Maravi

Laziness among our youths

Laziness among our youths
By The Post
Thu 14 Mar. 2013, 16:40 CAT

ZAMBIA Army director of chaplaincy Colonel Vincent Mwenya says laziness has become endemic among our youth. We agree.

And we believe that this laziness and do nothing attitude relates to the changing of discipline in the home and school. Today many parents let their children get away with most things because they think they are protecting them, the young people are not learning good hard work or discipline. When they grow up, they fail to understand that actions have consequences and the sense of being responsible.

Today we have young men and women over the age of 30 still living in their parents' homes, having free accommodation, free food, free everything and doing nothing but watch television, surf the Internet and fidget with their cell phones all day and night long.

Some of these young men and women are even marrying and producing children in their parents' homes. And the parents take care of everything. These young men and women are given money for new clothes, cell phones, talk-time, alcohol and so on and so forth. There are servants to take care of all their needs - cook for them, wash for them, clean their rooms and make their beds, and even look after their babies. The parents are paying for all that.

Most of these young men and women are not working, claiming there are no jobs. There are no jobs because most of the time these young men and women only want white-collar jobs, the same type of jobs their parents have.

They want to start their working lives as managers, as ministers and so on and so forth. Castro Chiluba used to boast: "Umwana wambwa ninshi? Nimbwa! Umwana wambushi ninshi? Nimbushi! Umwana wa president ninshi? Ni president…"

This is what the young people today want to be. The station of their parents in life should also be their stations in life forever. If their parents live in Sunningdale, Kabulonga, Woodlands, Rhodes Park, they too should live there, even if their personal stations in life can only enable them to live in Mtendere, Kalingalinga, Bauleni, Garden or Ng'ombe compounds.

Let us send them out from our homes so that they can use their minds and bodies to work. We are destroying them, and with them the nation, by giving them free accommodation and free food.

The laziness of our youth, to some extent, is responsible for the lack of rapid development in the country. They sit under trees and verandas all day long. And they try to blame this on lack of employment. We cannot expect to be rich if we don't work hard.

Our young men and women should start their work experience from lower
responsibility until they reach to the top positions of their dreams.

Some of the dreams of our young people lack responsibility. Let's dismiss lazy youths from our homes so that they can fend for themselves and learn what it means to be responsible. If you keep young men and women, with their spouses and children, in your house, you will one day be forced to resort to corruption to meet these huge obligations.

We are destroying these young people and the nation by giving free accommodation and free food to people who refuse to help in the development of this country.

What seems to be growing more and more in our nation is a lack of demand for responsibility and only emphasis on a person demanding their rights. This is unfortunate. John D. Rockefeller once said, "I believe every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty."

Sadly, parents are often to blame for this problem, for the laziness of our young people. In an effort to avoid confrontation, or the desire to make their children happy, many parents actually condition their children to be lazy. A parent's goal should be to develop a sense of wellbeing within their children by teaching them the importance of being diligent, of being hard working.

We should not, under any circumstances, reward or ignore slothful behaviour. We understand and accept the fact that parenting is an extremely hard job. But it becomes more difficult by failing to instil diligence and developing strong character in our children. Let our young people know that fun and pleasure come as a result of a good, honest work ethic.

Today's youth have a sense of entitlement that we find difficult to understand. They have no respect for their parents, or authority. And this seems to be a direct result of the way we are changing our views on how to deal with bad behaviour. We have allowed our children to think they can get away with laziness, with not working, with acting in this way.

We often hear parents say, 'When I was your age I had to walk 20 kilometres through the bush, crossing streams just to get to school.' That or something like that is usually said to a youngster who is complaining about having to do something. Laziness is inherent in youths who think they have to do nothing but eat, sleep, watch television, surf the Internet, talk on the cell phone and send SMS to friends, all at the expense and effort of someone else providing them the means and opportunity to do so. But at what point does childhood transcend into adulthood? When does a child become responsible for their own actions? When do you, as a parent, take away privileges and allow your children to fend for themselves?

Today, getting a young person to even clean up after themselves without being told is a nightmare, let alone asking them to do something on top of that. It is like pulling teeth to get them to do any chores if they do any.

As Col Mwenya has correctly implored, let us not allow laziness, which is now endemic in our youths, to continue. No country can develop that is not able to fully and effectively deploy its young people. These are supposed to be the most productive citizens of our country.

And if the most productive citizens become the most unproductive, then there is no hope for the country to develop, then there is no hope for a better life for the great majority of our people who today wallow in extreme poverty.

Labels: BENJAMIN MWAPE, WORK ETHIC, YOUTHS

posted by MrK @ 10:19 AM