The Cost of Education

The education of one’s child holds a special kind of pride for the Nigerian parent. It matters a great deal, this education, to the extent that parents will often stop at nothing, including turning occasional villain in the eyes of their children, to achieve this. The grander the credentials, the happier the parent—and this fact is as true today, as it will be tomorrow, and has been for a while, and the determined single-mindedness that fuels it will possibly never change either. I am by no means looking to shake the foundations of these truths, but perhaps query the effect it can have on the relationship between parent and child.

Part of what education promises is its ability to fully change one’s sensibilities. The child that schools away from the direct influence of home benefits most; for as until then, the child’s make up is a kind of mishmash of their parents habits and the habits of those around them. It can be quite the thing to see a child grow into adulthood with full authority over their selfhood. The parent wants this for their child, and wagers that the best education they can afford will get them there. Often it does. What is not considered though is the potential dark side to education: that which encourages the growth of the most hideous superiority complex in the mind of the educated, separating them from others they deem primitive or stupid or both.

In those that study abroad it is most evident, and without proper attending-to, this can grow into a full disdain for one’s parents or upbringing. In the case of the lower class parents, sending their child off to ‘better their lives’ as it were, the child that returns to them is often unrecognisable. With education, one can see the reality of that idea of social mobility playing out, so that middle class sensibilities arrive at the expense of the community that the child once belonged to. Suddenly, home has a sort of pitiable smallness to it, and in it, those that previously could hold their attention are now found to be lacking in sophistication and intellect. Naturally, the personal relationship between parent and child is vulnerable with such a gulf, and feelings of being misunderstood grow in both parties. It is important to note that I don’t speak of a kind of superficial mismatch in interests and passions between the pair, but a somewhat more serious dislocation of identity and belonging that brews in the still-developing adult.

Of course these cases are not the majority. Not everyone feels so disillusioned from their home, even if they should silently believe themselves better than what’s around them. But it is worth thinking about this concern and wondering how it could be mitigated. Because frankly, it can have a sort of snowball effect onto the bigger threat of the brain drain we see Nigeria suffer.

Perhaps it’s a slight leap but it strikes me that for the Nigerian residing overseas, it only takes an initial hint of superiority—in their minds—over their community and its supposed philistine culture, for it to manifest into a more general feeling of being too polished or too refined for what the country as a whole could possibly offer them. The truly scary thing about this type of modification in thinking is that it creeps up on the individual, unannounced and terribly precise. It becomes inexplicable to them as much as anyone why they suddenly feel so far away from everything they once knew.

Ultimately, the burden falls on the educated to bridge this gap. After all, putatively part of the deal in being sharp-minded lies in the ability to relate to all peoples, regardless of their level. The onus must rest on them to negotiate these imbalances and I imagine half the battle is in identifying the danger as far ahead as possible. Which goes for the parent as well. I suppose for the parents their job remains the same in doing what they’ve always done for their kids: expect and manage their very many vicissitudes. For it’s never the differences between us that’s fatal, but in how we choose to entertain them.