A child’s upbringing matters more than academic excellence

In his teaching series, ‘My Life And Ministry’, Kenneth E. Hagin, reveals that he grew up without a father. His father left home one day and never returned. At the time, he was about six years old, according to the recollections of his mother and maternal grandmother who raised him. He had scanty memories of the father because he was never there much. Why did Hagin’s father abandon his family?

One day during interactions with my nephew who is in Primary Four in a traditional boarding school, I found out that they do not wash their own clothes at school. That there are women who do all the laundry from P1 to P7. This was a bit of a shock to me having come through a traditional primary boarding school where right from P1, we washed our clothes, including bed sheets.
But there was a bigger shock. When taking him back to school last term, we got chatting and I learnt that they do not even clean their own compound. That this work, as well, is done by casual labourers. The dormitories and classes too are cleaned by caretakers.

I guess even after eating, they leave their plates somewhere for someone else to wash them. So the children are left to concentrate fully on their studies and a bit of sports. Good news. Isn’t it? No.
Given the cutthroat competition among schools in terms of academic performance, with an excel-at-all-costs kind of mentality, many other aspects that contribute to the growth of a complete child such as work (not homework), have been sacrificed at the altar of good grades.

That a child leaves P7 without knowing how to wash their own clothes or clean their own environment is shocking. As a result, we are going to witness a generation that views domestic chores as a punishment; as an unwelcome interruption of good times.
A child’s upbringing matters more than academic excellence. It is an all rounded life where an individual excels in class, can take care of their personal hygiene, and interact with others, among other things. But this steely focus on grades is robbing a generation of the intangible yet salient aspects of a whole life.

Children may grow up thinking that excellent performance in chemistry, biology or physics is all that matter to make it in life. But this is only until they leave school and start realising that there are other equally important virtues that are needed alongside the ‘A’ scores in various subjects if one is to share space with others without stepping on any toes or being stepped on.

But more than knowing how to wash clothes, which chores many people abandon once they attain mid-level status in their professions, work instils a sense of responsibility in a child. It is not about knowing how to sweep all the corners of a room, but it’s also the responsibility that comes with it that matters. That the entire school relies on you to clean a certain part of the compound, subconsciously imparts a sense of duty in you. You know that if you do not clean, that place will be left unattended to the whole day, and in our days, it would also earn you a couple of strokes of cane.
Nevertheless, I will not be surprised if this negative attitude towards work adopted by the school, was pushed through by some parents, who believe that the school fees they pay should sort everything else at school as their children concentrate on reading books.

There are some parents who keeping their children away from domestic chores and replacing these with video games, swimming, dancing lessons, etc, which are good, but should not be done at the expense of work. Unfortunately, it could be such parents who export the no-work crusade from their homes to schools. But the ramifications of this are dire.
Hagin’s father came from a well-to-do family. In fact, Hagin’s paternal grandfather was a millionaire and this was in the 1920s. But his father was an only boy, among four sisters, which came with the expected indulgences.
However, Hagin’s maternal grandparents knew that their would be son-in law wasn’t a good husband material because he was an “old brut.”

But such caution fell on deaf ears of Hagin’s mother, who was determined to make her bed and lie in it, however hard. And hard it got, when her husband walked out on her never to return.
Hagin warns that “No matter how much my grandfather had, he did wrong not to teach his son how to work, not teaching him to do things for himself. Any parent I don’t care who they’re, saved or unsaved, you’re sinning not to teach their children to have responsibility.”

[email protected]