By Dr Miriam Laker-Oketta
Early in January this year, I was observing a little girl who is dyslexic. She is 11 years old. Her parents were trying to help her with some
very basic homework. She was in Primary three last year and the school asked her to repeat the class. Her younger brother, about three
years younger, is going to be a class ahead of her. Understandably, the little girl was completely frustrated. She looked at his homework, barely
able to identify even the most basic letters. As I write this, I recognize that there are many parents struggling with the decision of whether to let their child repeat a class or not. Many of the affected children are those who have been struggling with education throughout the year and
likely in the previous years. The third term is the end of the school year in Uganda and the term determines whether a child gets promoted to
the next class or is asked to repeat the entire class. Sometimes, parents of poor academic performers are even asked to find another school.
In this article, I will share my opinion as a medical doctor, teacher, parent and person who, like many of you readers, has interacted with or
observed children with learning disabilities. In my opinion, a child should only repeat a class if they have a certain potential to improve; meaning that for whatever reason for example, extended absence from school, which led to severe learning gaps that cannot be filled with extra tutoring or remedial classes. A child with close to zero chance of improving significantly if they repeated the class should not be made to repeat. This latter category is where children with learning disabilities fall. Why do I think this way? The ultimate objective of going to school is to ensure that a child not only learns academics but also co-curricular activities and creates friendships that will be their life network in the future. Parents do not put much thought into repeating when children are in the low classes because in those early years, age up to about 10
years, children are still generally small in stature allowing them to fit right in with their classmates. However, as the child grows and gets into puberty, their bodies begin to change. A 12 and 13-year-old will suddenly have a growth spurt as they get into puberty; for boys,
their voices will break and they will get muscular. Girls’ breasts will develop, some will start to have their periods. Suddenly, you have a child in primary three or four looking and sounding very different from their classmates. These children become the brunt of teasing and other forms of
bullying. Unfortunately, teachers also join or worsen the bullying by calling out the poor performance of a child who has been taught the same things for more than one year. I remember a girl who constantly wore a sweater to hide her bosom because she had large breasts in a class of girls who were not yet in puberty. She was punished several times for breaking the school rule – sweaters were not permitted on warm days. There were boys referred to as “tallido” because they were the tallest in the school. Many “repeaters” (a term used to refer to pupils who were repeating a class) were called ‘matures’. Even when they excelled in things that they were genuinely good at, like sports and drama, children
said it was a form of cheating because they were “too old” to be competing. In schools where children are punished for poor academic
performance or called out during school assemblies and labeled academic dwarves, the victims are almost always children with learning disabilities. Unfortunately, I have witnessed parents unknowingly encourage the torment of these children by ridiculing their child who is usually
struggling academically before the teachers not standing up for their struggling child when a teacher says the child is not taking their studies seriously.
The Acholi tribe of northern Uganda has a saying; “The way a dog is treated is learned from how an owner treats their dog.” A parent who puts down their struggling child in the presence of a teacher should be certain that the teacher will confidently ridicule the child in their absence and usually in front of other children. For instance, the little girl that I opened this article with was now being shamed by her younger sibling even when she was trying out new things that she ended up being good at. While we do not have many specialists for special needs children especially those with more subtle conditions, parents usually correctly sense when something is awry.
I encourage the parents to talk to the head teachers, the class teachers and ask them to treat their child in a way that supports the struggling child’s learning. Putting the child down for something they have no control over destroys them. In primary school, I remember a child
who was constantly made to repeat constantly spanked by the teachers. Several years later, I met his sister who said he was finally diagnosed to be autistic. Interestingly, even though we as children at that time knew that there was something wrong, he was eventually diagnosed autistic
several years later.
