Written and published in April 2011, the article questioned if, we as a nation were indeed providing a desirable socio-economic backdrop for our children to grow to be innovative, creative and good citizens. It took a critical view of some of the practices and schemes we have accepted as norm. It is represented today for your evaluation of its merits and demerits.
“Our children are our future” is a phrase we often hear from political platforms, on world children’s day and whenever our leaders attend a school prize-giving or the opening of a new pre-school.
Our children are indeed our most important social capital. It would not be an understatement to say that they are our nation’s hope for building a desirable Sri Lankan society, sans the baggage the current generation carries of divisiveness, corrupt practices and selfish agenda. If focussed right, our leadership may be able to mould these children to be a more desirable citizenry as they grow up, where reconciliation, togetherness, honesty, integrity and transparency will be the values they will practise and uphold.
Negative lessons
Yet, some questions remain that need to be answered. Are we as a nation doing what is necessary and sufficient to nurture our children as our social capital or are we kidding ourselves thinking that what we actually do now will take us on such route? There is indeed a lot being done by many, and that is applauded. My focus today, is on some of the negative lessons we seem to teach our children, thus causing much damage to the good that is done.
On several occasions now, at the village level, I observed how our banking sector were wooing new custom on getting them to save more and more. Their targets have mostly been children. One such instance was just a day, before the recent local government elections. A candidate ceremoniously deposited Rs. 500 each in an account designed by a prominent bank exclusively for little-ones, at a nearby pre-school. The savings book had a sticker on it to say that so and so uncle was making a contribution for the future of the village children. I did not know what else to make of it, except that it was yet another promotion of a vote seeking politician. Since these innocent kids were beneficiaries of this below the belt ploy and were too little to realise its intent, I chose to have a good laugh about it. The victims indeed were the young parents.
More is not merry
Kids are often targeted at different ages and at different levels, ranging from regular school to Daham School. I often wondered how many ‘bank books’ or savings accounts an average village child will have. A young low income parent I know of a preschool child told me that his three year old had, six of them. Four were deposits made by various sources and two by the parents themselves. On further query as to why a three year hold has six accounts from several banks, the answer of the parent was that, the two they opened were responses to promotions at the hospital upon the child’s birth and at the dawn of a New Year wooed by the offer of a gift.
Your guess is as good as mine on how many of these accounts will be topped up meaningfully by the parents, to be used by this child when he or she grows to be 18 in age. Most of them for sure will remain inactive accounts forgotten by the parents and the growing child. The money deposited would have gone to pay to meet the overheads of the banks themselves and we certainly have too many of them, here in Sri Lanka.
Good fundamentals
I remember how in the early 1990’s Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew as the then prime minister, declaring that that nation’s economy needed only three banks. Those three, he said must be world class. Here is policy of a country that was not threatened by the global economic crisis, while we saw big time failing of many banks and financial institutions in many financial capitals of the world. Getting the fundamentals right was always the direction of that nation’s economic policy. Even today it maintains a healthy gross saving of around 50 percent. While our regulators may also wish to see such strength and consolidation of our financial sector organisations, the reality on the ground points to a different action scenario.
Fierce competition
Let’s now turn to the insurance industry. This is another area where a child’s future can be made secure and strong if the parents can afford to buy life insurance at an early age for their children. In a rural setting, where most villagers do not have regular income flows, insurance agents woo them appealing to their emotions, to buy life policies for their children. Fierce competition among the agents, make these promotions attractive with even goodies of gifts added-on in some instances, to woo custom.
Agents, mostly recruited from within the locality working on a per-sale commission basis often go door-to-door to generate accounts and collect premiums. After a year or so, having collected their own 30-40 percent commissions on each premium payment, they loose interest in these accounts. On close scrutiny it is revealed that the reason for this is the drop in the percentage commission level after an account has been in operation for a few years. This often results in the lapse of these policies with the burden of loss of paid-up premiums placed on the parents. Thus ends the intended benefit to the child, for whom the life cover had been bought.
While such practise may not violate any legal requirement and may even generate good revenues for the companies and agents, the moral and ethical positioning of it, must surely make our bank and insurance industry leaders, stand-up and take note.
Taught to lie
My focus next, falls on the education sector, the most vital link in ensuring that our children and their potential as social capital will be optimised. School is second home to a child and a good part of his or her moral and intellectual development is shaped within the perimeters of the school. It is sad that we need to hear of unscrupulous school principals who have taken undue payments to admit children to schools and/or of parents who use residential addresses close to the school for gaining entry to preferred schools. The child is often coached to lie about their residence to the school authorities at the admission interview, making it perhaps the first negative lesson a child learns on how to operate crooked to get things done in their living environment.
While the pain of having to go through the latter situation escapes a child seeking entrance to a ‘national’ school in rural settings, it is not uncommon to hear of school principals who demand building materials or money as contributions to building funds in return for admission of children. Here, I am not referring to calls from the school’s parent teacher association or the welfare association, once a child is admitted, for there is a lack of resources in many rural schools and a need exists for augmentation of such. My objection is for the call as a condition of gaining entry, which in-turn becomes a soft bribe, setting a bad example to the child of how the leader of his or her educational institution operates.
Sad realities
Using of school children for political purposes, to drive petty personal agenda of teachers and the conduct of tuition classes for extra payment, without fulfilling the teacher’s obligations properly at the school, have now become accepted practise in most rural schools too.
We go on discussing reforms to our systems to make our children’s education and survival skills better and have even made sweeping policy changes to them every few years. Yet, attention paid to detail and what is actually happening on the ground seems wanting. This indeed is a situation education and other decision makers both in the public and private sectors, having an impact on the development and welfare of our children must take serious note of; for they are the greatest asset we have, to make us the wonder we ought to be.
Our kids Our future
Pix credit: Self
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