THE CHRISLAND SCHOOL SAGA
Fr Victor Makinwa Ogunyemi
CESACC, Catholic Institute of West Africa Port Harcourt.
Waking up one day,the whole nation was faced with the scandal of young children engaged in active sexual activities acrossthe border of Nigeria in far away Arab country, United Arab Emirates in Dubai city to be precise during a World School Games event which was a shock to many persons. Though a segment of the society holds the opinion that a nation that accommodates indecent reality shows should not be surprised to witness such, especially allowing under age to watch it along with adults without any qualms of conscience.
One of the areas that people started looking at is parenting, how such children could get to that level of moral decadence.
The fact is that parenting is going through crisis more in our time, many parents are not really qualified to be parents, many parents are not ready to be parents and many parents are on perpetual leave as parents and the whole thing is tantamount to what someone said ” now that good parents are giving birth to bad children, what happens when bad children start giving birth?”
Different attention has been given to the Chrisland school scandal and with different parts of the society apportioned blames.The society, the family, the government and the school system all have what to take as blames in the low behaviours of our children.
The agents of socialisation must wake up more to their duties more than ever before because the children in the 21st century need more attention than ever before.
Eternal vigilance is what is recommended to watch over the children, nothing should be taking for granted and the family system, the school system, the religious system and the government system should know that the tomorrow is threatened with the characters being manifested by the children of today. What hope is for the tomorrow? What is the quality of the foundation being laid? Can we say we can sleep with our two eyes closed that tomorrow is guaranteed for a sane society?
At this juncture, more focus on the parents:
Get to do a follow up with your children, don’t be surprised by your children, don’t be ignorant of who they are and what they turn out to be.
Don’t joke with mentoring and coaching of your children.
Don’t spare them discipline and sanctions when necessary. One person must cry at a time because of discipline or lack of discipline. If a child is disciplined at childhood, will surely cry at the that time and if the parents refuse a child to cry at that age, then the parents will cry later on in life when the child has grown to be a dry crayfish,become a mess.
Monitor the freedom of your children with the social media. Don’t allow them to be too free to use the social media, because an unguarded social media has ruined the lives of many children.
Watch what they wear out of the house, don’t be comfortable with your children dressed irresponsibly.
At random, check their devices for inappropriate content and get to have the password to their social media handles.
A well formed generation of children bring about a secured tomorrow. This is a project all and sundry must be involved in and see that it is a reality.
