Our children need us to mould them

For hundreds of thousands of children across the country, as they begin their first year at school, this day is the embodiment of the cliché that “today is the first day of the rest of your life”. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed – or weepy and unhappy about being cast adrift from mom and dad – they arrive in different ways at their schools. Some will come in comfortable SUVs from their comfortable suburban homes, others will be squashed into taxis bringing them from simple township homes; still others will have to walk from their family huts on rural hillsides.

Many won’t even have the comfort of a mother or father, having been raised by a struggling gogo.

Right from the outset, those running the race to education have different handicaps. For some of them, the state will add to their burdens, as they are forced to deal with pit toilets, decrepit school buildings and teachers who couldn’t care less.

But what all these children have in common – and we call them that deliberately because that is what they are – is that they need our support. By our, we mean not just the government, the education authorities, the educators; we mean family, we mean community.

That support can be physical or monetary – because the needs of many of them are immense – but, more importantly, it should be emotional and psychological. Young people need to be loved, to be encouraged and protected.

Only by being made aware that they have value can they, too, come to value others. Only then will the adults they become be less selfish, less inclined to steal from each other, or the country. Only then will they respect others and value the lives of others. Only then will our violent anger subside.

Our future lies in how we mould these youngsters.