Extra Lessons or Extra Cash?: A Case Study of Schools in Masvingo Urban, Zimbabwe, from a Social Sciences? Perspective

Abstract

The study was about whether extra lessons in Zimbabwe Keywords: Extra-Lessons, Extra cash, Holiday lessons, Social role models, Best interest of the child, Social policies, Public schools, Needs of society, Utilitarianism, Rationalism. Contribution/ OriginalityThis study is one of the few studies which scientifically investigated why schools organize holiday lessons and parents continue to ask their children to attend regardless of the opportunity and financial costs involved. It unusually questions whether social policies are not hurting the very people that they claim to serve. BACKGROUNDZimbabwe gained its independence in 1980 after almost 100 years of British colonial rule. The colonial era was built on white supremacy, racial segregation, institutional violence and oppression of the majority African population by the white minority (Shizha, 2013). The new Government was committed to the creation of a socialist state which was guided by the principles of justice and equity. Education was declared a human right, and Education for All (EFA), became one of the key policy priorities of the new government. From the perspective of the State education was regarded as a potent tool for social and economic transformation (Nherera, 2006;Shizha, 2013). The State acknowledged that education was a basic human right, which played a pivotal role in combating ignorance, disease and poverty (Shizha, 2013).From the perspective of parents however, education became a tool for their children to enter formal and full-time employment, at times in sectors previously the private preserve of the white community and lately, in a country where the overall unemployment rate was as high as 95% (NANGO, 2011). For this reason most parents became prepared, unaided to see their children through the education system.To a typical Zimbabwean family, education of a child seemed like an insurance policy upon which the entire family may depend for survival in future. Families, even in rural areas became typically prepared to sacrifice everything, even an entire herd of cattle just to make sure that children see through their education and thus make them get "realistic" chances of getting a full time employment and thus break away from what Haralambos and Holborn (2010) described as the vicious cycle of poverty in which poverty breeds poverty.Independence also ushered in a period of massive urbanization as blacks now freely found their way into urban areas. This phenomenon also saw the breakdown of the extended family system as a vehicle for socialization, leaving schools as the main actors in this regard. This effectively meant that, in addition to its economic instrumentality, the education system also now played a social role with teachers adopting a role modeling function. This means, teachers had now the additional responsibility to model appropriate traits among children as they now did not only have an innate duty to dispense knowledge, but also to develop learners into good human beings in line with societal culture (Narinasamy a...