Scholarly excellence is a well-celebrated thing all across the world. Those who have put in the effort and sacrifice in order to bang in the best grades and achieve academic excellence should definitely be well rewarded for their toil.
In the southern African country of Botswana, however, one particular issue of rewarding academic excellence has gotten peo
ple asking whether it was well worth it.
In what is a rather weird form of reward, a Botswana secondary school student named Gift Jr. Nakedi of Lenchwe II Junior school was presented with a fat Simmental cow for his outstanding performance as the best graduating student of the school
According to a popular radio station in Botswana, Duma Fm, Nakedi attained 61 points (6As and three Bs) in his Junior Secondary School Exam last year.
Duma FM reported that the young boy’s family accompanied him to collect his gift. The gift of the cow is reportedly worth 25,000 Botswa
na Pula which is over N800,000.
In view of this, however, not many people are satisfied with the school’s method of rewarding Nakedi. According to the critics, the school should have given him something that will help him further his studies such as a scholarship.
There is, however, another school of thought which sees promise in the reward. These set of people believe that the cow could be a great starting point for a livestock business.
However, even this opinion has its fault as it indicates that the school would rather want Nakedi to go into farming than a proper education. Do you think it was right to reward the young boy this way?
