Our children and the future

As everything Nigerian, we defy definitions and redefine based on created realities. The political class is raising kids and issues that will likely plague the children of the ordinary people. So, where are our children and kids; I will tell quite a lot of us where our children are, while they are right under our noses, they have gone far away.

Today, the Nigerian child can barely speak his local dialect, unless he lives in the suburb where English is restricted to pidgin. The  Nigerian child is the one that never will get Montessori education because he has to make do with the now non-existent local government education authority education where Math is taught his dialect for better understanding.

That Nigerian child is the very shadow of his/her parents today — these children cannot recite the National Anthem, or Pledge; they are experts at foreign nursery rhymes that depict heroes alien to us, so much that our own heroes and their labour are fast disappearing. The other kids that can manage to recite it, simply mock it…”I pledge to serve my country is not by force…”

Where is your child? He/she is preparing for one of the television reality shows, rather than read, as Google, everyday, is taking the place of group study with search such as “how to dance shaku-shaku”. Our children no longer do the sesame Street educative viewing; from children of ‘Ben 10 and Penguins of Madagascar; why not Eagles of Nigeria, at least. We now are at the tramadol and codein level laced with explicit music lyrics polluting the airwaves.

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That Nigerian child has stopped to recite the states and their capitals; my son knows more about Abraham Lincoln, George Washington than he does of Awolowo or Ahmadu Bello, and doesn’t understand why Nnamdi Azikwe is called Zik of Africa. Cannot peel pineapple and cannot cook his forebears’ soup or most meals that are exclusive of noodles.

We are so concerned about the future that we are hardly paying attention to today. A lot has and keeps changing but should our value system be thrown away because we are evolving?

These days, we talk so much politics, but how about our homes? That Nigerian child that is taught to lie to his father, and learns about abortion from the mother. The stark reality stares us in the face. By 2030 what kind of Nigerians would we have, after we have bought examination questions for them, when they have seen us live extremely far above our earnings?

Prince Charles Dickson PhD

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