My experience around Africa and in some parts of the world is that nowadays nobody is teaching our children our ways. There are no conscious efforts to have our children get the right type of education that would ensure that they have a chance to survive, not to talk of thriving. We have even lost the only basic element that is part of the colonially bequeathed education – integrity. What we are concerned about today is to get our children to pass examinations and get paper qualification.
For this purpose, parents have bought certificates for their children; they have arranged to have other people write examinations for their children. The latest in vogue now is to arrange and pay money to unscrupulous school teachers and other special classes to arrange for “special centres” for their children to write examinations where answers are written down for them on the board.
The above is the reason we have university graduates who are armed robbers and kidnappers because they cannot afford to survive in the real world as soon as they left schools. In most African cities today, there is no chance of survival for those who had only secondary school education. This is because; they merely got poor reading and writing skills for the period they spent in schools.
To survive in this world today, and this is would be more complex tomorrow, we need life skills education and personal development. While life skills would ensure that we have the capacity to provide service to others and get paid doing so, personal development would ensure that our mind and heart and mental faculties are developed to be able to think and create products, programmes, ideas and services that would enhance the quality of our lives.
What is being advocated here is that from secondary school level or as early as they can handle it, our children should be thought how to produce food, even if you are living in the cities this can still be thought with backyard gardens or hanging plants in baskets and pots right inside your rooms or by the wall. They should be thought how and why to provide service to other people. They should be thought house/home operation skills such as plumbing, electrical wiring and fittings, carpentry and furniture maintenance, decoration, cooking, sanitation, etc. This is one of the major things that differentiate the advanced and advancing societies from us.
They should be prepared to know that from age 12 or as soon as is practicable, they should be start making a living and start saving for their education and other voluntary services or for supporting the family. This is irrespective of the wealth or riches already existing in the family.
They should be taught the importance of reading and writing down their experiences, maintaining journals of all their activities, experiences, feelings, thoughts and events in the life of their family and the community.
They should be taught very early in life to love studying the scriptures and other motivational books so that they can gain wisdom required for relationships, associations, team building, networking etc, required for a wholesome community living in this day and age. The opportunities are limitless.
Money is a critical element in human interaction. Money is used to create wealth. It is surprising that our people spend between 12 and 16 and sometimes 20 years in schools and are not taught a single thing about how to create or accumulate wealth. As a result, our people come into living and do nothing except to “pursue money”. This is the bane of our society today. This is why our children are taking to crime as a sign that they are smart. This is why ‘our leaders’ or those who masquerade as such only loot the treasury. It is all because they never learned how to create or accumulate wealth. They think wealth could be stolen. Being fools, they perish with the money they looted from the public treasury and the treasury of their organizations.
With life skills education and personal development, we would engender an evolutionary trend that would make this world answer the end of its calling and glorify the name of God, our Creator.
People in our own generation and the current generation have lost it. But we can ensure that our children do not lose it also by providing these two types of education for them.
What do you think? Do you have ideas and strategies to achieve this idea?
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