Attackers are said to be targeting children leaving school to rob them of study material, as reported by allAfrica.com
The school has put in place preventive measures to ensure that people who loiter around the school premises to seize textbooks from pupils returning from school are put to shame.
Apart from making sure that guards at the entrance to the school compound are on constant lookout for people loitering around the fence, school authorities have also put in place a system whereby stationery and textbooks of all pupils are kept in school.
I hate to ask this but is there any chance this is a conspiracy by the children to reduce their study time outside the school? It’s not the dog-ate-my-homework story but rather the thieves lurking outside have stolen everything, even the textbook, so I can’t even continue this class story. Perhaps there are textbook shortages and an underground market for used copies, but are students really going to resist having their homework stolen?
That’s a bit of a crass perspective on a pretty desperate situation, isn’t it?
I read the original article and it sounds like desperate folks are preying on kids to get the monetizable resources they have, I’m not reading anything that would indicate otherwise.
This summer my wife and I listened to “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind” by William Kamkwamba on Audible and got some new perspectives on the challenges of education in Africa. I know Cameroon isn’t Malawi, but my sense is the education challenges in both countries are enormous.
Norm sure there aren’t students in Camaroon hoping they’ll be robbed so they have a good excuse for not doing their homework. Education is too expensive and rare a luxury in Africabfor that to even be a possibility.
Probably right, Wes. The first image that jumped to my mind was a kid discarding books and then claiming a robbery to avoid getting into trouble. I guess I’m just saying the burden of proof of threat to homework is higher for kids who are expected to hate homework anyway. It’s also true books can be a valuable asset and there is a serious side to the story. Thanks for commenting and bringing it up.