Home Upbringing: A prerequisite for Student’s Success

Intro

The school system is a microcosm of the larger community. Therefore, all the characteristics of the larger community comes to play within the university system. Students come to school with various attitude; some even inimical to their success. Some others carry a charade along and their patterns may either improve or decrease their performance. This paper therefore, is a lamentation of the extent of parental home upbringing and their impact on students’ overall performance.

Problem Statement

Each year, we receive complaints of students’ bad attitudes – sometimes, within roommates, and at other times however, we receive such reports within friendships. Just this year (2019) alone, amongst the over 50 merging of roommates we have engaged, we have received reports from more than half of these merging on inconsistent behaviours. Some roommates will not want to do house work – leaving all the chores for the other partner. Other roommates will not contribute to house development. Some have very awfully bad attitude like being tetchy. Some do not tolerate insult, yet others are “I before others”, “all eyes on me”, indiscriminate dressing, “eat boyfriend fall and jump to another”, insult elders, have no regards for authority, move at nights (even in ungodly hours – not for reading purposes), smoking (both males and females), homosexuality, rape, stealing, cultism, squandering, deceitful, not in school but collecting school fees yearly and other supporting charges and many more. Surely, the list could go on and on.

It is very perplexing receiving some of the above information about freshmen. One would expect that even if you turn bad, maybe the school environment spoilt you. In these cases however, some of these students are already bad. In fact, as it stands, it could be said that they even came to spoil the school. Well, it is nothing else, other than the fact that your success may be truncated if you do not turn a new leaf. It is against this background that we write.

A review of the Current Issue

Dear parents, please, a whole lots of responsibilities rest on you to save the university lifestyle. We see students here and most of the lives they live here are mainly attributed to the type of environment they have been exposed to. Some of the parents live indiscriminate lives – what my mother once referred to as “carry do life”. It is a very bad lifestyle. A life of anything goes. Thereby causing issues to university students. Some parents see their kids jumping on chairs, making incisions with razors cutting openings in home furniture, meat pickings, insulting elders amongst others. The best replies they give is “leave him. He is just a kid”. It is alright. He bullied his mates, you take sides with him. It is alright. He steals, you say when he grows up, he will outgrow it. Wow? Such a parental mentality? Ma? Let me ask you? Was that the way you were brought up? If yes, then, you are just like your parents. Very wrong parental upbringing.

Let me tell you dear parents. If you are not a disciplinarian, you are setting up issues little by little, issues that even you cannot settle later in life. Your very own children will soon disgrace you. Keep on leaving your children to outgrow bad attitudes. Be sparing to rod until it get too late. Tomorrow, your poor parental results will be written all over the board.

From another angle, some parents are often fond of believing that there are some male chores in the house and there are some chores for only females. The truth is that while this is a general societally accepted norm, I still believe this is wrong. Why not exposed both male and female children to all chores, even cooking? When they grow, they know how to divide chores themselves. Take the university and secondary school for instance. In the secondary schools, we have Science and Arts students. In SS1, everyone studies all subjects together. Get acquainted with all the subjects. Then, as from SS2, you select which area to go into with a pre-knowledge of both sides. Even in the university, this is also obtainable. In Business Education, under the Faculty of Education, You will have to study till year two before you will choose whether you are going into Accounting, Management, Marketing or Office and Information Technology.

So, you see? Don’t just tell your kids not to near the kitchen that kitchen is a female business. Nooooooo. This is because in the university now, your sons are now committing kitchen blunders. My undergraduate roommate will mix raw beans and rice together and cook at the same time, something I learnt from childhood that beans get done first before you bring up rice. At the end, when you are eating his food, the beans is always like stones. Half done; big blunders. Some of your children here now, because they cannot cook, they have married in advance here. If their girlfriends do not cook fresh mills for them, hotels get paid for it. These are the issues.

The issues are just too plenty. Then again, I have a new year one (painfully under-aged) who wants to use because of her beauty to finish men. Eating here and there. Collecting money from both married and unmarried men. Hope if something happens to your daughter you will start crying to God? Start that prayer now and start talking to your kids. Because very soon you will start receiving heart-wrenching reports of how someone got mad when coming down from a vehicle. What is the name of that vehicle self? Benz!

The fact is that at this age, if your kids are living bad lives, you have already failed as a parent. What you should have done in childhood that you failed to do, they are now coming up to you. Now, you have to work extra hard to meet up and it is difficult at this stage. In fact, the challenges of a university environment as a direct consequence of bad behaviours are just too numerous. Other challenges will be added in our up-coming publications.

I had an undergraduate roommate. He doesn’t know how to wash drinking cup. And bad enough, anytime he drinks water, oil or food remnant from his lips will be all over the cup. No sense of cleanliness. When I complain, it seems I am overdoing and he will raise issues. So, All I kept on doing was washing it and dying silently since I cannot bear the sight of giving a visitor water with such cup.

The truth is that a student roommate start dying a mental death when he/she lives with an incompatible student. Some will not contribute but will eat more if you give them the chance. Some are not lacking though but they have greed and want to show that they are wiser. Some will not want to work. In their home, it is laziness everyday. No sense of putting the house together. With a stinking house, they live their lives all day and now, you are living with someone who cannot stay without bathing three times a day, what a huge disparity.

One of the latest report we received was of a student whom we just merged. She will not bring money to cook. She will not wash, make bed, sweep nor do anything. She is now a “madam spread legs” while her roommate is now a nanny or slave. These things are very bad and many of them start from the house.

Shall we start talking of smoking weed or cultism? School fees fraud or students deceiving their parents? The issues are so many. As we speak, some parents are paying final year school fees now while the student did not even gained admission. That is why on the school fees issues, we try as much as possible to deal directly with parents. All fees are sent to the office account from where we pay to NDU since the Niger Delta University no longer allows direct bank payment unless through online payments. The students only got to see receipt. This is safer for parents with deceptive students.

The fact is that despite the fact that new environment will also intervene in determining who your children will become, the truth remains that your previous upbringing would have ameliorated these negative intervening variables.

A Supposed Lifestyle

What we expected was that before now, you would have brought your child up in a decent and moral way that when he comes to the university, he knows how to conduct himself and navigate the pool of bad influences. For instance, strong Christians, when they newly come to school, you do not see them engaging in relationships in their early years. No smoking, flirting and other bad behaviours and their first year performance is always good. This is the ideal situation. If otherwise, the situation can be disastrous.

Suggestions

If you are a parent of a student with a known attitude, maybe a talkative, there is still time to reconstruct and reinvent him/her/yourself. For the freshers, those of you that always do low waist, cut punk haircut, tattoo your body all over, you will not last here. Just now they will recruit you into a cult group. The best way is to live a low key live. Some of us has been in a university before. We never saw what cultist boys looked like even when the chief cultists are passing by everyday. This is because of the lifestyle we lived. Even as a postgraduate student, I still do not have encounter with them on a one on one basis except passing by. And if you look responsible especially as a gentleman, no one will even come and near you for anything. They are disturbing you because they believe that the other group will recruit you if they do not do it fast because you look like a prospective and promising cult candidate.

To avoid school fees issue, endeavour to send the money to your café agent on time (The NDU no longer accept bank deposit. All payments are made online through your www.ndufees online profile). This should be especially so if you are the spending type.

Parents who already know the bad behaviours in their freshmen should start talking to them now and also make provisions for certain circumstances that may help. For example, if you know your child is the type that talks anyhow, please, don’t allow him/her to have a roommate nor live in the hostel. Let him/her stay alone unless there is a health concern. This is because “them say, them say” is spoiling a whole lots of things in the university. People have even died on top it.

Then again mummy, your child is using iPhone and you are a primary school teacher, hmmmm. A kid at that. An underage. What have you done about it? Are you applauding her or scolding her? The types of freshers I see these days makes me try to investigate the failures of the parenting community. Some parents have indeed failed woefully.

Please, exert yourselves dear parents.

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We sincerely hope that some tips here will make you do well in bringing your kids up; children especially within the age of 16 to 20 who are just gaining admission. Do not allow them learn their mistakes from their results. Help them to prepare and have a good year one results.

The discussant has been:
Michael Oghenenyoreme Jules,
M.Ed., In V., Voc. Tech. Edu.,
Faculty of Education,
Niger Delta University
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