She was told she couldn't...

She was asked by her teacher " what will you like to be in the future?". She asnwered in her 4 year old sonorous voice " I will like to be a doctor". And her teacher said "no you can't be, you are a girl and you will be a nurse, doctors are for boys'.

She got home and told her mother that her teacher had told her the truth, she is meant to be a nurse. Believe me, this is a true life story that happened a few weeks ago, in Lagos, in a private nursery and primary school and by a teacher that suppose to guide and nuture a child!

This is how so many dreams are destroyed, by mere word of mouth, wrongly spoken to inoccent hearts by uniformed adults that believe are doing the world a lot of good. This is how they make a girl-child feel inferior and lose her focus and her purpose. What are these people guiding? How do they get to be in a position of mentoring and nurturing when in truth they need to be mentored and nurtured?

If you have this unthinkable word said to your girl child, what will you do?

As development workers and stakeholders what should we do to stop this from becoming a trend?