What must we do to stop child mental slave trade?

By Charles Okecha

My terrific daughter returned home with a flamboyant report embedded in a holiday package file.

Other children not that divinely endowed are being molested by parents for wasting time playing not concentrating on their ‘studies'. Oblivious that their children are being fabricated to generate high grades for the indigenous investor to conscript victims of mental slave trade for profit in this economic dry spell.

Those accustomed to grading articles by writers' titles will hook themselves on ipads perusing through stale information published many years ago. Imagining that websites are heavenly manna automatically updated by angelic beings just like News sites Jerusalem Post, CNN, BBC do. Yet the brain child of Tim Berners Lee needs mortal man to modify and verify its contents through study of hard copy information and constant research.

By failing to think and reason we have duped ourselves that knowledge that works in Uganda is manufactured abroad.

Last week a muzungu who enjoys Stella Nyanzi stuff but cannot even memorise a single word he wrote, spoke out his written frustration word for word. This piece is here to fight for the future of our children who are being groomed to hate learning because it denies them sufficient food, play and parental love/care. Make no mistake, Jesus who said ‘let the little children come to Me' is contemplating snatching them away in an apocalyptic rapture! Prophet Moses prophesied about this and said, "Your sons and daughters will be given to another nation, and you will wear out your eyes watching for them day after day, powerless to lift a hand". (NIV) Woe to the remnants of this exodus, one day in their own house will be like 1000 years in Luzira!

If you think this was just Jewish stuff that ended in Babylon, Assyria, Rome or with Hitler, value your laptop, ipad, business, social media, pub, sex or even church more than your child. Deception that faith in the original bible version will grant assured entrance into heaven is at work. Did Jesus say those who say, Lord, Alpha and Omega will enter heaven, or those who obey Him?

Should parliament issue military-style decree and close all private primary schools? Or that the First Lady must resign and create space for a needy jobless Ugandan? Who else has access to all visiting, dignitaries, presidents and first ladies and opportunity to fundraise for education sector like her? We should help her identify technocrats who taught us and our honourables and still alive. She needs our ideas rather than demanding that her husband immediately leaves power after Joseph Kony, more mystical than Osama Bin Laden is assumed dead. Who knows how MPs who forget basic classroom discipline to bang tables on camera, treat their children and wives equally victims of mental slave trade while off-camera?

Media discussions and polls can be helpful but defunct ideas tend to receive mandatory press coverage as if to dictate what citizens must hear/read. Only a converted thief can catch other thieves and the point of contention should be who/how to bring tangible conversion in our society. Why not engage new faces for national talkshows including this writer?

The other problem is myopic decentralization which leaves societies that are habitual thieves to control local projects and funds, the superstitious to ritual- cleanses offices and so forth by copying demagogic manifestos.

In a snapshot, ideas that children learn through objects, play etc are always published but we play the serpent which has two tongues but no hands by talking endlessly without action.

The writer is a teacher at St. Paul's College, Mbale