Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere.

Academy of Diourbel                                                                                                 2010-2011

Bambey High School

The Corner of English Lovers

First Session

The high rate of students’ failure in rural areas: causes, consequences and solutions

INTRODUCTION:

The Senegalese government is doing many efforts to achieve the millennium goal in the field of education. This leads it to launch the program entitled “education for all” before 2015. Many organizations such as the World Bank, UNICEF, and UNESCO are following and assisting this noble initiative.

As an African country, ours is composed with two different geographical areas with different realities: The urban area which concerns the regional capitals and big towns is more or less developed and the rural area which is the countryside characterized most of the time by hard living conditions that make studies very difficult and sometime impossible.

This will bring us to call the high rate of students’ failure in the rural areas into question. Firstly we are going to search for the main causes of these failures. Secondly we will analyse the consequences that result in this phenomena and finally try to bring some solutions to these dramatic facts that traumatize students in rural areas.

I. THE CAUSES:  

As we have already announced in the introduction, there are several facts that should be taken in account when dealing with the causes. The first and the most important one of all of them is poverty. With no doubt, we are conscious about how precarious life is in these areas. Thus poverty is at the beginning and at the end of all we are going to say. But there are some very specific causes that can’t help mentioning in our essay. Among these we can list:

1. Desertification

The desertification is a very dangerous phenomenon which is gaining more and more ground. Several areas that used to be or serve as farms during rainy seasons are today transformed into very large and sandy deserts as far as any life is no longer possible in it. There is no pasturage, shepherds have nowhere to go. The only solution they have is to go into exile with their families to find a place to survive or sort of Promised Land. Then homes as well as schools will be closed.

2. Natural disasters:

When talking about natural disasters, we mean for example the bush-fires that may happen two months after the rainy season when the green and wet grass has now dried. This catastrophe can burn the dry grass around the houses and once it burns, it will touch the huts which are all made by straw. The fire could also touch the store which contents all the crops they had succeeded to harvest in the rainy season. This unhappy event will force some parents to send their family to town in order to have a new starting point.

Among other disasters we can also list drought which is a long period of extremely dry weather when there is not enough rain for the successful growing of crops. Nevertheless, it is less frequent and has not happened since many decades ago.

3. The death of a father

Most of the time, it is only the father who guarantees the survival of the family. He assures the daily spending for his family, their medical and school fees. After the death of the father, there is nobody to spell him. So unavoidably, it’s the eldest boys who will oblige to drop out their studies in order to shoulder their mother. They could no longer rely on a gloomy and far future? They could not continue sitting in a classroom for almost 20 years any longer, waiting for a degree which will never guarantee them a job the following year.  

4. Early marriages

This is one of the most famous reasons of children’s failure in rural area and especially young girls between 12 and 18 years. According to the studies of our demographist; our society is young and feminine meaning young girls are more numerous than boys in our families. So add to this the insistence of the eroding poverty; the only and actual solution is to diminish the number of the family members, unavoidably by giving girls to marriage.

5. Early pregnancies

The early pregnancies are also very recurrent in these areas. Unfortunately those who were supposed to be the educators turn to be the guilty people: Most of the time it’s their own teachers who are the fathers. But sometime it’s their classmates that make them pregnant. And this is a regrettable situation that should be fought because many young girls turn to be victims of this injustice.

6. The isolation of school.

We know that most of the time there only one single school in middle of the bush that gathers all villages surrounding it. This point should not be neglected because of its importance. When, you have to walk many kilometers before reaching school, twice in the morning, twice in the afternoon, this deplorable. And then once in your classroom, you will feel tired, sleepy and even very hungry. The direct consequence of this is you are not going to able to follow or understand what the teacher is saying. Thus if you don’t understand nothing on what is being said or done, how are you going to succeed in your exams

II. CONSEQUENCES:

The consequences that result from the high rate of students’ failure in rural areas is: They first abandon school and come back home. Now comes the time of thinking about new easiest ways to succeed in making profits in a short period because of the several years they have lost at school. Now they can no longer learn a profession, they are getting older and marriage and founding a family is waiting for them. Thus the first solution that appears is to migrate from village to town or even more than this from village to Europe.

The first consequence of this migration is depopulation of villages and overpopulation of the metropolis. Lack of security in both areas will follow this exodus. There is nobody to assure the security at home. Many families are completely composed by women only and may be a young boy of 5 year-old. At town, they will face a problem of reinstatement and unemployment because they have no job at their arrival at town. So, many of them will become delinquents, criminals.

III. SOLUTIONS:

The solutions to this phenomenon are numerous: The government must launch some campaign of sensitizing. People of the countryside should be sensitized about the importance of education more especially in living period. But, they should also be explained how dangerous giving young girls to marriage is. Their health should be taken in account because they could die while giving birth to a baby or the baby itself could die with birth complications or have some deformities.

The government should also build more schools and may be one village one school. The so-called teachers who are making their students pregnant must be judge as criminals and sent to jail. But their training session should more serious as well as to have very conscious educators.

CONCLUSION:

The inescapable conclusion which emerges from what we have already developed is: Very big efforts are being made in the field of education but their some sensitize points that should dealt. We have raised several reasons of these failures. Among which we have mentioned poverty that is ravaging the area. The desertification which is a dangerous phenomenon that gains more and more ground day after day. The natural disasters such as bush-fires and drought are also present in place. The early marriages and pregnancies were also underlined in our essay to show how they can prevent young girls from succeeding in their studies. Besides the death of a parent is an important disability. And finally we have talked about the isolation of some schools.

So we end by asking the government to insist on sensitization of rural people but the training of teachers should also be intensive.