The Dilemma of Raising Children Abroad

Vanguard (Lagos)
ANALYSIS
September 21, 2004
Posted to the web September 21, 2004

By Victor Dike


There is no substitute for education anchored on traditional African values.

FOR many African parents, raising their children abroad (particularly
the U.S), is a very daunting and challenging task. The reasons are
many, including the culture of the society, which gives enormous
powers to the child. Torn between two cultures, African parents are
therefore in a dilemma as to where to raise their children.

Those who have the infrastructure and courage to send their children
back home to Africa (in the care of their relatives) to get
familiarized with the African culture, have many things to be thankful
for. While completing their high school education, some of them seize
the opportunity to know their uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews and
grandparents, and to grow up in an environment where morality and good
character education are relatively regarded. But a few of the
misinformed African parents living abroad who have argued that those
who 'ship' their children home are 'callous' and 'selfish' seem to
forget that there is no substitute for a good education anchored on
progressive traditional African values.

It is difficult, if not impossible, for an African child to acquire a
good western education with a blend of African cultural and
traditional values abroad because the system lacks the tools to teach
African culture and tradition and virtues such as obedience and
respect for the elders/higher authorities, to care for parents at old
age (not dumping them in old folks' home), community orientation, good
moral character and behaviour, among others. Common sense shows that
if the culture and tradition of a people perish, the group also
perishes.

Culture is basically the way of life of a people. It is "the social
and religious structures and intellectual and artistic manifestations,
etc that characterise a society." Every group of people has values -
the dos and don'ts that are better learned by living with, and
observing the people of that particular society interacting with one
another.

Obviously, some behaviours that are acceptable in one society could be
an abomination in another. If one may ask, are the African children
raised in traditional African societies better behaved than the ones
raised abroad? The answer to this question would vary from individual
to individual, but the general consensus is that because of
environmental factors, African children raised abroad often display
behaviours that, under normal circumstances, would not be tolerated or
accepted in a traditional African society. Many African parents abroad
are worried about that, because they want their children to acquire
their traditional African cultural heritage - that is, African
children with African tradition.

Parental control

How would one achieve this objective in a society where the court and
child and family counsellors (some of whom are not married) dictate
for parents how to raise their children? In courts in the United
States, it is the children against their parents (or the wife against
her husband). Such condition, which gives the child unlimited powers
and freedom, undermines parental control and guidance.

It is also detrimental to family cohesion and the mental growth and
moral development of the child and makes parenting more challenging
for the African parents alien to the culture. Thus, for the culture of
a people to flourish, the people must possess the appropriate
character and the moral foundation to cultivate and sustain it.
Loyalty to that culture and tradition must be instilled in the people
at an early age. Meanwhile, the Greek philosopher, Aristotle, defined
good character as the life of right conduct - right conduct in
relation to other persons and in relation to oneself. Character
counts!

Therefore, good character consists of knowing the good, desiring the
good, and doing the good (habits of the mind, habits of the heart, and
habits of action); respect for the rights of others; regard for the
law of the land and concern for the common good, among others.
Convention dictates that these virtues are necessary for leading a
moral life for the individuals and the nation. However, any society in
which the majority of its citizens exhibit behaviours antithetical to
its fundamental values would be faced with constant 'moral crisis.'

Moral education

Historically, three social institutions share the work of moral
education in a society: the home, the church, and the school.

The influence of Western culture on these institutions and the African
homes in the Diaspora is myriad: divorce is rampant and single-parent
African homes are springing up; and some African couples are just
hanging on together without commitment and love for each other. This
itchy condition, which is not conducive to raising good children, is
causing an upsurge in dysfunctional African children in the Diaspora.
Consequently, some of them have joined the gangs and are doing drugs,
stealing and killing, or exhibiting sexual promiscuity which has given
rise to teenage pregnancy and prostitution, and cutting classes or
dropping out of school and other self-destructive behaviours.

The environment has also affected the schools - the many laws in the
society have stripped school teachers the powers to discipline
students and make them to do their class work. In some cases, the
teacher becomes a passive on-looker in the classroom, filling up forms
and documenting students' misbehaviours, instead of teaching. But in a
traditional African school system, teachers have the authority to
discipline and correct students' bad behaviour.

The churches are not spared either; with the rampant child molestation
cases, they are no longer what they used to be. As Theodore Roosevelt
was credited to have said: 'To educate a person in mind and not in
morals is to educate a menace in society.' Thus, through discipline
and teacher's good example and school curriculum, schools should
instruct children in the virtues of patriotism, hard work, honesty,
altruism, and courage.

Due to circumstances beyond their control, many families are incapable
of giving their children the necessary moral education at home, but
common sense dictates that the family is the primary moral educator of
the child and their most enduring influence. As Lickona (1991) has
rightly noted, how well parents teach their children to respect the
authorities would lay the foundation for their future moral growth.
When these institutions fail to play their role well, forces hostile
to good character rush in to fill the void.

The question therefore becomes: how could parents perform their
important traditional functions if and when their powers are diluted
or completely stripped?

Nevertheless, because of the importance of moral education to the
moral health of the African children, neither the school nor the
family should be a neutral bystander in good character education of
the African youth. Because as Friedrich Nietzsche notes in On the
Genealogy of Morals, "if something is to stay in the memory, it must
be burned in." It is appropriate to note that societies, since the
time of Plato, have made moral education a deliberate aim of
schooling.

They educated for good character as well as intellect, decency as well
as literacy, virtue as well as knowledge; they tried to form citizens
who would use their intelligence to benefit others as well as
themselves, so as to build a better world. However, as people began to
worship money and material wealth (with less regard for good
character), support for old-fashioned character education crumbled
with morality taking a nosedive.

However, despite the negative influences of the West on African
schools, the environment back home in Africa is relatively better for
'good moral education' of the African children than what is obtainable
in the West. Sadly, many of the African youths raised in the Diaspora
know little or nothing about Africa other than the distorted and
negative views the Western media houses have about the continent. It
is, therefore, imperative for African parents in the Diaspora to give
their children appropriate and realistic information about Africa to
dispel the negative perceptions the developed world has about Africa.

Towards this end, Opoku-Owusu has urged Africans in the Diaspora to
influence the media to change the negative perceptions the developed
world has about Africa. But the big question is: how would the African
child get the appropriate information if he/she were not given the
opportunity to live in an African society?

Experts in human development have noted that 'values education'
enables a society to survive and thrive, and to keep intact and grow
toward conditions that support full human development of all its
members. As noted earlier, it seems an uphill task to conduct moral
education in an individualistic and materialistic pop-culture of the
Western world -a society that 'emphasizes materialism at the expense
of good moral behaviour. And oftentimes, some of the married African
ladies in the Diaspora that are imitating the negative part of the
western culture are causing some friction and fracture in the African
homes.

The society gives ladies unlimited powers, thereby transforming some
of them into super-ladies that dictate to their husbands, and often
refuse to follow the husbands' advice. This type of behaviour is
common in the United States among those who erroneously think that
they could do well financially without their husbands. This often
leads to disunity and broken homes and makes the upbringing of their
children more cumbersome. And families bedeviled by such problems have
often ended up raising frustrated and dysfunctional children.

Economic burden

Nevertheless, because of heavy economic burden on parents, many of
them have multiple jobs that allow them little or no time for good
parental care - discipline, controlling who their children associate
with, doing homework, cleaning the house, cooking, and other house
chores. But in a more relaxed and 'less materialistic/competitive' and
community-oriented traditional African society, the wife is often at
home with the children.

More importantly, in African societies, it 'takes a whole community to
raise a child' - the neighbour, uncle, cousin, niece, nephew or 'even
a stranger' assists in raising a child in the absence of the
biological parents. Obviously, this is not possible in the Diaspora!
As William Kilpatrick noted in 'Why Johnny can't tell right from
wrong, "the core problem facing our schools [and our homes] is a moral
one.

All the other problems derive from it." These virtues could help the
child to think and behave appropriately. As William Bennett noted in
The Book of Virtues, 'a person who is morally literate will (ceteris
paribus) be immeasurably better equipped than a morally illiterate
person, to reach a reasoned and ethically defensible position on tough
issues.'

strike a balance between African traditional values and those of
individualistic society of North America;" because 'when people learn
to do good and love the good, they take delight in doing the good.' To
fill the void created by the scarcity (or lack) of educational
institutions that offer instructions in African culture, Africans in
Diaspora should come together and establish such educational centers
that could teach progressive African cultures to the children of
African descent and others interested in African culture.

If other nationalities (Asians, in particular) are doing this, why not
Africans? To solve a problem of this magnitude African leaders in
Diaspora must be proactive. Proactive problem solving, as experts have
noted, includes designing the future we want and finding the most
effective way to get there.



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*  Madiba K. Saidy, Ph.D

*  Research Scientist, Atomic Energy of Canada

*  Department of Energy & Natural Resources Canada

*  ====

*  Secretary/Treasurer

*  Joint Division of Surface Science

*  The Chemical Institute of Canada & The Canadian Association of Physicists

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