Utamu wa Tendo la Ndoa

CHALLENGES TOWARDS LEARNING SCIENCE SUBJECTS IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS.
By Miriam.J.Sikazwe.
              Science subjects are perceived to be the most hardest by most of students in secondary schools. They are only forced to study them before they are free to choose which subject they want to study in their educational life. Many students are likely to choose art subjects and business subjects. We cannot just blame our students there must be reasons behind this fear and some of them are:
           Small number of competence and qualified teachers to fulfill the demanding needs, the nature of education is what determine the quality of the product we produce. Science subject teachers are of low qualities and competence in training the subjects because they are not well prepared and trained. Teachers lack skills and creative ways of arousing students interest towards science subjects when they face difficulties, also many teachers do not know how to meet students unique needs. Also teachers lack creativity during classroom teaching and learning processes for example teachers concentrate only on what is written in the books instead of providing relevant teaching aids to make the lesson real. Another thing is that science subject teachers have huge tasks because you may find only one teacher teaches three different subjects in different four class levels,  for example only one teacher is given responsibility to teach physics form one, biology form three, and chemistry form four and form two I myself had a teacher like that in our school. This thing reduces teachers’ competence and experience in teaching one subject effectively.
           Problems in teaching and learning materials, because of the bad perception towards science subjects that they are so hard to learn they require extra strategies and materials to make them more easy and interesting. The problem is many school have few text books to cover the all teachers and students needs, a school may have only two mathematics books for a class of more than 40 students. Also lack of relevant teaching and learning aids make the subjects harder, learning become more understood when students see the real object they are learning about.
            Lack of laboratories for practical, people say practice makes perfect and in learning science subjects practical method is very important. Unfortunately many government schools where many children are studying there do not have laboratories and special places for practical, for example I had to walk for more than 10 km to go to another school for practical because my school did not have laboratory. For four year students theoretically learn about earthworm, test tube, Bunsen burner and other scientific tools but never seen them even a single day till in the final national examination room. That’s why students fear to take science subjects because they know that they won’t do well in their final exams.
          Another problem is that girls are discouraged to study science subjects, so sad some people go further to relate physical appearance of a girl and the study of science subjects. They say that beautiful and attractive girls cannot study science subject and that they are only meant for arts and business subjects. It’s because of this stereo type vision, mentality and ambition of many girls towards science subject has been affected. Girls believe that science subjects are harder and only boys can study them that is why we have very few women in some field of work like engineers, architectures, doctors and so on compare to the number of men in those fields.
          Finally intensive strategies should be taken to improve teaching, learning and motivation of students towards science subjects in secondary schools. First students should be directly  involved during teaching and learning processes in the classroom to improve their thinking capacity, here teachers must use demonstration and participatory methods of teaching to allow students discuss, ask, and answer questions. Another thing is that more qualified and competence teachers should be employed and equally supplied to all urban and rural schools. More importantly teachers, parents, and government must make effort to encourage girls take science subjects up to the higher education level.