Stakeholders in the private and public sectors gathered in Abuja on Thursday to eliminator practices which overburden children and pupils by parents and schools.
The stakehoders deliberated on the growing trend of hurried child syndrome, where children are rushed to finish their studies at a tender age.
The Hurried Child’ project, aimed at highlighting the dangers of rushing or overburdening a child through childhood years conditionally or unconditionally by several factors at home, in school and the society thereby causing negative stress on the child.
The event, which was attended by highly placed academia, stakeholders both in the public and private sector, was an initiative by a none governmental organization, A Mother’s Love Initiative in collaboration with the National Orientation Agency in commemoration of the celebration of the World Day for the prevention of child abuse.
In his address, the Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, expressed worries over the practice of parents forcing children to jump classes and wanting them to become “wonder-kids” by overburdening them with accelerated teaching.
He described the practice as not only unhealthy and dangerous but counterproductive, a trend he said must be addressed head-on by the relevant agencies like the Quality Assurance Agency to save children from falling into undue stress with its attendant devastating effects.
Adamu, who was represented by Mr Adekola Ben, Deputy Director, Senior Secondary Education Department, said: “Since rushed children are made to pass through adulthood related stress, they in turn begin to exhibit adult stress and related health and adult related delinquent behaviour.
“Most of them end up underachievers instead of academic prodigy hoped for by the parents. Some also subsequently become a naiviety-ridden and end up with sleep disorder, suicide, depression drugs and crime.
“The hurried child syndrome is a popular bug among the elite class. It is a process of transferring their children from childhood to adulthood overnight by skipping the process of natural growth.”
According to him, “the phenomenon of rushed children has remained because of the weak regulatory enforcement of the National Policy on Education as well as the lack of sensitization on the Negative impact of the practice on the child and the society. It is in the light of the foregoing that I urge Quality Assurance Agencies and practitioners to be up and doing in tackling this menace.”
He said for instance, “today most pupils transit from primary five or even primary four to junior secondary 1. This leaves most schools without the primary six (6) classes.
“This unhealthy trend is also found in the senior secondary school where students in senior secondary school SSI and S$2 sit for terminal and university entrance examinations.
“They are propelled on by their parent’s desire and impatience. This is the hurried child syndrome. This is reflection in some instance of the misconception of the interpretation of the Nigerian Educational system (6-3-3-4).
“The situation also brings to fore the gradual erosion of the basic essence of education in Nigeria today. The lack of attention to the full delivery of the primary school curriculum with the absence of primary six(6) compromises the child’s opportunity to acquire the full complements, knowledge skills, emotional, physical and moral development as prescribed in the curriculum.”
Also speaking at the event, Prof. Olatunde Adekola, a senior educational specialist, World Bank, lead speaker of the event, urged parents to learn how “to distinguish between their own needs from those of the child”.
He said as long as parents continue to confuse the two, “that is the single most common cause of hurrying. The main thing is to watch the child carefully and try and understand his/her specific needs and knacks or capabilities.
“If a child enjoys learning and extracurricular activities, that is great, but if the child is struggling and resistant, it is time to back off and let him or her take his or her own time to learn as much as he or she can.”
On her part, the initiator of the Hurried Child Project and CEO AMLI, Mrs Hanatu Enwemadu Esq, called for basic sensitisation for parents and schools operators to under the dangers of pressuring children to grow at a pace that they were naturally not designed for.
She said though there were policies in place to check the practice of hurried child approach by schools, specifically, but there must be delibrate effort by all to eliminate it.
She said: “We all do understand that Nigeria system is based on the federal and in a federal system, everything comes from the top to the bottom.
“So to give this advocacy a national feel, we have to bring it here to Abuja to present the issue nationally so that we will assess and create awareness among government and inter government agencies, international bodies, to work together in partnership like you’ll see.
“This is not something for one organization to do. There is need for serious partnership and collaboration.
“Basically, to sensitise people, to inform our governments to create awareness and a whole lot, because a lot of us do not understand that this practice has an effect on Nigerian child or the African child as a whole.
“So, parents and school owners should slow down. We can see our society, our youth, and not doing very well. Remember these children are our future. The future of Nigeria, the future of education. We have policies in place to address this, but like we say, we are all governments in our different industrial opposition. Government is a collaboration you understand. So we come together to say, look, this is a problem. How do we go about it? Are there policies? Yes, there are policies.
“How will I say we need for us to come together so we can’t leave it all for governance. We have to work together. Okay. This has actually become a norm in most private spaces.”
