This article was first published in New Vision Newspaper in December 2021
By Bob Kisiki
Isn’t all of life cyclic? Birth, growth, death. Morning, afternoon, evening and night. In some parts, you have winter, autumn, spring and summer. You have budding, growth, harvest and sowing afresh. It’s all about cycles.
Nobody gets stuck at one stage and says because I have been unwell for months, I don’t want to get well again. Nobody says since I have now got accustomed to life at sea after months of sailing, I don’t want to land. When one stage ends, life is set for the next.
That’s just how it is. To resist change is to resist nature and life itself will deal with us, as a result.
Children have been out of school for over six months. Since nobody can clearly say when the coronavirus pandemic will leave us, if at all, we can never say with certainty whether this in-school-for-a-while; out-of-school-for-a-spell thing is becoming a cycle, too.
From the start of last year to-date, this is the second time we have gone through it. One way or another, a pattern has been established. We need to adjust, because if we do not, we become victims.
Orient your school-going-children for a possible return to normal study. After all these months away from the formal school setting, it’s obvious that a lot has changed. Systems are clogged. Attitudes are changed or are changing. Possibilities adjusted. Eyes focused on other things. A thorough re-orientation is a must.
And, since we’ve just got into December and the Government promised to reopen schools next month, this is the time to psyche the children up for that time.
School is not just about the subjects they will be studying; it’s also preparing to be subject to the authorities there and beyond. I won’t call you lucky if you haven’t seen the memes people have been circulating on social media. Those are an indicator of what to anticipate, in part.
Children who feel too grown up to be told what to do. Children who have tasted big money and now wonder what formal education might be about. Children who feel that school will just be a general bother; that they have already lost out as a generation, and could as well let things slide, in their speak.
Detox their minds. Prepare them psychologically. Reorient their thinking. Rechannel their focus. Talk to them. Let them know that the road does not end at the bend; it’s just the launch of a fresh leg of the journey. The apparent touching of the sky and the land over the horizon – that’s not the end of the world; it’s just a deceptive game our vision plays on us.
The real end, if it were to come now, would only come if your child permitted it, and truth is, it’s not yet due. If they think that their generation has already been disadvantaged, how much worse it will be for the person who chooses to drop out completely!
For, over and beyond preparing people to “qualify for employment”, which is how many erroneously view education, it, even more importantly, teaches us to think, weigh possibilities and make the right choices. Children need that now more than ever before.
The writer is a parenting counsellor and a teacher
