Let Us Be Children

So it's another weekend and after our routine morning devotion, I returned to my room to have a think and draft out my to-do for the day. Since it's weekend, it was a perfect time to carry out my weekly clean up of the house and also do some laundry. It was after I had finished cleaning the house and since the power company decided to remember us, I decided to arrange what I'm wearing to church tomorrow.

It was after this that I noticed that my young cousin was still on bed soundly sleeping. Where I come from, it's seen as disrespectful for your elders to be awake and about, doing house chores while the younger ones are still sleeping. I was about to give him a shout to get up when I remembered his situation and couldn't help but feel sorry for the boy.

He's a boy of about 15 years old, who's in SS2 and is already planning for his senior school certificate examination. But that's not the issue, that's not why I felt sorry for him. The boy just returned from his dormitory a week ago after their school closed. He's lost weight and visibly looks tired and stressed.

But instead of staying home and enjoying his long holiday, he was out to school on Monday for holiday lessons. Personally I don't see the need for the lessons, and I even tried to talk the mom out of it. I don't see why a child would spend 3 months in school studying without really having a proper time for recreation only to return to school during the holidays.

I believe those that created the school calendar understood the importance of recreation and rest for children before setting aside a particular time for holidays. I don't really see what they're going to teach them in this one month to significantly improve their knowledge base, that they did not teach in three months.

A few days ago when he returned looking like someone who just got off the desert, I asked if they're teaching them anything different and he said no. So I don't see the reason or need for these incessant lessons.

These are so rampant nowadays and have deprived children the opportunity to just be children. Day after day, they're becoming more robotic and anti-social. There is no time for play and to make friends, the only thing they know nowadays is book after book. This is taking away the humanity away from our children and is making it hard for them to fit in the society.

The boy loves accounting and I advised the mom to instead of sending him to lessons to learn the same thing they taught him in school, get him a laptop with accounting softwares for him to learn. That way he starts very early to get acclimatized with the professional tools, and by the time he gets to the university he'd be head and shoulders above his peers.

These lessons for the best part are just business ventures who are only there to make profits, not to necessarily improve children's intellect. All they care about is how much they can make, not how much these children learn.

Let's only help them find their feet and their calling and help them improve on them, instead of dictating it to them. Not everyone will be book smart, some of them are street smart but can't manifest because we've dictated to them what's acceptable without giving them a fair opportunity.

So let these children be children, let them play, let them make friends, let them build relationships, let them make their mistakes and learn from them.

Thanks for giving my ink value. You're free to air your views and opinions in the comments section, It'll be my pleasure to learn and engage. See you on the next article