Two days from today, the country will celebrate Children’s Day, a day supposedly dedicated by the government to celebrate our young population, often referred to as leaders of tomorrow, and to give them hope of a better future. Do we set out to meet the objective after we celebrate? Big question there.
Often for us, important landmark events that should provoke deep introspection turn out to be a jamboree of fun and lavish waste of public funds. Observing Children’s Day in recent years hasn’t been different. Governments at the three tiers would line up school children, pull out huge public monies and read highfalutin speeches full of jargons lacking in meaning and substance.
The occasion, as already observed, is intended to serve as avenue to offer assurances of better life for our young ones but one thing is certain: if what you are reading were to be a live discussion programme among friends, one can bet his life that the following interjection would come almost immediately in the form of a question: “Better life for which group, the youths?” Most of the discussants would likely ask anyone believing or thinking along the line to sit down and shut up.
On the surface, the response or reaction would appear to be too stern and to an extent unacceptable but those who know our society and how our leaders have steered affairs, especially in the last 30 years would tell you it isn’t a misplaced one altogether. One can begin from the celebration itself. In places where there’s order, the people are forward-minded and very progressive. Such occasions and celebrations stir up citizens’ souls and this is for the simple fact the new generation is involved.
People who know about sustenance know the key to a progressive transference of the baton of legacy rests in continuous assessment of the inputs put in the adolescents. What orientation and what world view? If we leave the young population to their intentions we end up having a society wrecked at some point. This is why countries that understand the place of youths do all in their power to mold and make them turn out even far better than all the generations before them.
Some of these countries virtually recreate the successor generation. Italians are on record to have left the world with rich lessons when its founders left humanity with the words “we have created Italy now we have to create the Italian.” A society that has the objective of imprinting a stable, healthy and thriving society must take special attention to create and recreate the upcoming generation.
The old Empire of Britain successfully navigated through rough medieval times, through suffocating monarchical era into republican order and finally a democracy through systematic reorientation and rebuilding of each new generation. If it weren’t so life and living would have been a terrible story to tell in that country today. Americans basically migrated from Europe but they don’t act the same.
If you see an American amongst the white people gathered one can tell easily who is American and who is not. The mannerism is different, even the world view. It didn’t just happen, it is an outcome of serious thinking, vision, clarity of thought and hardwork. By now it ought to be very clear to all of us that nothing good comes easy. Gold as we have been told is not picked on the surface.
Russia, Israel, China, Japan,Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia, among others, didn’t just emerge top world nations by hyperstance. Leaders sat down and told themselves: “Look, if we don’t plan out the makeup of the young ones, we stand the chance of having a ruined nation. They did not only think, they went into action. Till tomorrow no Israeli citizen would sell out no matter the cost, everyone knows what is required to keep the country going and that is because outside formal education the country took time to build the youth.
At some point in recent history, the western countries accused China of child abuse because the country from the age of six began to expose the children to aspects of life considered only suitable for adults. Of course China gave no attention to whatever was being said because to them the vision was top-notch and there was clarity of purpose. Today, fear has not allowed the rest of the world to declare China the new leader nation in the world. But that is what China has become because leaders know what backward countries should know and do if they must win the catchup war.
One can go on and on drawing on very scintillating examples but let’s return to our situation to make sense. Ordinarily the Children’s Day celebration ought to serve us far better than has been the case. The approach ought to be for us a good opportunity to take stock in a very scientific manner, looking at numbers and data, drawing deductions and appropriate conclusions. Unfortunately, ours isn’t that way. We would rather talk and give admonitions that we ought to done at home as parents. The leadership would read speeches which many of them can’t adequately comprehend the import of the theories marshalled out in those addresses by hired speech writers. The decay continues
Today, only a few are happy at the state of the young ones. They look healthier than their parents perhaps they are also better catered for but that is where it ends. A far majority of the adolescent class are without good character. What is a being without character? It is so because society stood and tolerated the destruction of cherished customs and values passed on from generations before them.
Absentee parenthood has become vogue. Father and mother are always away leaving children to develop themselves. There is no law that pins down parents to home care for children as we find else. The lucky ones hire maids, hired from third parties who don’t have the ability to ascertain the character and make up of the recruited. Often deviants are employed and children with teachable minds are kept at their mercy. Definitely the blind can’t lead the blind.
Even when parents stay around, they lack better examples. A child in a private car told the parents at a security checkpoint, “Please give them money so that they don’t disturb us”. Ordered to shut up, the young lad would not as he held on insisting, ‘this is what every other person on the road does.” Children in primary schools today talk tough, carry the bullish miem and appear ready to confront teachers and authorities. Many have at that age become cultists. It wasn’t the school or peer group pressure that was responsible for all of that.
It was parental failure, children and the force of personal examples. No force in the school of human socialization is higher than the force of personal character. This is moreso with our children. It is our expectations that our children would grow to become the reigning stars, engineers, doctors, great journalist, pastors, authors, wonderful scientists. These are good and necessary desires but as a collective too we are not ready to put in what is required.
We elect ill-equipped persons into government who return to muddle up things in a manner and dimension the young become traumatized and end having no reason to turn responsible and patriotic citizens. Knowing that they can’t elect leaders of their choices is sickening. What becomes of an adolescent who knows his country subjects him to discriminatory admission cut-off marks? How can they grow up to be patriotic when they know the society they are born into isn’t merit driven, that your mates who are less brilliant than can rise quickly to become your boss.
Those are potent issues and factors. It is not enough to wish the young ones well in the future. If wishes were horses, as we say, every one would be a King. Behind every great future is creative hardwork. The government should begin by finding a way to let groups sit and decide what we want to be doing with the young ones. Laws should be made to ensure real care, no child should be left alone at home or to walk the busy streets returning from school. Care should be taken in the recruitment of domestic staff. In fact the police should be involved and periodic reports should be made to police about their conduct.
Schools, primary to tertiary, should have full-fledged departments of counseling who will do their job professionally. In developed worlds they know when the young is depressed, wounded or facing severe difficulties and they intervene with all seriousness. A Nigerian mother almost went to jail in England for beating the child. School authority discovered that from the look of the child. We should pay child allowance in this country till the children turn 18 years. Education should be very affordable, loans and scholarships should be part of the rights.