Today, one of my ideal belief was confirmed and before you start to wonder what belief I'm referring to, I'll tell you. I've always been a strong believer that the environment where children are raised have 99.9% effects on their attitudes, behavior and general foundation. The same goes for adults as well. Where we reside or dwell affect us one way or the other.
I remember having this conversation with a friend a few years a back and he was of the opinion that the environment did matter but that it didn't matter much, at least not up to 90%. I beg to differ!
I say this because children are born into this world empty and everything that they know or learn, they pick up somewhere. What better place is there to pick things up than the immediate environment where they find themself.
This is why when i see young adults lacking in character, self conposure, confidence and many other necessary ingredients they need, I'm quick to blame the family. That's the first place where they miss these things. Parents are often too busy with financial obligations and other duties and neglect the needs of their children, leaving the society to fill in those gaps on their behalf.
What's sad is that the society or environment is ladden with more bad than good and trust young children, especially without any form of guidance to be more drawn to the bad, than the good.
Its amazing how much effect little kids have on each other. A perfect example was a couple of children i saw playing earlier today. While others had shoes on, a particular one was barefooted and of course was running around more easily than the others. Not long after, the other kids with their shoes on started taking them off one at a time and before i could say JACK ROBINSON, they were all barefooted.
I was not surprised, but the speed at which they all conformed was what alarmed me. They were not babies, so i was pretty sure that they knew it was wrong to walk barefooted let alone run around the house and the adjoining houses without any shoes. They just didn't care at the moment. What they wanted was to play with ease, without their shoes slowing them down and I'm sure that was all they had thought of whilst making that decision.
This goes to show how much society can influence even the best of us at certain times.
It's also the same reason why two businesses alike in every fashion, opened on the same day but in different environments will not record the same level of response or growth. They will greatly differ. That is not to say that there might not be a possibility for the same response to occur, but that is a very rare occurrence.
Just as people do market survey for their businesses before they begin, site selection, population samples and the likes, i feel that individuals not just limiting to children this time, should take time to study new environments before jumping in, to see if they tally with their values and principles and provide opportunities for positive advancement.
It'd be sad to only pick up new things everywhere we go without any true chance to develop the ones we already picked up during the course of the journey.
In my words, growth should be a steady accumulation of knowledge that will be a foundation for other things to be built on. If more things cannot be added or learnt in correlation with what is already existing, then the whole learning process is a disaster waiting to happen.
