Children can be teachers to adults

IT becomes increasingly hard to write a column that promotes affirmation and nation-building via the simple strategy of improving literacy on every level.

Daily, we are pummelled by denials and bare-faced lying from president to publican, politician and pseudo-preachers, who resort to insect spray as a salvation strategy.

But I caution the reader against throwing down this piece as another diatribe of misery.

I am returning to my theme of literacy because it is one of the guaranteed strategies available to all citizens, regardless of categories.

It is a guaranteed key to open the doors of opportunity for the hapless millions who languish in despair, illness and hunger. I salute those columnists who can still write coherently through the avalanche of detritus that has become our daily bread.

I saw a cute sticker on the door of a Grade 7 classroom: If you can read this, thank your Grade R teacher. Another clever exhortation via the same media says: Every time you use an apostrophe ‘s’ to form a plural, a puppy dies.

You see, dear reader, children are not only here to be taught. They are here to actually teach us. By some strange genetic mutation, each succeeding generation gets smarter. Take the purchase of a new cellphone for Dad for Christmas.

He agonises over the myriad applications around which he can’t wrap his generations-old brain. Give that same phone to a seven-year-old and watch the magic.

And that, via this tortuous introduction, is my theme for this week: children as teachers of adults.

All seven of my grandchildren are better at managing the media gadgets that are available. They agree that my take on present-day matters is Jurassic. They reckon their grand-pappy (that’s me) was a pretty sharp guy in his day, but apply his logic and experience to the present time?

No way, Andre, or Desiree or Courtnay. But not Josè. They speak a language that even I, who have studied English as a subject all my life, cannot decipher, decode, unpack or even deconstruct.

You see, our skills are not their skills. We use children as fodder for our egos or forget the passion engendered by them, then regard them as burdens, party-poopers, or just plain disposable. Yet they can, as I shall cogently point out, be pointers for us to straighten up and fly right, for us to rearrange our own notions and adapt – or die.

Think of the Little Drummer Boy. He also came to see the Baby in the Manger. And he played his best on his drum for the child.

Hans Christian Anderson tells about the little Match-girl in Victorian London who was so cold she struck up the matches she was sent out into the snow to sell.

In the desperation she felt at being cold, she struck one illegal match and found she could see through the walls of a house of plenty with a goose on the table and a partridge in a pear tree.

Sadly, she strikes a second and a third, achieving the illusion of warmth and happiness. We know how the story ends. And what about the little boy who walked alone along a dyke in the Netherlands and saw the beginnings of a leak.

He could run and tell the Mayor, but maybe he knew that the Mayor wouldn’t have a clue. So he stuck his finger into the hole. Read the story for the ending.

And what about the Boy who cried “Wolf”? He was supposed to watch daily and warn his villagers of the presence of marauding wolves. They never came. When he became bored one day, he just shouted “Wolf” to get some play, some learning. No wolf. They never trusted him again. One day, a wolf really came. Read the story.

So there is my tale of hope. Listen to the children. The adage does tell us that wisdom shall come from the mouth of babes and sucklings.