“TWO AREA BOYS” Professor J.T.K. Duncan and Professor J.T. Da Rocha Afodu (Continuation)

Permit me to share the following research by Harvard University:

“Harvard University Reveals The Secret To Raising Successful Kids”

Harvard University has just established that giving your kids a better life or making them successful. You know what the greatest predictors have said. Harvard University conducted a 75-year study on whether your child is born to be successful. Harvard tracked children well into their age to determine whether it is grades or being born to be successful. Children who are given chores become successful and become responsible in the future. Making them involved will make them successful and really help develop hardness and give them a sense of responsibility. Give them responsibility. I have to work hard; I have to do this, no matter who your parents are. Let them earn what you give them. Give them the life you have. Now the thinking is backwards because I am successful; I want my kids to be successful.

If you truly love your kids, instill in them by giving them less. If you give them more, you are actually setting them up for failure in the future. Otherwise you spoil your children. But statistics now show that they are going to be a failure in the long run.”

“I tried finding out if there’s such a 75-year longitudinal study correlating success in life with childhood chores.

Answer: Yes — but it’s not a single “Harvard chores study”. The claim comes from 2 different Harvard-affiliated sources that get mixed up:

1. The Harvard Study of Adult Development / Grant Study

This is the 80+ year longitudinal study people usually mean. 1eff

– Started in 1938, tracking 724 Harvard students and later their children.

– It found that “love and work ethic” were the 2 biggest predictors of adult happiness and success.

– Researchers linked early work ethic to childhood chores. Julie Lythcott-Haims, former Stanford Dean, cited the study in her 2016 TED Talk, saying, “Professional success in life comes from having done chores as a kid, and the earlier you started, the better.”

– The study itself didn’t publish a paper specifically on chores. Lythcott-Haims pulled that insight from the broader data on work ethic.

2. The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten 2011

This is the actual study that directly tested chores and outcomes.”

Now, we know why both Professor Duncan and Professor Da Rocha-Afodu were so successful. We have been provided with a vital clue. Professor J.T.K. Duncan (as Kofi, the eldest child) did a huge number of chores for his mum – including assisting her at night in her dressmaking business to meet orders for delivery on the following day.

In the case of Professor Da Rocha, as a lad, he would first have to feed his grandfather’s menagerie of pets before setting off for school.

What is fascinating is that I reviewed Professor Duncan’s books: “Milestones” and “Reflections At Eighty”.

He was truly an ambassador and advertisement for the value system that prevailed in Lagos. We had every reason to be proud to be “Area Boys” because our fathers (particularly my dad, Chief J.K. Randle; Lisa, the prime minister of Lagos) took keen interest in the football matches played at Campos Square. At the end of the match, gifts (soft drinks and ice cream) would be distributed, but kids from the other areas would be served first. Thereafter, the Area Boys would take their turn. That was sportsmanship!!

Perhaps, I should add that other parts of Lagos produced “Area Boys”, e.g., Alhaji Musliu Smith, who recently celebrated his 80th birthday. He was from the Olowogbo / Offin area. He joined the police and eventually became the inspector-general.

Another “Area Boy” was Gasper Olanrewaju Animashaun from the Isale-Eko/Onola Area. He will be eighty years old this week. He joined the Nigerian Army and rose to the rank of major-general. He also served as minister of communications. I have a long list of other Area Boys who are thoroughly disgusted that in recent times, miscreants and thugs have hijacked the honourific of Area Boys and weaponised it to cause mayhem – not excluding extortion, “419” fraud, cultism and drug trafficking. Everything has been bastardised.

I must not forget to include the fantastic “Area Girls”, such as Alhaja Lateefat Okunnu (nee Oyekan), who attended Methodist Girls High School, Yaba, followed by Queen’s College, Yaba, and thereafter University College Ibadan. She became a permanent secretary in Lagos State and also served as the deputy governor of Lagos State.

There was also Bisi Gbadamosi (nee Animashaun) who as a student at Methodist Girls High School scored “A”s in all her subjects in the WAEC (West African Examination Council) examinations. She was for many years the principal of Ahmmadiya Girl’s High School, while her husband was the principal of Ahmmadiya Boy’s High School for seventeen years.