims and fancies. The student needs to be held responsible for his mental and physical preparation by his parents and those in charge of the national curriculum. However, things get rather more complicated where the parents might not do a good job of home-training, and everything spills over to add to the responsibilities of the teacher. Hence, in a typical twenty-first century classroom, a teacher has to be prepared to be a parent, a security guard, a police officer, a guidance counselor, in short, the jack of all trades and the man for all seasons. The teacher must be prepared to take the blame for everything, including events occurring outside the realm of the classroom. It becomes even more intricate if one tries to dig deeper. The chief official of education is an elected professional, hence, he has to be all things to all men to save his seat. Pampering the population, including parents, is part of the deal and someone needs to take the blame, so it falls on the shoulders of the teacher. When all is said and done, the teacher needs a job, and toying with that teacher’s tenacity might not be a bad idea when passing the buck.

Another responsibility of the student is to honor and respect knowledge or education, since it is the right thing to do, considering that it is what makes him functional in the society. It is for his or her good, so there couldn’t be any better reason to hold learning in the highest esteem. In order to show that a student gets it right in this regard, that student needs to start with showing respect for all education authorities. Of course, sometimes the teacher fails the test of time by bringing down the banner, but the student has to be enlightened that he should watch the message, not the messenger. It’s the office that the student should allow to dictate the pace of respectability, not so much the personnel in representation. For example, a student should be groomed to understand nowadays that although a principal might be caught molesting a minor, it’s the office that he holds that is the key. Hence, once the system doesn’t keep that person in place, the show must go on, forgetting about the molester, but keeping his office in the upper ranks.

The respect line must be drawn so that the student shows obedience to it, in manifesting trust and loyalty. This line is very blurry in the contemporary classroom, but nevertheless, the shrewd student never loses sight of the margin. It’s like driving in a downpour mixed with fog, whereby the chauffeur needs to watch the road closely, lest he crosses over in the wrong lane. He couldn’t afford to fall asleep behind the wheel under normal conditions, now it is even worse. A student, who gets the proper gist of learning, knows whenever there is a hiccup that has the propensity to derail his intentions and so, “shoo fly, don’t bother me”. Hence, even if the teacher doesn’t live up to expectation, that student is focused on the light at the end of the tunnel.

Three students were suspended from school in a not so recent brawl between them and their principal, angering parents and the community associated with the pertinent pupils. The principal told the girls, all of them seventeen, that they shouldn’t use the word ‘vagina’ in a scheduled presentation that involved the entire student body. However, the female students, who had a strong persuasion towards feminism, thought that the principal was out of his place to think otherwise. They went ahead with their plans, using the disagreeable noun of the female anatomy, and the principal took action. The students were sent home on their temporary vacation, but that didn’t sit too well with the parents of the teens. These disgruntled guardians rallied the support of the entire community, and soon the drama was making national headlines.

“Those are strong girls,” said one TV presenter, after relaying the incident.

“That principal needs to go,” chanted community activists.

Are we surprise then that the learning process is punished by people with these shortsighted understanding of the responsibilities of the student? As the parent of any of these teenagers, the relevant questions to the trio should have been, did you go to school to teach the teacher, or did you go to learn from the tutor? Who is the principal of school, you or the master? What did he tell you to do? Did you do it? As implied in the first paragraph, a teacher can also learn from his students but that is not compulsory. Yet, it is obligatory that the student learns from his mentor on account of the normal teacher-student function described earlier. A wise student knows a wave that is coming to rock a boat. The sky might not be blue, yet the teacher perhaps disagrees. However, if by contending with the teacher, that is going to wreck the entire ship, agreeing to disagree might be the best thing to do to move on with progress. In other words, by not using the word ‘vagina’, that would have prevented those girls from being out of school for three days. Not to mention the hubbub that lasted for over a week, evidently creating a few dents to not edify education at that institution. Who won? The principal lost nothing even if he lost his job. It was the students who suffered.

In order to put the record straight, it was the principal who had the repository of knowledge and education to offer, and if he weren’t found competent to be in the position, he would not have been given the staff to carry. We are not here talking about a popularity contest, it’s about knowledge that is not easily accessible by mere miracles and misgivings. As the principal, he must have gone through the rigors of studying psychology, and therefore was in a better situation to see and intercept errors before they occurred. When the headmaster told the girls not to use the word ‘vagina’, surely a man of his might didn’t believe there was anything wrong with the word itself. And if perhaps the presentation were going to be done solely for the audience of kids in the seventeen-year-old age-range, the precaution would not have been necessary in the principal’s estimation. However, since impressionable pupils were to be in attendance, choice of words had to be considered with the greatest care.

Not all students are ready for openness, and that’s why a subject like sex education is such a ticklish topic. Teachers and parents know their protégés and are the best judges of when and where to apply the information. Hence, if the principal says no, it is no indeed. What doesn’t cost life doesn’t cost a thing.