In the past several weeks, I have argued for the need to bet on our innocent children whom we voluntarily choose to bring into the world. I submit that we bet on them when we create a future that is worthy of them and the country which they in turn can be proud to call theirs. We create that future by investing in their education from the cradle so that from the first time they open their eyes, they see a nation that cares and educates, just as they behold the love of an extended family of mother, father, siblings, uncles, aunties and grandparents who first welcome them with loving hands and cheerful faces. Today, I discuss how this initial joy of welcoming a new member of the family must lead to a lifetime of involvement in the education of that original bundle of joy.
The idea, popularised by former First Lady, former Senator and now former United States Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, that it takes a village to raise a child is originally an African belief and no indigenous African brought up in the tradition of the ancestors can escape its practical import. We come from social settings in which any older person in the village, whether a blood relation or not, has the traditional authority to discipline you so you don’t bring the village into disrepute and so that you don’t cause yourself avoidable harm. We all have stories of great uncles who are more fearful than our fathers. But more to the point, we have cases of perfect strangers who, on account of their consideration of our best interests, may choose their own way of bringing us back to our senses. I have one such story, which weaves together in an interesting way, the elements of my thoughts for today.
It was my last year in the elementary school, the Okeho Literary Society—a group of young men and women who had advanced in the education ladder—put together a program of after-school study group to prepare us for the final regional examination, the Primary School Leaving Certificate Examination. My cousin, Iyabo Ojeleye and I were enrolled by our parents. On our way to the evening class one day, we chose to walk by a fence littered with broken bottles. Unbeknown to us, Mr. Longe, the local pharmacist, sitting by his shop had been watching us. Now Mr. Longe wasn’t an indigene of Okeho. However, having been persuaded that we were endangering our lives, he knew what to do. He secured a horsewhip hanging on his door, and as we neared his shop, he pulled up his almost 7-foot body frame, with the horse whip in hand and shouted at us: e fee foju ara yin sera yin? (“do you want to hurt yourselves?”) Iyabo has been a sprinter all her life and before I knew what was going on, she had left me behind. I too managed to escape. But of course, the matter had been reported to our parents and what we escaped in the hands of Mr. Longe, we eventually received in the hands of Papa. Later in life, Isaac, Mr. Longe’s son, was one of my very good students in every respect, an outcome that I attributed to good family background and parental involvement.
The event that I just recalled is narrated to underscore the point of this discourse. First, it takes a village to raise a child. But second, as our people also understand, there has to be a demarcation of ownership in a matter of joint property. Parents have to take effective ownership of family responsibility in the education of children. And this has always been our tradition even in the pre-colonial days when our focus was on practical education for skills that were considered essential for a successful life—farming, trading, crafts, and family professions. Parents secured apprenticeship for their children, and developed good relationships with the masters training their kids. And when “western education” was introduced, in spite on their deficit in that area of knowledge, many parents understood that the future of their wards was in the hands of the teacher and the school. So they got involved in various ways.
My father was a self-taught reader and writer and was always proud when he would converse with me in English in the presence of his friends. In my student days away from home, I always enjoyed reading his letters in what I thought then was an archaic cursive writing until my children had to learn cursive in the elementary school in the United States. My friend, Bisi Adesola’s father, and my father became close on account of our education. They never missed a Parent-Teacher Association meeting and, interestingly, even after each of us had left the schools, they would still attend those meetings. For them, just as there are student alumni, there are parent alumni with responsibilities to be involved.
I followed my father’s lead almost to a fault. While he had no choice but to let me leave home for higher education, since there was no secondary school or secondary modern school in Okeho after my completion of the elementary school, I had a choice, and my wife and I decided in favour of keeping our children close to us. All our children gained admission to the popular Unity Schools when those schools were supposed to be the best. But we decided that they would be better off with us if we were actively involved in their schooling. We chose to be active in the Parent-Teachers Association of Moremi High School, Ile-Ife, a public school located on the campus of Obafemi Awolowo University. I served as the Chairman for a couple of years. I knew that the school had a dedicated staff led by Deacon J. A. Ogunwuyi who is now a proprietor of his own school. And of course, my children still tell tales of how hard it was for them in the house when they had to study for several hours a day. The point is that a school is what its clientele makes it and these include the teachers and the parents.
The literature on parental involvement in education is convincing. There is copious evidence that when the family is actively involved in the education of their children, it has a positive influence on the achievement of the children not only in school but throughout life because it enables them, not only to do well in examinations and earn good grades, but also to develop better social skills which help them in life. Initiating and nurturing family involvement in the education of children is a double-lane approach by parents and schools because there is a lot at stake for both but certainly more for the parents. A school where accountability is taken seriously and where there are consequences for failure would leave no stone unturned in getting all hands on the deck for successful students outcomes. On the other hand, parents know that the future of their kids, and their own happiness and peace of mind are at stake. They therefore have a lot more reason to get involved. Careers are important, but as the elders remind us, the probability is very high that a child that is inadvertently let untrained and unskilled may end up destroying whatever legacy an illustrious career has succeeded in building.
Surely, not all parents have the patience, skills, or self-confidence that are essential to an effective involvement on all fronts. A parent may not be able to offer direct help for a child’s home work. This is where the entire family structure has to be deployed. We pride ourselves as communal in orientation. We create the phenomenon of aso-ebi. And as I recalled above, it has also been our tradition for community organisations to get involved in the education of their members. What it requires is a new orientation that privileges the very idea of community which our urban-centered individualism has jettisoned. Then what one lacks, others can supply and together we can build a new coalition of committed family and community for the education of our children.
