Yeaning for Role Models; Society full of Wrong Models
I have interacted and worked with children, – persons who are 0-18 years as defined in Constitution of Kenya (COK) 2010, for over 20 years. The other day, I was challenged to put on paper the many interesting stories I have collected in my work with children and share them as open conversations of untold episodes of these – now adults. The episodes will range from what they remember from childhood, what makes and breaks children, dreams and aspirations, socio-political acts and geopolitical events that influence their growth political, their experiences in the education system, what parents do or don’t do that impacts on children, when role models become scarce among other thorny issues. Dr. Seuss noted that Adults are just outdated children, that adults are obsolete children. Let’s see what childhood meant for them.
In this piece, I want to share with you what we discussed with “Empowered Children (EC)” who shared their biggest yearn – Role Models. Society is proliferated with uncountable number of WRONG MODELS! A Role Model is a person you look up to and would like to be like them at one time in life. For children, the first role models they have are their parents – mother and father. These are the first people they relay on from conception to adulthood for food, protection, care and their growth. From birth when children can move their limbs, the parents and not just the mother are everything to a child. Where the biological parents abscond their role and abandon children, the foster or adoptive parents play the same role of being a model for all children who survive.
When adults conveniently choose to forget they are role models, the problems of children set in. Like any other mammal, the children are forced to look up to other persons or things to model after them. In most cases, given their small size and cognitive thinking, they take on whatever is near them in their environment. If the environment is proliferated with liquor and drunkards, the child taking to drinking, if the environment is known for using dangerous drugs, that’s the model the child will take on. If the environment is made up of class of high profile friends who convert residential houses into mini-bars sipping expensive liquor, that’s what the child fills him and herself with. On the other hand, if the environment is filled with praises, prayers and preaching, that is what the child takes to.
This explains why when you ask lower primary school children what careers they would like to get into when they grow up, they will tell you what they see. At class one, all children want to be teachers! That is the most intelligent person they first see apart from their parents. At the same time, when the parents given children a reason not to trust them when lie to them, the teacher comes in every handy and every thing the teacher says is gospel truth. There was a time when every child wanted to be a doctor, because when they got sick they went to hospital and a doctor treated them, there was a time when being a pilot was the in being because children have either had a chance of flying in a plane or the schools have organized trips to airports and children have seen a plan through the fence and they were told it is usually “driven” by a pilot. In the last decade, every child is dying to become a lawyer! Lawyers have been seen as the stars urging cases, leading process of constitutional making, making a killing from everyone including those who have killed in cold blood but they have come to their defense!
Adults confuse children, when they turn out to be the opposite of what children thought they should be. Parents are usually the first culprits. Good or bad behavior of any child starts from home. The homes make or a break a child. When a parent lies to the child i.e. a five-year old child asks a simple question like, “where did I come from? And the adult’s answer is, “we bought you from the supermarket”. Then later turns abusive be it emotional, physical and the worst is sexual – the child is completely thrown to an empty space. If the only safe environment a child knows has become very unsafe place for the helpless child, where else can they turn to? To the first thing or person that come the child’s way and that may determine what the child becomes. Parents thought the y are being clever by passing the buck to the teachers to help answer the many unresolved questions from their children – forgetting that parents are the first and last teachers of their children. No matter how educated or wealthy one may be, they cannot be greater than their parents!
By the time a child starts schooling, what has been inscribed on his or her mind makes who the child turns out to be. So teachers usually get spoiled child and teachers are usually involved in repair work! That explains why teaching is the only profession that is described as a NOBLE Profession. Making a child who could not write or even speak a different language, walking with the child as they develop their cognitive thinking to a level where the child can stand on their own and either drive a bus, captain a plane, treat a sick person and also start teaching other children is no mean achievement! A good teacher is one who makes another great teacher. But when the teachers turn into abusive animals breaking arms and legs of children because they did not know the answer to what is one plus one? Or they turn the children into sexual objects and potential wives and husbands – the children get double confused. Confusion at home and confusion at school makes the two primary institutions of growth to be mega prisons. The best the children are take out of them is forgetting all they got from those schools and revert to the tabula rasa position they were in at conception. This explains the abundance of people who behave like they have never stepped in a class or see inside of a home even when they are holders of academic certificates, diplomas, degrees and PHDs.
Which adults in Kenya – be they a professional, politician, parent, religious leader can comfortably go public with a nudge and confess that he or she is role model worth aping by children? Which adult has a local role model they have or can tell he or she is the measuring yard for their behavior and work ethics? Who is the role model of the president and deputy president, members of parliament and assembly, Cabinet secretaries?
Which is easier – to become good role models for children to enable them grow into responsible, moral adults or to come up with a bill in parliament to propose building a school for adults who will become carpenters to repair the many broken adults. We have choice today – to change to being role models or remain the wrong models status that many currently hold.
With this, the attentive “EC” left for lunch and promised to come back for a build up conversation on what can make a child a strong adult.
The term “EC” refers to young persons who have been through the Child Rights Movement in primary, secondary and Charitable Children Institutions (CCI) when they were children but were shepherded by Kenya Alliance for Advancement of Children (KAACR), a key empowerment strategy that has touched my lives not only in Kenya but a cross the world. Any such person reading this piece can share their story with me as a reminder of what we did with you.
By Tim Ekesa
Email: timekesa@gmail.com