When parents spend more time at work, it affects children —Modupe Adeleke

Chief (Mrs) Modupe Adeleke is an educationist, a former president of the Association of Proprietors of Private Secondary Schools in Oyo State and proprietress of Nickdel Group of Schools. In this interview by TAYO GESINDE, she speaks on how she became a successful school owner, how to achieve marital and parenting success, among others.

You are a successful school owner in the country. What motivated you to go into academics and what is the secret of your success?

My love for children and my passion for teaching are the reasons. God is the secret of my success because it has pleased Him to bless the work of my hands. All glory belongs to him. Besides, we make every effort to give total education to the child because we believe academic excellence without morals is nothing, so we try to develop the child morally, spiritually and socially.

 

What price did you pay to get to where you are today?                                     

A lot. When I started private school education, I faced a lot of challenges. I started the school in a completely new environment at Akobo in Ibadan, but in a purpose-built class environment. The result was that the place was very far from town and I had difficulty in getting pupils and teachers. I would come to town to ask my friends for teachers they didn’t need so that I could employ them because there was no way of getting teachers without coming to town and I am sure that most people didn’t know that that place existed then. We were fully prepared. We had to buy everything we needed for the take-off of the school abroad then but people were not ready to pay for it. We started with round shaped furniture with fewer students but it didn’t work, we had to revert to the normal classroom setting which could accommodate more children. Apart from that, there was burglary. The place was in a bush so the result was that robbers were very common in the area. They would enter our classrooms, especially during the holidays or weekend. There was a particular day that they entered the school and carried the rug in my office. They would cart away toiletries, closets and so on. Another challenge was that because it was far from town, I embarked on bus service and the bus was always giving me trouble. Parents would complain each time the bus broke down because I would have to use my car and my husband’s car to pick the children. I expected them to be sympathetic but they were not. Many of the parents felt we were happy using our personal car as school buses. However, the challenges strengthened me. I made up my mind I was going to surmount them. I developed a thick skin to them.

 

You started with just one school. How did it metamorphose into group of schools?

Let me say that the group of schools came about because the government did not want us to have branches. When we wanted to open a branch in Ring Road, for instance, the government preferred us to open a full fledged school there because there are certain payments you need to be making when you are opening a separate school. Despite having different schools, I make sure we do the same things and the same examinations at the same time. But we exchange marking and we do central marking. We don’t take the scripts home. We stay in the hall and mark.

 

With what we can see around, it appears many people are going into teaching today because they want to make money and not because they have passion for teaching. What is your view on this?

I believe teaching is a calling. I believe God should call people into teaching the way they are called into priesthood. Not everybody can be a teacher. You have to love children and teaching before you can be a successful teacher. If you are into teaching because you just want a job, you won’t make a success of it. And such teachers don’t put in their best. If you are not a trained teacher then you need to go for training.

 

Nowadays, we hear stories of private schools engaging in examination malpractices so they can boast of students with good results in external examinations. What do you have to say about this?

I don’t believe that is true. It is just that when people see good results, they tend to believe that something must have happened in the background, especially if you have good results in West African Secondary School Certificate Examination (WAEC) and Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME). Instead of making insinuations, people should believe that the teachers are working hard to ensure students excel in their studies. Here, we encourage our teachers to do their best. When examination is near, we do weekend coaching and we start lessons at 7:00 a.m. Besides this, we teach them lessons during the holiday just to make sure they reach their peak and this has paid off. Many of our old students are in good institutions in and outside Nigeria and many of them are in high places.

 

How will you rate the progress of the Nigerian women?

I believe we have gone a long way. We are home makers and most of the responsibilities of the children are on women because of the belief that it is the men that go out to fend for the families. But unfortunately, the younger generation seems to have abdicated their positions. You find a lot of them leaving their children at the mercy of home help. Some have even left the care of their husbands to house girl and they will start to grumble that their husbands are following the house girl. They are not playing their parts as mothers. Some others prefer to have children without getting married. I believe for children to be properly brought up, it must be done by both parents. This entails quite a lot of sacrifices on the part of both parents, but nowadays, some parents don’t even see their children two, three days. When they go to work, the children are still sleeping; when they get back from work, the children have gone to bed. This is part of the problems of the society since the child’s first education is the home. When the home is failing, the society will definitely fail.

 

You said when the family fails, the society fails. It is when a family is together that a couple can train their children properly. You have been married for decades, can you share with us tips for a successful marriage?

The success of a marriage has to do more with women. Women have to be tolerant. Some women look at their husband’s phone to snoop on them. That is going to the extreme. When you do things like that, you won’t be happy in the marriage. Do things that will make you happy. As the Yorubas will say, ti  eti o ba gbo yinkin, inu o kin baje (if you are not privy to certain bad information, you won’t be unhappy). Don’t stress yourself and as much as possible, make sure you understand your partner and beware of the kind of company you keep. Some friends will give you wrong counsel. You must also be prayerful. There are lots of things around you that can break your home. Pray and make up your mind to keep your home. A young woman who goes into marriage with the mindset that if it works fine, if not, I will leave; that is a wrong attitude to marriage. Rather, make up your mind it will work and pray towards it.

 

So, how can this situation be rectified bearing in mind that both parents have to go to work to make ends meet?

I believe women have to marry both home and work. How will they do this? They have to sit down, fathom how they will combine the two together successfully. For instance, you can arrange your work in such a way that you resume early and close in good time such that you will have time to socialise with your children. Women can also work from home and their work will still be fine. This is where I believe bosses should be compassionate with women since they know we have to keep both the home and the work. You discover that where parents, particularly mothers, spend more than reasonable time at work, it will definitely affect the home. So, they must find a way of spending sufficient time to earn a living from their work and still be able to socialise with their children. It is when they do this that they will be able to know the children’s problem and the children will be closer and open up to them.  That way, the mother can monitor the child’s progress.

 

Children are fast becoming endangered species in our society. Many children are victims of domestic and sexual abuse. What is the solution to these problems?

It still boils down to what I said earlier. Parents must give time and attention to their children. If you socialise with your child, if anything is going wrong, the child will tell you. Parents have to be really friendly with their children. If you are not friendly with them, if they see something going wrong, they won’t tell you. You must also not be too stiff and over-protective of the children. If you overprotect your child, the slightest opportunity he has, he will misuse it. So, it is better to be friendly and correct them with love. Some children commit suicide because their parents are too harsh. Also, parents must lay good examples for their children. If you don’t want your children to watch a particular thing, sit them down and tell them with love why they should not watch it. If you explain it to them, once you are able to convince them not to watch it, they won’t, even if you are not there. We had an instance where a child went to a friend’s house and refused to watch a particular programme though her parents were not there. When you guide your children aright, they in turn will guide their children aright when they grow old. The era that a child should be seen and not heard is not applicable this day. Today, children should be seen and heard. When they are not heard, there is a problem.

 

What advice do you have for young people?

If you don’t have passion for teaching don’t go into it. It is different from office work, if you can’t work on a file today, you can do it tomorrow. Teaching has to do with life. Whatever you do to a child can make or mar him. Some students hate some subjects because they didn’t like the teachers that taught the subjects. Please, if you are not ready to impact lives, don’t go into teaching. Know that teaching is a calling. You have to love it to give your best.

 

 

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