Parents have been charged to educate their children on cultural heritage, by teaching them to speak their indigenous languages, as well as to prepare different delicacies; irrespective of the gender. The Parish Priest of St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Church, Kugbo, a suburb under Karu in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Rev. Fr. Cyprian Imandeh, gave the charge on Monday while delivering his homily during the Cultural Day Feast organised by the church to celebrate different cultures in Nigeria. Fr. Cyprian frowned on what he called “the carefree lives of many parents,” whom he said “are damaging the future of their children by holding conversations with them in the English Language and how to prepare noodles, instead of different cultural delicacies.” According to him, the English Language is a foreign language that can be learnt in school and that parents should teach their children their indigenous languages, “so that they will not look out of place whenever they travel down to their village from the city for one event or the other.” “Every society in the world has its culture and peculiar language and ours should not be different. It is very disheartening that some parents prefer to speak with their children in the English language, instead of their indigenous languages.
These children have all the time to learn the English Language in school, as it is the language of instruction. “Yet, when they come back from school, their parents also speak with them in English; thereby denying them the opportunity to learn their indigenous languages. As a result, the children become confused and look out of place whenever they travel to mingle with their relatives in the village,” he said.
He said God had mandated parents to teach their children to cook, irrespective of the gender, “so that they can survive without depending on anyone; that it would be a shame if their daughters were sent packing from their husbands’ houses, because of their inability to prepare any dish other than Indomie noodles.”
