The boundary between parental care and social vices has become inconsequential in the scheme of things in Nigeria. How do we explain parents forging documents to change their children’s age to gain admission to higher institutions of learning because they cannot wait to have them clock the required age? We euphemise this act as having our children’s interest at heart and downplay the life-long effect of making them normalise forgery and accept lying as a norm. While this will go on subtly in homes, it becomes the liability of the society when such children grow to become administrators and public officers with no regard for standard practices.
If helping children secure a good future now means to pay specially for malpractice for their O level and A Level examinations; can we still confidently say we are raising future leaders? I remember a student came to me weeping about a course she had failed and she repeatedly said she would not mind the lowest mark because she had never failed in her life. How do we justify raising a generation of future leaders who do not understand failure as a stepping stone to success? Will they not grow into adults who take elections as a do-or-die affair and consider public offices their entitlement?
Education is the acquisition of skills, knowledge, values and attitude which make one a functional member of the society. It is pathetic that the aspects of value and attitude are now trivialised in our understanding of education. The affective domain of learning which should inculcate the spirit of hard work, dedication, honesty, transparency, accountability, empathy, selflessness and so on into young minds is handled with levity. The focus of many parents is the formal education of their children with outright disregard for the informal education which a renowned educationist, Professor Babatunde Fafunwa, described as “eko omoluabi”, loosely translated by Dasylva (2016:65) as the attitude of an “ideal persona”.
In Ogundeji’s (2009:73) opinion, ọmọlúàbí implies “ọmọ-tí-olú-ìwà-bí/ọmọ tí ó ní ìwà ìbí (rere)”, meaning “a person born and raised by someone with good character and, by implication, a person with good character himself or herself”. These elements of informal education or “eko omoluabi” are the soft skills which grease hard skills such as competence and ability. A competent leader who lacks compassion will starve the followers. An administrator who has ability but lacks humility will ruin a system. Educationists represent the domains of humans as the head, the hand and the heart. A nation that does not properly mould the hearts will not get the best of the heads.
The school and society can only consolidate and improve on the foundation that the home has set for a child. This is of course why the English proverb says “charity begins at home”, and why the Bible says “train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it”. (Proverb 22:6). “If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do (Psalm 11:3)?” Inasmuch as parents want to make life easier for their children, they must also ask themselves if they would have got it right if this was the path they were made to take.
Our society is a reflection of our family system. If it gets better at home, it will be better out there. Let the education be right from home.
Ganiu Bamgbose, PhD, wrote from the Department of English, Lagos State University.
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