With many children spending less than the stipulated time in primary and secondary school, stakeholders are making efforts to check the ‘hurried child syndrome’. SAMPSON UNAMKA reports on how efforts by parents to shave off schooling years affect children negatively and one group’s effort to stop the trend.
Hurrying a child through school may be child abuse. But many parents do not see it as such. For many parents, a child’s ability to complete six years of primary education in a record four years, then go on to complete six years of secondary education in four or five years is a testament to how brilliant the child is. By the time he or she is 18 or 19 and freshly minted out of university, the child is considered a star.
However, not much is told about the challenges children face when they pass through school younger than most of their peers and the enormous amount of pressure they face.
Through its “The Hurried Child project launched last weekend in Victoria Island, a non-governmental organisation, A mother’s Love Initiative (AMLi) is shining light on these issues.
Mrs. Abiola Taylor knows firsthand the devastating effect of rushing a child from her brother’s experience. She said it usually starts when parents feel their child is very bright.
“A lot of our parents do this because they want the best for their children. But they need to understand what the best looks like and so when they don’t, what happens is that they , rush their children, especially first born children, or if the child is academically sound.
“That was what happened with my brother. They saw he could really take so much and the more they were giving to him, the more he was coping. He had a double promotion in primary school and he went from Primary four to secondary school and he got into a class with people that were older than him. And obviously there was a psychological issue there; there was a social issue with him also not being able to mingle; issues with bullies. It was also a boys’ school and boys are extra harsh and tough. So it was just like he was just thrown into the deep end at that young age and our parents did not realise that something had gone wrong until he was in SS1 or SS3 when the whole thing just crashed and then he had to be taken out of that particular school to another school to re-program himself.
“If it was not for the intervention of my mom and her fellow teachers; if my mom wasn’t even in education, you can imagine what would have happened. He was lucky. There are a lot of children out there that may not have that second chance at all,” she said.
Having experienced the hurried child syndrome herself, the Lagos State Education Commissioner, Mrs. Folasade Adefisayo, advised parents to allow their wards to complete the primary education before going into secondary school.
Mrs. Adefisayo shared how she got into the University of Ibadan at 15 and had a difficult time dealing with classmates almost 10 years older than her.
She said: “What I always tell parents: okay let the child go from primary four; so the child will now be 14 when he or she enters university. Do you really want your 14-year-old in class with 18, 19 year olds? Many of whom are sexually active? Many of whom have had all sort of experiences in life laughing at your daughter and saying mummy’s baby? That the child starts to forget your values because at that age you have to mingle with them; because a child at that age cannot yet have the strength to be able to say no this is what I stand for. You have to strengthen your child and strengthening the child means that the child has to develop a certain level of emotional maturity.
“If the child goes to primary school too early, secondary school too early, they are going to go to university too early. And this is where my own story comes in as a hurried child. I actually entered University of Ibadan (UI) at 15 years old. I clocked 16 in November, and I entered UI in September. In those days some of my classmates were 25, you know, good 9-10 years older than me. Eventually the boys in the class knew that I was so frightened, I only used to walk in the midst of girls – five girls here and another five girls here – and me in the middle so that no boy could call me. Only a boy who is really bold can come and clash with 10 girls walking alone.
“I had a very bad experience as an undergraduate, I do not have good memories of it much because I was frightened of my shadow; frightened of the boys in class who knew and therefore used to say all sorts of things to me. In fact there was one who used to follow me round. Actually one day I stood in the middle after he had followed me after I had said leave me alone, I just started crying. I was too young.
“Nobody could believe that I was in the first set that did school certificate in May-June. Before then school certificate was in December. I would have done it in December and gone for two-year A level or at least a year in A level before going to the university for prelim or whatever. But here I finished school certificate in May or June and in September I entered university. Nobody had heard of it before; people were congratulating my parents; they were so happy. It shows you that I was a good student right? But I was not a good student in UI. I was just average. At a point, I was good but I lost focus because I was just too young. The university experience I enjoyed was at Masters Level. By then I was more matured, no boy could come and if you said this and that I too would say it so
Mrs. Adefisayo said schools were conniving with parents to rush children and made it difficult for the Ministry of Education to monitor whether they are doing the right thing.
“This idea of not hurrying a child is a very difficult thing to market to some parents because most of them do it in collaboration with schools.
“There are many private schools in Lagos that do not have Primary Six classes anymore and what they do is that when we send our inspectors to such schools they have a room designated as Primary Six and it is difficult to prove because you will meet pupils in those classes.
“We have a National Policy on Education that states it clearly that children should enter (secondary) school at the age of 12, but I will be silent on that but I know it is more of question of moral suasion and not force to follow the guidelines to assure a better future for the children,” she said.
National President, World Organisation for Early Children Education (OMEP), Mrs. Olatokunbo Doherty said sometimes, school owners have to battle parents who think their children should be pushed ahead of their supposed classes.
She said AMLi’s initiative was long overdue because the hurried child syndrome was a cause for concern.
The early child expert said: “We have been really concerned about, having hurrying children into whether nursery, primary, secondary, or tertiary it is wrong. There is a developmental stage for every child and it is right of the child to belong in a good environment and at the same time too, at each stage of development the child should be happy, comfortable and you will find out they will even love school, they will even love this education and of course using the right books at the right time, not a child in Grade 1 using a book for Grade 2. No! they should be comfortable for the textbook has been assigned for that particular age group and this is part of making the child comfortable.
“No child should be hurried. Parents should be educated; workshops should be run for parents; they should be sensitised about what is going on now. That is the problem our children have when they go abroad because they cram so much and they find that even if they know the stuff yet they are not creative about their learning so it means there is something wrong.”
On his part, technocrat and politician, Prof. Pat Utomi, said children who are hurried experience trauma and mental health issues which are not usually addressed in the Nigerian society.
“In those days, it used to be fashionable to think that you are doing the child a favour but we found out since that many young people are not mature enough for places they are put. They cannot cope with the stress. One of the problems we have in our country is that we don’t really look enough at mental health and we see young people who have been traumatised by being rushed and we wonder what the problem is. We do not know that this is the consequence of some of those things. It is not by accident that people assume your age in the United States they see you are a freshman in the university they assume that at least they are 18 years old. But many are entering university at 15 in Nigeria and so mentally ill-prepared for that kind of environment. Some of them suffer trauma that affects them the rest of their lives, so it is good to get some maturity in how we evaluate these things,” he said.
Speaking on what AMLi is out to achieve, its Head, External Relations, Mrs. Hanatu Enwemadu, said it is to educate parents on the evils of hurrying their wards.
“We are trying to create awareness on this syndrome and also to help to inform the Nigerian parents on the need to allow our children and the bottom line is also to get empathy, making a case that creates empathy on the Nigerian children we are under a lot of pressure we need to slow down.
Mrs. Enwemadu added that AMLi was ready to partner with other organisations to sensitise the Nigerian society about this syndrome that has affected the mental health of many people.
“We are trying to see how we can achieve this but this is not possible on our own, so we need to come together, team up with organisations both in the public and the private sectors to see how we can make this happen.
“We started this journey five years ago and it was really tough because getting people to speak about it was not easy. Because they are being seen as being mentally not stable so it has been a journey. Many people think about that it was not easy and we are being seen technically unstable so it’s been a journey”, she said.
