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Thursday

Education Visa To Financial Freedom



 By Aisha Maureen
Graduation is defined by the online Wikipedia as the action of receiving or conferring an academic degree or the ceremony that is SOMETIMES associated with, where students become graduates. In MOST countries, a graduation usually only occurs at UNIVERSITY LEVEL.

In Nigeria, what used to be tagged Speech and Prize giving day, memories of which bring nostalgic feelings to anyone who experienced it, has now been tagged Graduation Day and instead of emphasizing on celebrating academic excellence and giving opportunity for children skilled in one creative art or the other to display their skill, it has been turned into a money spinning venture where school authorities device various means to expose parents/ guardians of their pupils to embarrassments and rip them off as much money as they can.
It beats my imagination and saddens my heart that, today nobody talks about Speech and Prize giving day. It used to be an honorable day. A day parents and pupils look forward to with excitement. Corporate bodies are made to attend and scholarships awarded pupils who distinguish themselves academically. But, today, this day has been commercialized and baptized Graduation Ceremony. I don’t understand what we are celebrating about that graduation. It has been bastardized; turned into a huge fraud which is most painful. I found out that some parents collaborate with the school authorities to perpetrate this fraud. The most annoying part of it is that these institutions are managed by the churches. The churches entrusted a precious thing like the education of our children have turned into another thing entirely. If you look at what goes on during our graduation ceremonies, you now begin to imagine what happens in our various churches.
Some of the school authorities have taken the spiritual tabernacle to this graduation event. Parents are asked to pay to light up a candle and pray for their wards in the school. So, if you don’t have money and venture to be there, your child will feel slighted and unloved. Imagine the psychological damage this could cause the child! And some parents who decide to avoid the shame by not coming dishonor their children. For instance, my child took the second position. The child that took the first position, I wept for. That child won a lot of awards but his impoverished parents were not present to congratulate him. Even the costumes the child wore were all borrowed. My heart was broken because he is my child’s best friend. I didn’t know who to blame.
Should I blame the parents of the child who carefully decided to avoid the event for fear of being embarrassed by the money hungry school authorities in religious garb? Or should I blame the school authorities that have turned the event into a drama of extorting money from parents and guardians of the pupils. This is so bad! It should be condemned!!
Another aspect to it is that when these children start an academic session, the first few weeks the school uses for academic programs while the remaining weeks are used for rehearsals of different creative displays. Yet, when the D day comes, the children will not be allowed to display what they had been rehearsing. The MC will keep knocking out those programs the pupils had been rehearsing to accommodate the greedy school authorities and selfish parents who want to use that day for fashion parade or august meeting or launching of sorts.
Who is graduating? Is it the parents that are graduating or the institution or is it the children that are being celebrated? I am begging these charlatans who call themselves educationists to please take away this corruption from these children’s environment; children, who are still between the ages of 4 and 12, and are being subconsciously conditioned to accept that talent, creativity should be sacrificed on the altars of money-mongering. I am calling on all the bishops; both catholic and Anglican to, please, with immediate effect, tender an unreserved apology to the parents – those who have been victims, suffering in silence. These religious leaders should investigate into this matter and make sure the perpetrators are brought to book. I’m calling on the Honourable Commissioner for Education to look into this matter. She is a mother and should understand the peril our school system is exposing our kids to.
Look at the way people in the north are being turned into terrorists. You give a child bomb and she goes to a target area and detonates it and lives and properties are destroyed. It is the same destruction that we are practicing here by exposing our children to misplaced priorities. If you don’t imbibe in this child the right values and ethics that promote constructive living, once the child loses it, she has lost it. That child is being turned into a ticking time bomb that will in due time destroy you.
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