Who is to be blamed for a child’s poor performance?

Who takes responsibility for a child’s academic success? It is the parent or the teacher; or even the child himself? The answer to this vexing issue as varied as the respondents Life Xtra spoke with.
Lagos-based media consultant, Adediwura Aderibigbe, says parents are primarily responsible for a child’s academic performance but notes that other factors are also involved.
“Parents should be blamed though it quite debatable as other parties are also involved in what becomes of a child who came to the world with nothing learned but what he gets to grab from the environment he grows up in,” Aderibigbe asserts. “Parents however, should get the bulk of the blame as they are in a better position to mould the child.”
He explains why teachers shouldn’t be faulted: “We cannot really put the blame on teachers because there is a little they can do to a child whose parents fail to carry out their primary responsibilities of making sure they encourage their wards to do the needful. Children grow up to become who they are as adults courtesy of what they learned from their parents.”
The media consultant is of the view that modern-day parents do not encourage their children to earn success, but would rather support them to pass exams by all means.
“The teachers also used to be children and had parents, the adults the teachers grow up to become is a function of the manner of parents that raised them up. Teachers cannot monitor the pupils while watching TV at home when they are supposed to be studying,” stressed Aderibigbe.
But Bingham University student, Esther Joshua Bamayi, says the child takes responsibility for his/her success or fail. “If a student is really determined to work hard he will try all the possible ways out to do that not minding if the teacher don’t do his work or the parents don’t do theirs,” Bamayi states.
“A teacher can only teach his syllabus but it is left for the student to go and read wider on his own. We have great people in our nation that lost their parents at a tender age but still made it in their academics. Some people do online studies and excel, so I believe if a student wants to perform well in school he can,” she concludes.
For Kabrang Nayako, a thirtyish school teacher in Gombe however, teachers and parents are jointly to blame because they all have roles to play, though the “teachers carry most of the blame.” He attributes this to factors like training, remuneration, motivation and teaching environment.
But Chinonyerem Cecilia, a mother, places the blame on all three parties. She pointed out that parents are supposed to always check the children’s progress but they do not because they are too busy with their own lives: “Once they do that they will always know when the child is doing well and the child is not to know the next move. But when parents do not check on their kids and they are not performing, how will they know?”
She adds that teachers share the blame because the way they handle students can also affect their performance: “Fear can sometimes prevent a child from performing well. Being strict leads to fear hence when a teacher is too harsh and strict, it can affect the child’s performance.”
A teacher at Government Secondary School Tudun Wada, Zone 4, Abuja, who declined to be named, says both students and parents are to blame because “the students are not prepared to learn. You’ll see them during exam periods playing all over the place instead of reading their books. Some of them skip classes, and they don’t even do their assignments when they are given, they wait for those who have done it then they copy. And this is very wrong.”
She added that parents contribute to their children’s failure in school because they do not bother to check their books, stressing that: “They don’t assist them with their assignments. Some don’t even know the class their children belong to, and this is very bad.”
Blaming parents further, the worried teacher notes that: “All they are after is their business. They go out in the morning for their businesses, sometimes come back very late.”