I watched a video on social media in which a little girl is imploring her parents, “Help me mother! Help me father!” though not in those exact words.
She is worried about technology and its increasingly important role in the lives of parents at the expense of nurturing and guiding their children. Ironically it is to the credit of the same technology that many people will get to see that video.
The child lauds technology as innovation, creativity and modernization – all of which should be good products of a growing society – but also rightfully points out that they cannot replace nurturing and guidance, which are the primary roles parents are supposed to play in a child’s life.
Parents are using video games and sweets, and spending most of their time on laptops or WhatsApp. In a professional context, the child is decrying the acquisition and protection of material heritage at the expense of intangible heritage.
Intangible or ‘living’ forms are the traditions that are inherited from one generation to next, and are the main mode of transmission of knowledge and principles that enable us to interact with nature and the universe.
It also transmits traditional technologies and crafts which have been proven to be very environmentally friendly. Why would a parent want to give their children sweets in place of mental, spiritual and psychological nurturing?
PLAYING 'HEADMASTER'
Sugar lacks essential nutritional elements that help in physical and mental development of the young.
Sweets increase a child’s propensity to obesity, especially when combined with video games which involve little or no physical activity, not to mention the dental bills that are likely to follow, the never- ending coughs and many other side effects.
If parents critically examine the benefits of video games, they may find that it is cheaper, and healthier, to buy a child a real ball than a football video game. Many supposedly ‘science fiction’ games that involve violent conquests by aliens and other forms of life are actually 99 per cent fiction and 1 percent science!!
Traditional games played by most Kenyan children in the past involved varieties of enacting social scenarios and role-playing, with actors chosen among children. Though recreational, these games served as a mechanism of knowledge transfer.
A child would for example be given the role of headmaster and they would do their best to demonstrate the authority of the headmaster. A child given the roles of mother would practice nurturing, guidance and carrying out other roles and chores that are designated to mothers.
Even if our highly educated and modern society is happy to throw around words like ‘practices make perfect’, it does not care to encourage children to practice various roles and responsibilities in traditional games, since they earn enough to buy video games.
LEARN BY DISMANTLING
The world recognized this need when the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) adopted the Convention for the safeguard of intangible cultural heritage in 2003. In daily life, this means protecting and safeguarding those simple things that are appropriate for the heritage in question, by ensuring they remain an active part in the lives of today’s generations.
To keep interest in such simple things is to protect the intangible heritage of our country which reaffirms our common destiny and identity, not to mention the knowledge that they transmit.
We fail to appreciate the creativity children show when they see a lorry on the highway and afterwards spend time to make a similar one using locally-available materials.
We claim modernity, but are unwilling to pay to make the transfer of knowledge from our children to their age-mates possible. A parent will buy a child a video game, but will not want the child to dismantle it in an effort to establish how it works. We are only willing to adopt technology as consumers.
Lack of appreciation and understanding of what is truly ours in the face of globalization is the biggest threat to our future.
It does not even take a cent out of our 2-trillion budget, but is in our heads and our hearts. Why don’t we use it again?
