In­nis Fran­cis

in­nis_fran­cis@ya­hoo.com

Youth aber­ra­tion could be an ex­haust­ing con­ver­sa­tion and the blame game seems to have shift­ed in every cor­ner of so­ci­ety, but Nerukhi Ato Os­ei re­cent­ly re­leased song, Don’t Blame the Chil­dren seems to have some an­swers.

Os­ei, an artist and for­mer sec­ondary school teacher, sifts through the ash­es to pin­point some key el­e­ments to the grow­ing gen­er­a­tion of failed nur­tur­ers in song.

Among the fail­ures, Os­ei not­ed lies the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of lead­ers, ra­dio per­son­al­i­ty, and the lack of par­enter­al groom­ing.

“The song was mo­ti­vat­ed by the is­sue of in­ad­e­quate par­ent­ing in so­ci­ety. Many ra­dio sta­tions seem to have aban­doned their so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and some of their mu­sic en­cour­ages an­ti-so­cial be­hav­iour of dif­fer­ent types.

In some in­stances, there is child ne­glect caused by reck­less par­ents or those un­pre­pared for the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of par­ent­ing. An­oth­er pos­si­ble so­lu­tion is manda­to­ry train­ing in par­ent­ing for would-be par­ents.

More sen­si­tive and in­tel­li­gent pro­gram­ming by ra­dio sta­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly the ones that at­tract young peo­ple with more pos­i­tive mes­sages in mu­sic and, giv­en the ex­tent of cul­tur­al vari­ance in so­ci­ety it is now dif­fi­cult to de­ter­mine if the val­ues of cer­tain au­thor­i­ty fig­ures will match with those of cer­tain homes,” he said.

The song’s jazzy beat in­fused com­men­tary, which ab­di­cates the role of adults to their chil­dren’s de­vel­op­ment and how blame is as­signed with a neg­a­tive out­come.

The song was writ­ten, per­formed, and pro­duced by Osie at Nerukhi Stu­dios in Gas­par­il­lo. Jaime Ghany on sax­o­phone, Aquil Ar­rindell on the na­tion­al in­stru­ment, Eu­gene Bass on gui­tar, and back­ground vo­cals by Janelle Mon­tique com­pli­ments his pru­dent call for nur­tur­ers to be more ac­count­able.

Osie al­so pro­posed that em­ploy­ers share the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for par­ents to take bet­ter care of their chil­dren by im­ple­ment­ing

strate­gic op­por­tu­ni­ties to aid par­ents to ef­fec­tive­ly work from home or on the job site.

He said: “Rein­tro­duc­tion of cer­tain com­mu­ni­ty val­ues that brought bal­ance such as adults rec­og­niz­ing their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to all chil­dren and work­ing to­geth­er in sup­port groups to en­sure that shared val­ues could be re-en­forced.

“In this way, the child will re­ceive greater su­per­vi­sion when away from home. More youth-cen­tered pro­gres­sive ac­tiv­i­ties to keep our youths oc­cu­pied and mo­ti­vat­ed while at the same time pro­vide op­por­tu­ni­ties for their de­vel­op­ment.

Long ago we de­pend­ed on the val­ues and ex­am­ples passed on by our par­ents. These days with the ad­vent of tech­nol­o­gy peo­ple are heav­i­ly in­flu­enced by so­cial me­dia and oth­er sources of in­for­ma­tion that may be cul­tur­al­ly in­ap­pro­pri­ate and, in some cas­es, ques­tion­able and dan­ger­ous.”

Os­ei said the cal­lous na­ture of to­day’s so­ci­ety has failed to pro­vide vi­able so­cial op­tions and caus­es peo­ple to make dif­fi­cult choic­es must al­so be not­ed. As well as, par­ents who have no sup­port sys­tem in place and can’t af­ford to pay for day­care ser­vices.

Os­ei said so­ci­ety has quite of­ten failed to ac­knowl­edge that each child has the po­ten­tial to achieve great­ness if sup­port­ed prop­er­ly.

He said the home is just one of the so­cial­is­ing in­flu­ences and we need to look at the role played by the oth­er so­cial in­sti­tu­tions such as the schools, church­es, clubs, mass me­dia, and the poor ex­am­ples set by adults, par­tic­u­lar­ly those in au­thor­i­ty.