Blue-Collar Workers Want Their Children To Go to College: Why?
By Ajanlekoko
This guest post was made by a good friend and a Senior Manager in one of the telecommunication companies operating in Nigeria. He prefers to remain anonymous but operates under the pseudonym Ajanlekoko on Nairaland.com. He earlier made same post on Nairaland.com
Here is something to think about, albeit a bit controversial.
Why do lower-class blue-collar workers insist on ensuring that their children go to tertiary institutions in Nigeria?
There are many cases I’ve seen of blue-collar workers, who can ill-afford it, bust their backs ensuring that their children all go to universities. It’s noble, but is it really practical?
Hmm.
What’s wrong with a child of a blue-collar worker learning a trade, and earning money from an early age?
Or, in the converse, what is right about a blue-collar worker begging, borrowing, and stealing, to ensure their four or five children all attend one higher institution or the other?
Are they playing a lottery with the children? The irony is that, a lot of these children also have to bribe or cheat their way to those higher institutions like a lot of other children. And most of them will probably either not do particularly well at school, and may end up sitting at home unemployed. What happens then?
We should move from the ‘you never know’ mindset, and try to be a bit more pragmatic in the way we live life in Nigeria, IMO.
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I guess my friend is trying to play the devil’s advocate here. I think, given what we all see today, irrespective of what path the children of even the lower class want to tread, the minimum education should be a degree. Don’t forget that the reality of our system is such that even when you’re good at something today, you will be underpriced because of your not having tertiary education. A case in point is this case one reader threw at us weeks back: People take advantage of me because I don’t have university degree. So, I beg to differ with AJ here.
Jarus
I think another area where we get it wrong is that some of the so called blue-collar parents who have flourishing businesses will not want their educated or graduate children to work with them.
Unlike our Indian, Lebanese, Israeli and Greek brothers who left their countries as lower caste and did blue-collar businesses or trading in Nigeria, whenever they struggle to train there children to the University level. The children will always come back to work in their lowly educated parents businesses and take the business to another level.
I think Nigerian businessmen, blue-collar and traders have a lot to learn from the Indians, Lebanese, Israelis and Greeks who are based in Nigeria.
While we are looking for jobs these foreigners who came to Nigeria about 60 years ago as blue-collar workers, traders and businessmen are buying up Lagos. There educated children are even more enterprising that there uneducated parents.
The Indian guy making millions of Naira everyday from the production and sale of Lacasera drink is roughly 40 years old, he branched out from the family business to start his own about 10 years ago.
jarus could you do me the favor of stop posting the words by this so called ajanlekoko, if his main aim is to bash Nigerians in a stupid kind ogf way then i strongly disapprove iof it an di would like you start posting constructive criticism from hin………. back to the matter, [b]IT IS BETTER TO SEND YOUR CHILDREN TO SCHOOL AND THEY DON’T MAKE USE OF IT, THAN TO HINDER THAN AND THEY LATER HEAp THE BLAME ON YOU IN THE FUTURE[/B]
It is a free world, if you are not comfortable with Ajanlekeoko’s thought you can do yourself a big favour by not reading his contributions.
Just to add to the conversation:
I have a househelp with three children, whom I found out later that two of them were sitting at home, and attending lectures for JAMB. Not a single one of them was doing any kind of work, and they were both over 18, and had finished high school. I asked my help why her kids were not working, or at least doing something to assist her (she is a widow, by the way), and she said she didn’t want them undertaking any manual labour, so they could focus on their studies!
Mind you, she repeatedly asks for loans and salary advances from me, so she can pay for one thing or the other for her kids.
In contrast, we have these tea ladies in my office. All are young girls in their 20s, they go to school part time on weekends, and work Monday to Friday. I engaged some of them recently and they were like ‘Nobody is there to train us, so we have to work and put ourselves through school.’
Now that got me thinking. Here we have one parent who has made a deliberate decision to work hard, beg, or borrow, so her children will go to school. Conversely we also have some other people who are going to school, but are not placing their burdens on anyone. The interesting thing is, because Nigeria is a dependence-oriented society on so many levels, a lot of people actually find the first case (my househelp’s situation) perfectly acceptable.
The earlier our children are introduced to the world of work the better. My father used to tell me that hard-work does not kill, rather it is laziness that kills.
My father opted for an early retirement at UNILAG, and started a business but all his children worked with him in his private business during holidays, June 12 crisis and ASUU strike.
We were paid the salary he paid school cert holders, but were given just 20% of the salary the remaining 80% was used to pay our school fees and pocket money. We never liked the way our father behaved, but I think that training shaped our work ethics, values and orientation towards money.
Imagine a father who has houses in Lagos and Ogun State, yet he collects house rents from his graduate sons living in his houses. Although he was kind enough to refund 70% of the house rent paid over the years when I got my own apartment. He said the 30% he did not refund was for knowledge and wisdom learnt from what he did to me.
I think Nigerian middle class and upper class citizens need to inculcate the right values in our children at a very early age, so that our youths will stop having entitlement mentality. How many children of Nigerian dollar denominated millionaires or billionaires have succeeded in taking their parents’ businesses to the next level?
Imagine the children of Late Sam Waltson the founder of Walmart, working as shop attendants in his chains of stores just because he wanted them to understand how the business operates. This happened at a time when he was one of the richest people in the world.
It will be very difficult for this to happen in a Nigerian owned business, although Fola Adeola and Late Tayo Aderinokun had some days in the month when they worked as tellers at GTB during the early stage of the bank. This was done in order to bond with their customers and get first hand feedbacks from them.