Finally, Oge had her Graduation

Finally, Oge had her Graduation
This Thursday, Ogechi, my three-year-old daughter, had her graduation. Ordinarily, this shouldn’t be news or something that merits a blog article, except the attitude that she brought to the event! For the past three weeks, since she announced the upcoming event, she has reminded me about it, at least, five times. And when it was over, she had only one regret, in fact disappointment: Daddy wasn’t there at the graduation!
Even though she now has a baby sister who is as enthusiastic as she is about her daddy, Oge remains daddy’s girl. I drop her off at school every morning, before heading out for work. Most evenings, I pick her up, too. On those days that I’m not able to pick her up, it’s not good enough for her that her mommy picks her up. On this graduation event, mommy was there to take her pictures but when I returned to ask if she missed me, she readily answered in the affirmative.
The way Oge fussed about her imminent graduation, you’d think that she was graduating with a Ph.D. Indeed, from what I know now, it was her own Ph.D. I was, totally, wrong about what the “diploma” that she received meant to her. As soon as I walked, Thursday night, the diploma was the first thing that she presented to me. I could see from her eyes that it meant the world to her. If I knew this much, I would have taken the day off from work and be there for her! To understand my miscalculation, not that it is an excuse, you’d have to understand that I belong to a different order and a different generation!
I grew up in Nigeria, not in America! Twelve years after I arrived these shores, I’m still learning how Americans do their things. Sometimes, I’m intrigued by what I see; at other times, I’m flatly amused at how Americans approach issues! Take, for example, everyone who sets foot in any kind of academic institution, from preschool to the university is a student. In Nigeria, you’d have to have got to America’s equivalent of the 7th grade to earn the title of student. At the primary school level, you are addressed as a pupil. Another example: For completing preschool, Oge came home with a diploma! In Nigeria, you’d have to be in college (university) to earn a diploma. Here, high school graduates earn a diploma, not certificate, as we have it in Nigeria. Even the word, graduation, is reserved for college students in the system that I’m accustomed to. Anyway, Up America! Whatever anyone or system does to motivate our kids to learn and like school is worthy of praise!
Any time that I see Oge and her friends (that is what they call their classmates), I’m reminded that I did not have the opportunity of a formal early childhood education. More, importantly, my heart and thoughts go out to the millions of Africa’s children who have no access to early childhood education, more than three decades since my generation left primary school. In Nigeria, alone, only about 4.6 million out of about 23 million children, under the age of six are enrolled in any form of formal early learning centers. We can do better. If you are concerned about this appalling situation, as much as I am, visit my website at www.powereducationfoundation.com to see how you can help change it. If you would like to contribute to make the early learning center that I’m building in memory of late father be the best that it is designed to be, you can visit www.alichechildcenter-ngr.org and make a donation. For the entire year, Oge studied free of charge, under what is called the Abbot program in New Jersey. It is a form of head start program; something that you cannot see in Nigeria, perhaps much of Africa, at that level of education. In Nigeria, though, education is free from the equivalent of first grade to the ninth grade but, ironically, not at the preschool level.