The ManicaPost
Morris Mtisi
“We are doing the best we can to upgrade the school,” says St Matthias Tsonzo High School head, Mr Obvious Chikata. The School Development Committee holds the same view. However, a group of former students hold a different view.
“We cannot support an administration that is incompetent and evidently driving the school to the dogs,” says one of the former students who requested anonymity.
If the above scenario does not describe factionalism in a school, what is the best way to describe it?
One member of a group that calls itself Tsonzo Alumni (Former Students) comes to the Manica Post. The story is of a high school rotting in the hands of an incompetent and seemingly corrupt administration. The fees are as high as $600 per term. But look at the pictures of the rot at the school. Where is the money going? And we want to support the school as former students but how can we with such a school head and administration? Thus went the story.
The Manica Post sends the pictures to Mr Chikata via Whatsapp, first to confirm if the pictures were from the school and secondly to hear his side of the story and how do you defend such conditions at a fairly big boarding school like yours? Those two questions if answered properly would suffice to write a ‘balanced’ story.
The Manica Post does not look into schools for negative reporting, unless it is outright corruption going on. Sometimes, may be often-times negative reporting is counter-productive for it only exposes problems but does not help to solve them.
What is required at Tsonzo is for all interested parties to work together towards understanding one another and not tearing the school apart and fanning animosity and factionalism.
It is not too late to allow the present administration to work as best it can to develop the school, at the same time allow constructive criticism to be allowed to play a role in the development of the school that belongs to learners more than it belongs to teachers and school heads. For these will always come and go. The school will remain for future generations.
Listen to the worries and concerns of proactive and progressive minded former students, teachers, parents and students.
Allow constructive advice and criticism to help you build a civilised and better school. This is our advice to the school head.
At the same time the above must not act like political opposition parties that oppose the establishment for the sake of opposition.
Reason with the head. Stop fighting him. Talk to each other and pull in one direction. Those who see the glass as half full have a good attitude for they talk the language of fullness.
Those who see it as half empty see the same glass but with a different attitude. Both can easily get to a yes and together move in the same direction if expert conflict resolution skills are used and used wisely. Allow expert arbitration to allow sense to prevail.
Consider the benefits and losses that come with fighting and confrontation versus peaceful and common compassion for reason to prevail. Emotional intelligence leads to entrenched conflict and deep resentment of each other. And when this happens in school it is the learners who suffer and the pass rate plummets.
All should work towards eliminating the attitude of our enemies who believe Africans are still too primitive to resolve their conflicts and differences amicably. Schools will never develop if they are theatres of back-biting, intriguing, backstabbing, noise and conflict.
That is our message for Tsonzo High School. Come together, put heads together, resolve differences, forgive each other and move on. That is the best lesson learners at any school can learn from adults who have their school at heart.
If school children need two a lessons to learn without writing an examination in all our schools, it is first and foremost the honour of shunning corruption and second, the lesson about peaceful conflict resolution.
I hope after this newspaper story with a difference, fostering developmental educational journalism will stop the fights at Tsonzo High School and indeed other big schools torn apart by factionalism and disorientation. In the place of fighting, it is our hope that all will quickly adopt level headedness and peaceful conflict resolution. God bless Tsonzo High School. God bless other schools in a similar state of cold war!
