Has society forgotten about the boy child?
The place of the boy and man in society is changing at a frenetic pace and many are still struggling to live with the realities of the changing landscape.
The ongoing debate about the performance of girls in the recent Kenya Certificate of Secondary Examination (KCSE) examination results is a confirmation of this.
Six out of the top ten candidates were girls led by Pangani Girls’ Naimo Karimi who scored a straight A of 87.011. This was very different from the past performances whereby people were used to seeing boys in the top positions.
Some men and boys were really touched the moment Education secretary Fred Mating’i applauded Pangani and Alliance Girl’s schools for their improved performances.
That jealousy burning inside the latter could not be withheld and they had to burst into the social media complaining how the boy child has been neglected.
Little did they know that it all started when all attention was diverted to girl child and women. Even men at that time were in support of the issue.
In the times of yonder, it was a tradition that the boy child was taught how to transit to a full grown-up man by imparting them with skills. The same applied to the girl child, who had to be shown the way of changing from a girl to a woman based on behaviours and the roles. All these was done by our grandparents. Therefore, an arising question is, where did the rain commence beating the boy child?
Problem arose as a result of a huge reduction of the population of old people ,that is, grandmothers and grandfathers to guide their grandchildren, rejection of cultural practices and that issue of separating girls for special teachings, which was majorly witnessed at primary schools at the beginning.
Just to begin with, due to the current health problems that have been brought by consumption of several chemicals, the life span of human beings has really dropped, hence, the decrease in the old people’s population.
This has made our daughters and sons miss some good basic teachings because of lack of their grandparents to show them as per the traditions.
Secondly, in connection with the tradition, the current generation has 90 per cent done away with the customs that could give them good foundations on how our boy child and girl child can transit and cope up with different challenges in life.
Lastly on that note, a burning issue that now paved the way to the current situation is gender equality. I do recall freshly in my mind that back in primary school, it was reaching a point that girls were being separated and put aside by some female teachers to be talked to in a special way.
Being extra keen boys, I could take some of my friends and go behind the buildings just to eavesdrop on the conversation. All that I can remember them being told was to be away from boys who were termed as disrupters of their studies and also they could be told some skills of how to cope up with life challenges and changes on their bodies.
At this moment boys were being released to go and play football or any other game. At that juncture, the society had not realised that they were missing a point. They never realised that gender equality is utopian, if not alien concept.
All that we have forgotten is that adversity is part of life and is necessary to enable the children build life-coping skills they will need later in life. This is because it reached a point where boys had no model on how to transit into men.
Therefore, empowering one gender must never be synonymous with stifling the other. We must come to our senses that we need a functional man and woman for a functional society