Why Adolescent Girls are More Likely to Miss out on Quality Education in South Sudan
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A young lady with a gun on guard during Governor Philip Aguer visit to Anyidi payam, Bor County, Jan 2016
The majority of adolescent girls in South Sudan are at greater risk of educational wastage from the school settings.
By Ustaz Abraham Mabior Rioc, Juba-South Sudan
Sunday, June 14, 2020 (PW) — Viewing it from educational terminology, educational wastagerefers to any repetition, school dropouts, forced or early marriages among the school going-Age children. Apparently, there are different and various factors, which trigger educational wastage at any level of the educational cycle.
As a teacher by profession and a girl child education defender and sympathizer, I have earnestly observed that the majority of the adolescent girls especially from the Dinka community residing in towns are likely to miss education or quality education at this juncture.
Figuratively, whenever I move around some of the residential areas at evening hours being HaiReferendum, Thongpiny, Mia Saba, Gudele, etc, there are usually adolescent boys and girls moving isolatedly and in pairs. Sometimes, they stand, sit, or move at dark corners with an aim to exercise love under the pretext of freedom of associations and love choices. If you are not a very keen person who normally pays closer attention to issues of concern, then you will not be able to notice that.
Observably, you could indeed, observe in their close social movements some romantic gestures and activities which are suggestive of being prematurely engaged in sexual and unproductive love relationships. Definitely, such meaningless social networks among the teen-agers are unhealthy and could negatively affect the national education system per se.
By their physical appearance, these adolescent boys and girls are between 13-16 years of age. These are the ages, which are critical for girls to be impregnated unknowingly and eventually drop out of school. Physically, these boys look like niggas (a coined literal term that refers to those children who abandon their education) who are no longer interested in their schooling. Plainly, they are ghetto survivors who think of love affairs with adolescent girls as the top social agenda. Their future is practically deemed and they are destined to spoil the future of young girls as well.
I am not so sure whether the parents or guardians are aware of such dangerous romantic behaviors among their children, especially at those wrong hours. If they are aware and fail to intervene, then they are committing serious parental irresponsibility. For instance, the majority of these children are from the Dinka community who float major towns due to lack of responsibility.
In most cases, when such girls get impregnated, these boys are not able to afford clothes and compensation cow (aruok) leave alone paying the dowry to marry his love and provision of basic needs for family survival. So, the decision is to terminate the marriage, hence girl drop out of school completely. In such situations, educational wastage is apparently looming at primary or secondary school levels.
On the contrary, children born out of such unplanned courtship are obviously confined in the irresponsible home. They are left to loiter on streets in such food for survival and the majority has now filled the streets of the major towns in South Sudan. They are lacking their parents to take care of them including sending them to school. On the same note, these girls (impregnated mothers) are left with no option but to take the odd jobs to sell tea and Shishas at different stalls and isolated kiosks. Hence, the practice of illegal prostitution remains at full gear.
Based on my personal experiences, last year while in Greater Bahr el Ghazal, I was able to visit Kuajok, Wau, Tonj, Warrap, Turalei, and Wunrok, mention them. In all those towns, I personally observed the same social and romantic behaviors among teenagers. Some girls pretended to go to school but they later divert their way to visits their friends in isolated tukuls. Yet, I noted that the government and parents could not do anything at all up to this point in time.
As parents, we ought to act now before it is too late. Our children are our future and we need to protect their future through education and strong parental control. I am already very concerned about this parental irresponsibility that needs to be urgently addressed by the government in coordination with the parents.
Since people have different views on my observation, anyone who may disagree with me should pay a courtesy call to any of the areas I have mentioned and he or she will possibly witness. These are practical realities on the ground, which are being covered up by freedom of associations and human rights agitations.
Literally, education is the only tool to liberate us from illiteracy and bad social behaviors. Educating adolescent boys and girls is the best means to transform human lives and possibly scale up technological advancements countrywide. Stay blessed!
The author, Abraham Mabior Rioc, is a teacher by profession who holds dual masters’ Degrees of Education from the University of Juba and The University of Hong Kong respectively. He is electronically reachable via mabiorrioc@gmail.com
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