COMMENTARY
Problems Of Adolescence
In Sierra Leone
Who IS TO BLAME?
Commentary By Abu Conteh
From the generic point of view, adolescence is the period between childhood and adulthood, roughly between thirteen and nineteen years. Based on the age bracket ascribed to this group of people, we realize that they are full of life, exuberance and most often in search of adventures.
In the case of our Sierra Leonean adolescents, the experiences of the long period of the conflict, coupled with the violence seen in the recent elections has made them much more uncontrollable. In as much as the freedom of young people must be respected, their energy and exuberance must be directed in a way that it produces desirable results.
The current internet age is something parents and the government expects the youngsters to use in order to pursue their educational and professional careers. Unfortunately that is being misconstrued in the sense that the internet is widely used to view pornographic films, violent films and immoral western pop music. Little wonder a new culture has evolved among adolescent involving violence, increased sexual urges, drug addiction and stealing.
This inculcated way of life is hugely affecting the young because most of them are not able to reflect and set meaningful goals especially those that relate to educational and future career development.
A research conducted by a famous Swiss psychologist B.F Skinner reveals that children in whatever circumstance have the likelihood of replicating whatever is being done by older adults (whether good or bad). The got this proven by setting out two groups of children for an experiment. The first groups of children were exposed to a violent film while the others were not. Those who saw the violent film came out and acted violently exactly as they saw it in the film and those who did not watch it remained modest just as they were.
If parents use this analogy very well, they will begin to draw conclusion on the internal and external social currents that are now driving their children into becoming bad boys and girls.
I walked into a busy internet café one afternoon in the centre of Freetown and found a young boy of about twelve or thirteen years old, engrossed with the computer monitor watching some pictures and scrolling them up and down. I amazingly found that he was watching pornographic pictures. I reported it immediately to the man running the centre; this time I was more amazed to get a response that the boy was equally paying money just like me, so he had right to do whatever he liked. A deep reflection overwhelmed me on that day with serious questions hovering round my mind; is this the way a nation should care for its young? Does the issue of childcare and discipline only lie with biological parents? Are we all serious about giving our future leaders acceptable societal values? Certainly no.
Another issue that has not fully caught the attention of many people is the magnitude at which young people are getting attracted to drug addiction, notably marijuana. You obviously don’t need to be a detective police man to know where these illegal substances are being taken. They are being sold, bought and smoked at street corners and Ghettos everywhere. In addition to this is the habit of particularly school boys and girls smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol in clubs.
The resultant effect of this drug addiction is the increase in the number of mental health problems. A renowned consultant psychiatrist Dr. Edward Wahim recently declared that some four hundred thousand Sierra Leoneans (10% of the country’s population) have some form of mental disorder, many of which are related to drug addiction.
Have we also taken time as parents to see how school boys and girls occupy street corners and backyard gardens at night to arrange love relationship? You can multiply the number of hours every night by the number of day in a month and see how many hours could have been lost through such unproductive means. (we often see that such situations lead to unwanted pregnancies or babies and most seriously, aborted pregnancies, leading to some health implications.
With all these things openly happening in our houses, communities and neighbourhoods I tend to ask, whose fault is it. Is it the fault of the parents community members, teachers or the adolescents themselves.?
I don’t wish to apportion blames but let me prefer these pieces of advice.
-Parents should be very watchful to know the interests of their children and their attitudes.
-The issue f childcare and discipline should be the responsibility of the entire community so that children can be corrected when they go wrong even in the absence of their biological parents.
-Parent should have regular dialogue with their children so as to in still in them matured and forward looking ways of talking critical decisions that confront them
-Parents should be selective of the friends their children should go along with.
-Personal reading habits and self discipline should be developed in young people so that they would not engage in unproductive discussions or groupings may God bless the future leaders |
