2 July 2009
Activities of group of learned Liberians who called themselves “the progressive” have once again come under the microscopic spotlight of a Liberian journalist, James S. King.
In a speech delivered by James S. King at the 9th Commencement Convocation of the Voice of Education School System, Airfield Community on Sunday, June 28, 2009, he partly by carefully focused on the activities of the guys who many blamed for Liberia’s troubled period.
On the topic “Liberia’s Educational Gap the Role of the purported Progressives,” he told the audience of students and parents that he could not conclude his speech without registering the concerns which “I believe are very much the concerns of every ambitious member of the present youthful generation which I am a key role player as a human resource developer.”
He said “as we convoke here today for this worthy exercise in honor of our children whom our assassinated but revered former president Rev. Dr. William R. Tolbert called his “precious jewels”, let me unequivocally state here that as a careerist and a relatively young man myself.
He recalled that it was extreme disgust and woeful robbery and exploitation, the misguide visited upon his generation by those he called “purported progressives of the 1970s and 80s” which according to him led some of his compatriots into taking arms to self destructions “because the purported progressives shielded their minds from understanding the truths about the socio-economic and political realities of the seventies and the eighties.”
“In today’s Liberia, and as a direct consequence of the misguided revolutionary leadership of the purported progressives, most members of my generation are earning their undergraduate degrees beyond what we Liberians called the calendar age, they are graduating with degrees after they have well lived beyond age thirty or thirty-one,” the Liberian journalist noted in the lengthy statement.
More than that, he said such practice has unacceptably created a huge generational academic gap between the so-called progressives and my generation.
“As former UNMIL boss once said about Liberian youths, and I quote, “Liberia is a country where parents are most educated than their children” un-quote. This should not have been the case,” he noted. “Some of those purported progressives earned their undergraduate degrees in their prime ages, but they denied us from doing so.”
Journalist King used the occasion to call on all surviving members of the purported progressive class to unconditionally issue public apology to my generation and all young people of Liberia including all those who, one way or the other were denied their rights to quality education by bringing destruction and ignorance upon them.
In the same token, the guest speaker also reflected in his speech the challenges most parents face in giving their kids education.
“There are numerous and daunting challenges that most parents face in nurturing kids. One social challenge or vise that parents should meticulously guide their kids against is the vise of the unregulated video clubbing by children under age,” Mr. King observed.
According to him, the apparent lack of concern on the parts of most parents to restrain their teens from video clubbing is undermining the educational success of our teenagers particularly the girls most of whom lurk in video clubs at odd hours to watch pornographic films.
“Our country particularly, Monrovia has become a place of indiscriminate and an unregulated display of offensive images such as half naked photographs of performing artists,” he stressed and noted that such practice is outrageous as they corrupt the inquisitive minds of our young people, and therefore needed to be halted.
“I had an experience with two female teenagers a year ago in the Fiama Community. While on my way to work this day, I came across the girls in their school uniforms standing by a video club during school hour discussing plans to boycott their next class hours in favor of video shows which posters they saw displayed on the bulletin of the very video club,” he recalled.
“While I urge parents to regulate their children on the kinds of movies they watch, I think it is equally the inexcusable responsibility of national government to institute stern and comprehensive measures to halt the unregulated proliferations of video clubs in the country and screening of movies during school times,” the Liberian media practitioner said.
According to him it was now time that the relevant authorities at the Ministry of Information stopped their “disingenuous rhetoric about controlling this public nuisance.” “Too many assurances and ultimatums have over the years been issued by Information Ministry authorities, yet the problems exist. How long should our children and youths continue to academically lack behind their contemporaries?”
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