Manifestations of Namibian Boy's Underachievement in Education.
| Author | Zimba, Roderick F. |
Introduction
Article 10 of the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (UN 1981) stipulates that women should not be discriminated against in education at all levels and in all contexts. Eight years later in 1989, this principle was reaffirmed in articles 28 and 29 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) (UNICEF 1989). The CRC urged all state parties to recognize the right of all children to education. Soon after this, it was recognized that the girl child was, all over the World, discriminated against in education and in other spheres of life. She needed special support to enable her to access education and remain in school. In the year 2000 The United Nations Girls' Education Initiative (UNGEI) was established to facilitate and concretize this support. Although a lot of progress has been made in ensuring that the girl child receives as much quality education as the boy child, gender disparity in education has not yet been eliminated in many countries of the World. In fact, girls appear to continue to lag behind boys in terms of access to and retention in education in several developing countries (UNICEF 2015).
Notwithstanding the situation of girls depicted in the preceding paragraph, there exists in countries as diverse as Australia, the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Mongolia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Lesotho the relative under-achievement of boys in education. In these and other countries, more boys than girls underperform on national examinations, more boys than girls drop out school and more boys than girls receive corporal punishment due to misbehaviour (East Asia and Pacific United Nations Girls' Education Initiative, 'EAP UNGEI' 2011). The under-achievement and underparticipation of boys in education has become a serious concern in many Educational systems of the world.
My task in this paper is a modest one. I have merely decided to discuss five childhood education issues that pertain to Namibian boys' underachievement in education. Premised on the gender perspective in primary and secondary school education, the five education issues are:
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The Background to Namibian boys' underachievement in education;
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The nature and scope of Namibian boys' underachievement in education;
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Some characteristics of Namibian boys' underachievement in education;
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Apparent causes of Namibian boys' underachievement in education;
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Theoretical and practical implications of Namibian boys' underachievement in education.
I cover the four education issues in the paper as follows:
Background to Namibian boys' underachievement in education
According to UNESCO (2004), the term 'gender'
"refers to the socially and culturally constructed meanings and roles assigned to persons of different biological sexes: males and females. The concept also includes the expectations held about the characteristics, aptitudes and behaviours of both women and men. The notion of gender equality thus refers to all human beings developing their personal abilities and making life choices without the limitation set by stereotypes, rigid roles and prejudices. In other words, gender equality means that the differences in behaviours, aspirations and needs of women and men should be valued and treated equally. It does not mean that women and men have to become the same; but that their rights, responsibilities and opportunities will not depend on whether they are born male or female. Hence, gender equality starts with equally valuing girls and boys. It is based on women and men being full partners in their home, their community and their society" (Emphasis added).
This definition encapsulates the ethic and rhetoric of gender equality. In practice, girls and boys do not seem to be valued and treated equally in many countries of the world. It depends on where you are in the world. If you are in Finland and Norway, this definition may be adhered to in practice. However, if you are in Pakistan or Kaduna, Nigeria, the situation is entirely different. There, girls and women are not treated as people who are equal to men in every respect. Substantiating this from a global perspective, UNICEF (2015) has just published a report entitled: Progress for Children Beyond Averages: Learning from the MDGS. In this report, UNICEF gives a progress report on achieving the third millennium goal which was on the empowerment of women and the elimination of gender inequality by the year 2015. In education the report stipulates that in 2012 whereas 31 million primary school age girls were out of school, 27 million boys in the same age cohort were out of school. This meant that globally, 13% more girls were out of primary school than boys. This gender gap was narrowed substantially at lower secondary school where 32 million girls were out of school whereas 31 million boys were out of school. The report also indicates that in SubSaharan Africa, 84 girls were enrolled in secondary school for every 100 boys in 2012.
Notwithstanding global and the Sub-Saharan African gender statistics, gender disparity in education in Namibia has been effectively reversed in favour of girls. Now, more Namibian boys under-participate and under-achieve in education than Namibian girls. Could this be due to differential support and treatment of boys and girls in the education system? Have Namibian boys and girls been equally supported and valued in education for the past 25 years of the country's independence from apartheid and colonialism? Although this is not an easy question to answer, we need to conjecture whether the differential levels of support between Namibian boys and girls can by itself explain why substantially large numbers of Namibian boys underachieve in education. A search for other explanations is warranted.
Before we focus on other explanations, it is instructive to show how, over more than two decades, girls in general have been given more educational support than boys. This support has been based on, amongst other things, the rallying cry: "The surest way to keep a people down is to educate the men and neglect the women. If you educate a man you simply educate an individual, but if you educate a woman you educate a family" (Dr. J. E. Kwegyir Aggrey, Ghanian educator [1875-1927]).
At the global level, the support for girls' education has, for more than two decades, been promoted through initiatives that include United Nations Girls ' Education Initiative; Women in Development; Millennium Development Goals; Convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women; Girls' Education in the 21st Century: Gender Equality, Empowerment, and Economic Growth (The World Bank 2008); Gender and Development; Promoting Education Quality through Gender-Friendly Schools (Mannathoko 2008); and The Dakar framework for Action, Education for All: Meeting Our Collective Commitments. (UNESCO 2000).
At the African continental level, African girls have been supported in education through the avenues and instruments of Forum for African women Educationalists (FAWE), African Union Gender Policy (2009), New Partnership for Africa's development (NEPAD), African Charter on human and people's rights, and the Solemn declaration on gender equality in Africa (2004).
At the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region level, girls' education has been championed through the following instruments of the SADC Protocol on gender and development (2008) and the SADC gender protocol Barometer (2013).
At the national level, Namibian girls' education has been supported by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Child Welfare, the Forum for African women Educationalists--the Namibian chapter, (FAWENA) and through the Gender mainstreaming in education programme.
It is the case that while all these initiatives were put in place to support girls' education, few, if any, initiatives were specifically established in Namibia to target and support boys' education. Although this position may be disputed, I need to point out that boys were not chased away from school when girls were excelling. A number of searching questions may still...
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