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Pregnancy of school girls not a deterrent to studies
2006-07-02 09:19:34
By Rayner Ngonji
School girls’ pregnancy should be a thorny issue worth discussion with thousands of them suffering heavy dropout every year.
Different attempts deployed by the government to contain the problem seem to have yielded little effect as Staff Writer Rayner Ngonji reports.
Tanzanian society for a considerable period of time has been at an impasse over whether to accept back to school pregnant school girls after delivery or not as a way of controlling the problem.
Two different schools of thought emerged as the debate developed to a scale where all stakeholders wanted the right prescription for the oustanding problem.
There are those who advocate that school girls should be accepted back to school arguing that the process would do more good to the girls than just abandoning them in the jungle.
Pregnant school girls are still children. As such they are still entitled to the right to education.
Pregnancy is actually not an epidemic disease; these girls are seduced and influenced by adults who use some powers financial or physical to quench their high libidos.
The aim of enrolling pupils is for them to complete school. So it is important we reach our aims by ensuring that those who have already started school end up completing.
Preventing or reducing dropouts is one of the best ways to ensure their access to education is guaranteed.
Education Programme Groups (EPG) constributes excessively to dropouts.
But the notion has strongly been criticised by pro moral activists who fear legalising the practice might promote promiscuity amongst school girls themselves.
Accepting pregnant girls back to school is likely to encourage men who want to have sexual relationships with school girls to continue.
They will have nothing to fear any more and they will treat these girls as normal lovers or wives.
Emphasis should be put on preventing school girls from being pregnant rather than accepting them back to school, a move which clearly indicates failure to maintain discipline in schools as is observed by one analyst.
The analyst calls for sex education, guidance, counseling and moral studies programmes to be introduced in schools to inculcate some skills into them to avoid temptations.
However, he recounts that even in countries where this kind of education is being taught pregnancy among students occurs but minimised.
Unwanted pregnancies also occur among married people! So we will still have this problem which means we need a more realistic solution.
As children, they will still make mistakes regardless of what kind of education they get. Do we have to chase children who make mistakes? Naturally this is both wrong and unfair.
What is important is to enforce the laws protecting school girls. Even now men don’t fear and that is why we have these pregnant cases among many school girls.
It is not only school girls who are being sexually abused by men. Even other girls and women in the community are victims.
So logically, there will be no difference in the attitude and practice of abusing men when the girls are allowed back to schools.
Generally, most young girls don’t like to have children. When it happens, it is very accidental. Therefore it is not correct to assume that these girls will just carelessly accept men who approach them!
Right now students do not enjoy good quality education in their schools. Those who have managed to finish school are still in villages and streets frustrated, let alone many who have never been able to go to school.
Why attend to pregnant girls who have already been given their right to education only to abused it, instead of helping the other innocent and helpless children?
The general objective of the nation is to educate all people, and the mere act of becoming pregnant cannot be the reason for one not to be educated.
In African set up, premarital pregnancy is a sign of immoral behaviour and irresponsible sex which is socially unacceptable.
Sending girls with babies back to school will contradict this culture and will give an impression that now the society has lost its value and morals so much so that even sex and having babies is allowed among children!
Maybe yes, but who is involved in impregnating these girls? Are they not adult men who in the African set up are the ones supposed to protect the culture?
Actually, adults who know these morals best are the ones who contradict them most by running after young and school girls!
Nowdays there are so many cultural aspects ignored or completely left out in the society. Why only look at this one?
We cannot deny one’s human right just for the sake of observing values and morals.
By the way, are the school girls the only people responsible for protecting society’s morals?
Girls may undergo abortion for fearing of expulsion from school or may dump their children after losing hopes following expulsion.
Are these practices not against African morals and culture? They are even worse!
We must consider the fact that at present girls have more difficulty in protecting themselves than in the past because now they stay many years in school before getting married.
They are more exposed to the dangers of being pregnant a long time than in the past when girls were married soon after menarche. We should consider this social change as well.
Many girls are not responsible for their own life, nor do they take education seriously.
Sometimes they engage themselves in the activities which endanger their education such as night discos, drinking and having lovers.
In such cases where pregnancy is not accidental but out of negligence, why not advice them to do something else.
Both boys and girls are like that, and probably we are all like that! Therefore, we should not point out just girls as being irresponsible, and in this case it is the parents who are actually not taking responsibility for guiding and monitoring the movements of their children.
It should be noted that most of the school girls are adolescents and as such this is the most difficult stage in life. The girls and also boys need guidance, not blames and name calling.
Sometimes pregnancy is an outcome of problems associated with their age and, therefore, the victims need assistance and sympathy instead of expulsion which is actually a double punishment.
In practice normally girls of such kind of behaviour do not get pregnant! It is the poor, innocent and well-reserved ones who are mostly affected.
This is probably because men take advantage of their status; or clever girls know how to avoid pregnancy?
But school girls just as other youths have a right to recreation. It is up to the adults and the community in general to provide safe centres or areas for them. Having recreation should not be seen as an offense and therefore be punishable or even associated with being pregnant.
Aren’t adult men the ones taking these girls out? Men should be responsible!
Girls who are also mothers can suffer stigmatisation and isolation in the schools.
It will be difficult for them to socialise with other children and this may affect their performance in schools and may even lead them to drop out.
This is a mere assumption! These girls are ashamed because they are condemned, humiliated and treated like criminals.
If they will be accepted and considered normal by the school and community they will feel comfortable. Stigmatization is not there if the girls are accepted back to school.
Even now, some well to do parents send their daughters who have been pregnant back to school, and they perform well.
It is the daughters of the poor parents who are actually suffering most from the expulsion.
Research has shown that most of the expelled girls want to go back to school and study hard if given the chance.
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