A few weeks ago, a friend was speaking to her three-year-old on phone when the conversation took a baffling turn. This is how it went;
Taken aback, she had no idea how to respond to this sophisticated answer. I mean, she had expected her to say “Fine,” to which she would go on and ask her daughter what she had been up to in school, what she had read, and other questions parents tend to ask their school-going children.
It turns out that this was what she had been taught to say in school. When her teachers, the head teacher or a visitor greets them, they are all expected to say they are blessed and highly favoured, not that they are “fine”. Since that day, it has been her only response to the greeting: How are you?
This is disturbing my friend, so much so, she is even contemplating transferring her daughter to another school.
Her argument is that her child will grow up believing that this is the proper response to greeting, and might end up having a difficult time in social settings in future.
Don’t get me wrong, my friend is a devout Christian – she volunteers in church and has taught her daughter about God and how to pray. At that young age, the little girl believes that God is the giver of all things, including the food that she eats and clothes that she wears. Her mother also prays for her daily and seeks God’s blessings.
My friend suspects that this is the school’s way of building their young charges’ self-esteem, but feels they are going about it the wrong way, especially when she asked her daughter what the phrase, “highly favoured” means. She has no idea. And no, her daughter refuses to say “fine” when asked, “How are you?” because her teacher told her that she should say that she is blessed and highly favoured.
This friend equates this to bumping into an acquaintance who casually asks, “How are you?” Instead of you saying fine, like is expected, you launch into a monologue about how you really are – how your left knee has been giving you hell for months, how the cost of living has skyrocketed such that you can barely afford three meals a day, and how you cannot wait for the elections in August to come and go – you get the drift.
The truth is that when people ask you how you are, they are not really interested in knowing how you really are – they have their own pressing problems to deal with.
They simply want you to say that you are fine so that you can release them to attend to these pressing issues. The expectation is similar when people ask you how your children are – they don’t expect you to start bragging about how they were made prefect, how tall they have become, or how clever they are.
And no, they are not interested in seeing your children’s photos, so refrain from fishing your mobile phone out of your bag. They just want to hear that they are fine.
This friend feels that for a school that enforces rules with such stern rigidness (her daughter’s teacher expects her to strictly colour within the lines or within the picture, she must always put on the correct school uniform, right down to the correct shade and her hair must be plaited in neat cornrows) they are doing her daughter and schoolmates a disservice.
Why invent their own social rules, rules that the rest of society knows nothing about and will therefore frown on? Behaviour or responses that might end up setting these children apart?
Why teach children to follow rules and then make up unique ones that do not prepare them for the world that they are going to face each time they walk out the school gates?
