Can you really afford that ‘exclusive’ school?

The irony is that most parents try as much as they can to take their children to those schools, disregarding the implications in it.“I don’t want to take my child to a school where they would give him what we the parents cannot afford to give him at home. They will just spoil your child […]

The irony is that most parents try as much as they can to take their children to those schools, disregarding the implications in it.
“I don’t want to take my child to a school where they would give him what we the parents cannot afford to give him at home. They will just spoil your child and make him not appreciate what you can give him,” I once said to my aunt when discussing a boarding secondary school where students’ clothes are washed and pressed.
In fact there is a very good private girls’ boarding secondary school, but the students are made to do ‘duty’ such as sweeping their rooms and making their beds. Though after they have gone to classes, cleaners would go and sweep the rooms again.
So some students complained to their parents that they were made to sweep. The school proprietor said she had to instil discipline in her students and that students, especially girls should be taught how to look after themselves and their surroundings.
 Besides the girls would be married one day, she added.
 However, the parents removed their daughters and took them to another school that students don’t sweep.
When one new school came out with all the ‘goodies’,  a friend took her daughter there.  One day when she came for third term holidays in her first year, the mother saw that she brought out her previous items that were bought for her such as soaps, biscuits and creams.
Two days later the mother asked her about the items, and she said she had thrown them away. She said they were of inferior quality to those her friends took to school and she was ashamed to bring them out to use.
The mother was shocked. She lambasted the daughter, saying, she as her mother could use those items, and why couldn’t the daughter, was she better than the mother?
And even if she didn’t want the items, why would she throw them away, asked the mother.
Well, that was the end of that school for the daughter. She was transferred to day secondary school.
In some cases, some students in prestigious universities on scholarship look down on their parents. They couldn’t wait to go back to school after holidays; complaining about the food epileptic power supply, lack of internet connection and so on.
The scholarship is in good faith, to enable those brilliant students whose parents may not be able to afford the school fees the opportunity to attend such schools. However, such students should be counselled that it is not an excuse for them to feel superior to their parents, just because they now mix with the children of millionaires who own expensive cars and live big.
They should always remember where they are coming from. And the parents, while they are happy their children get such scholarships, should pause and think. They should sit their children and talk to them about the realities of life.
 The other day when I went to one plaza, I was handed a flyer advertising a school. Things advertised among other things are,  air conditioned classes and air conditioned school bus.
I thought, to be on the safe side, may be only parents that can afford the big generators that powers the air conditions  throughout the day and night, can also afford such schools. This is because sustainable electricity is still a mirage in Nigeria, so it really doesn’t count.
Because it wouldn’t do for your child to be taken to school in air conditioned bus, stay in air conditioned class, only for him to come back home and face the heat. You may not even have air condition, or there is power outage.
And if the small child in kindergarten cries of heat and says that he wants to go back to school because there is AC there, what are you going to do?
The challenge  of such schools is enormous, I hope people are not literally handing over their children to such schools, only for them to come back as strangers full of disdain for them.