Previously published in The Island (Saturday 9th February 2008
Probably at no time before in the history of our country has there ever been exerted a more deleterious effect on children’s value-education and personality development by adults in every walk of life including the highest and the lowest ranks of society than at the present time. This is a very disconcerting observation that any responsible adult will make. Negative though such a comment may essentially sound, we should remember that the clear apprehension of a problem is the first step towards its solution.
I consider it relevant to reflect on the ideal role of adults who alone must shoulder the responsibility and who alone wield the power to initiate and maintain an instructive and inspiring relationship with children in this connection. Hence the following essay.
It is a commonplace comment that the older members of the society make that there is a general decline in moral standards among today’s young. The alleged moral degeneration is said to be evident, for example, in their failure to show respect to elders including their parents and teachers, their reluctance to offer a seat when traveling in a public conveyance to an elderly person or a pregnant woman, their love of noisy music, the uncommon propensity among them towards crime and violence, and the high level of approval that they show in respect of hooliganism during school matches, and ragging in seats of higher learning, and so on.
However, a little retrospection will be enough to reveal to ourselves the fallacy of such an observation. When we were young, we were subjected to the same criticism by our parents; they themselves had been similarly censured by their parents. Although we were then negatively judged by our elders, today we do not consider ourselves any worse than our parents were. On the contrary, it could even be asserted that we are probably more ‘moral’ than they were in certain respects. For instance, aren’t we relatively less concerned with class, caste or creed distinctions, don’t we believe more in social equality, and pay more attention to equal rights for both sexes than our parents did?
In all ages of human history there has been this adverse opinion held by older people about the apparent moral non-conformity among the youth. We come across instances of this in the ancient classical literatures of both the East and the West. The legendary founder of the Sinhala race, Prince Vijaya, had been exiled along with his friends by his father the king for his alleged delinquency before he accidentally landed in Lanka.
Usually the so-called ‘misconduct’ of the young is, in my opinion, a temporary phase of social adjustment – a period of trial and error – in which they try to come to terms with the new realities, which are naturally of little concern for their parents going to seed. Few young persons remain ‘bad’ for ever. Many reform themselves even if they have been criticized for misdemeanour before; in the case of others, what has been condemned as unacceptable by parents turns out to be something actually good, like certain forms of dress earlier deplored as unsuitable, or forms of entertainment such as social dancing which used to be frowned on by more conservative parents as immodest for girls in our country some time ago.
The older generation’s readiness to fault the moral standards of the young is due to their implicit assumption that they have arrived at an age when, for some mysterious reason, the young are born wicked. This, of course, is a total fallacy. The special moral wickedness that many adults attribute to the young people of today is no more congenital than it was in the case of their parents’ generation. I think the instances of so-called moral decadence among today’s young are really the result of socio-cultural heritage rather than skewed heredity or any other congenital aberration. By the term ‘socio-cultural heritage’ I mean the education and training that the older generation subject their offspring to voluntarily or involuntarily through their own specific moral conduct and its implicit ethical values. So when they accuse the young of low moral standards, they are blaming themselves.
In this respect many of us are blameless as individuals, but as members of a community we can’t escape collective responsibility for putting things right if there is any real erosion of ethical values among our youth. This responsibility devolves, in other words, on the older segment of the society – the social matrix which fosters the moral growth of the young. It comprises parents, teachers and all other adults who stand in a position of moral authority and influence vis-à-vis the young people of the country.
Children grow up at home enjoying the love and care of their parents, learning through both nature and nurture; play occupies them most of their time. Their moral education starts here. The growing children assimilate the vital ethical values implicit in the behaviour of their parents in addition to some basic knowledge about their environment that is essential for them to survive and flourish. That our culture recognizes this fact is evident in the Sinhala word ‘degurun’ which literally means ‘the two teachers’ and refers to ‘parents’.
When they start schooling, they leave the relatively small family circle and enter into the larger society of the school, where teachers take the place of parents. But the teachers must look after a large number of children in the school, which provides the kids a quite different milieu from their home background. Under normal, secure circumstances children are in their element in both these places.
When we consider our adult responsibilities towards the young, it will perhaps enable us to appreciate more the opportunities we have in this country to fulfill our obligations if we care to spare a moment to reflect upon the plight of thousands of innocent children in the unjust, conflict-ridden world of today who suffer in such inhospitable places as open streets, refugee camps, factories and battlefields.
Parents at home and teachers at school exercise an authority on children from which they cannot escape. It is with parents that they spend most of their time, though this statement should be heavily qualified in view of the fact that in the hectic modern society parents and children do not find themselves together at home as much as they would like since parents’ jobs and children’s tuition and other activities often keep both parties away from home much longer than in the past. In any case, generally, children spend less time at school with teachers than at home with parents. Because the length of the ‘contact period’ is an important factor in determining how much moral influence is brought to bear on the children in each case, parents could be said to play a greater role in fashioning their moral being than teachers particularly in the formative years.
There is another category of people that children interact with: this consists of their own older siblings, senior schoolmates, and adults other than their own teachers and parents that they encounter in the playground, on the street, in the bus and in every other conceivable place. Though this third group of people may not appear to exercise so dominant an influence on children as parents and teachers bring to bear on them, they do constitute a powerful element of the environment in which children grow up.
I view the element of authority or influence over children that characterizes the three groups of adults delineated above as a crucial agent in inculcating acceptable ethical values in the youth of any community. Children are taught or encouraged to look up to their parents and teachers, and other older people who come into contact with them in our still relatively tradition-dominated society. This is a good thing, provided, of course, that they are not made to demean themselves, or lose their personal dignity, or forfeit their right to independent thought in blindly following a tradition.
In western or western-oriented societies generally this authority status of adults in their interaction with children seems less important than in an eastern society like ours; in such a society children give up their dependence on parents in most matters at an early age, and their parents apparently believe that they have no right to interfere in their children’s lives beyond the early teens.
However, this is not to say that there are no exceptions to this general rule. I don’t mean this as a negative comparison. The western attitude has much to recommend it. For example, by freeing children from parental supervision so early, parents teach their children self-reliance; they avoid the risk of overprotection which is harmful to personality development. The same attitude prevails at the other end, too: filial obligations are not so ‘sentimental’ as in the East, though old, physically frail parents are not neglected.
Here our values are somewhat different. The eastern view generally is that just as parents have an obligation to bring up their children in the best way they can and to continue to protect them until they are well into their early adulthood, so do children have a duty to support their old parents who cannot fend for themselves because of age. In traditional eastern societies the observance of this principle is taken for granted. However, parents do not consider what they do for their children as sunset provisions for themselves, nor do children who support their old parents feel that they are settling old debts.
Today we are witnessing modernization’s relentless onslaught on such traditional mores. Modernization is broadly synonymous with the phenomenon of globalization that steamrollers all developing economies and cultures socially , politically and technologically. We may also assert that this global movement is the most modern form of the West’s political and economic domination of the world, which began about five hundred years ago in the Renaissance in Europe. Since material advancement is its hallmark, it invariably clashes with cultures like ours whose roots are less materialistic. Therefore in the face of modernization such values as the belief in parental and filial obligations may tend to erode, unless we are aware of this danger and do something about it.
Threatened or actual erosion of traditional cultural values could be seen by some as part of the price of material development. But it is difficult to underestimate the harmful effects of value-neutral trends on the wellbeing of the society as a whole, because it is sound ethical values that sustain and empower human beings in close-knit communities. When young people are made to overstep ethical bounds due to various reasons such as poverty, ignorance of parents, or evil societal impacts, they are pushed towards crime; it is then that they abuse drugs, rob, try to attack teachers, cheat at public examinations, and indulge in other forms of disruptive behaviour that we so often hear about.
Of values it is not only charity that begins at home; others begin at home, too. In other words, we should first observe values in the home environment before we do so in the society at large. Children learn socially acceptable modes of behaviour at home. Parents are responsible for this. It is useful to appreciate that bringing up children consists not only in feeding and clothing them, but also in educating them.
If children are to possess desirable qualities such as kindness, caring for others, industry, and honesty the older people at home must demonstrate these values in their own behaviour. No amount of preaching and teaching will be of much use where these qualities are observed in the breach. Practice is more important than mere precept.
It is generally accepted that a child’s character is decided by the time he or she reaches the age of five. So the first five years in a person’s life form the crucial period in which that person’s personality develops. If parents know this, then they will create the right kind of home environment for their children’s wholesome physical and mental development.
The most important component of that wholesome home environment is in fact parental love. When children are surrounded with love and caring, which is expressed both in words and deeds and gestures, they feel secure. A sense of security is indispensable for healthy emotional growth. It is a fact that most criminals have had a disturbed childhood.
Parents must be careful not to push their children too hard to satisfy their own exaggerated aspirations. Sometimes, parents, well-meaning though they are, tend to have ambitions for their children far beyond their native ability. When children fail to achieve these unrealistic goals set for them by their parents, frustration results, which is sometimes dangerous. Some years ago we heard about a rash of suicides among school children from Singapore and Japan, which were blamed on this kind of frustration.
Alienation from parents has been identified as one of the causes of rising juvenile crime in Germany according to sociologists. This is a social malady rampant in the West, but it is not rare in our own country. The problem of children abandoned by both parents, especially street children, is a current issue. There is also the problem of single parent families due to the absence of one of the parents as a result of foreign employment. So we are required to cope with new trends that threaten the traditional close-knit character of the family unit with deleterious effects on children’s mental wellbeing.
There is a growing younger generation of parents with the necessary educational background to provide their children the kind of parental guidance outlined above. That, indeed, is a happy prospect for the future of this country.
Teachers come next to parents. Most teachers are parents themselves with children of their own. The bond between parents and children cannot be duplicated between any other two groups of people, because parental love is unconditional. But, I think, the rapport between teachers and pupils very often comes close to that between parents and children in that the concern most teachers feel for the success of their pupils is selfless.
The school introduces children to a much wider social circle than their immediate families. On admission to a school children take a much bigger step towards socialization. In the initial stages of schooling the socializing objective is definitely more important than the information- or knowledge-acquiring process. Learning to read and write, and to deal with numbers, and computer literacy are all important, but they take a back seat in the face of the necessity for them to establish themselves as members of a society where they do not find the supportive presence of their parents, older brothers and sisters, and are suddenly confronted with the challenge of having to stand on their own feet. This is a crucial and critical phase of development for children. From the first to the highest grade of school they spend their time in the company of their numerous peers under the supervision of teachers. The period of schooling, which in Sri Lanka extends over more than thirteen years, is much longer than the five or six years of early childhood spent exclusively with parents at home, and its importance can hardly be exaggerated.
The loving, caring background that surrounds children at home must, as far as possible, be duplicated in the school. Emotional stability is essential for the development of a sound personality and also for educational success. A thorough sense of security forms the basis of such a conducive environment. Therefore the school environment must be a natural extension of the children’s secure home background.
The school stands between the protective home background of their infancy and the not so indulgent, but rather indifferent adult world where all people must ultimately live out their lives. Essentially the school society shares similarities with either: on the one hand it is like home for a child, with the teachers playing a parental role, and the children being required to share the same resources and pursue the same interests in an intimate setting; on the other hand the school environment resembles the wider adult world outside in that it includes something of the impersonal , anonymous nature of its population that we find in a more pronounced way in the latter. The school is, in fact, a microcosm of the outside world; it is a halfway house on a journey from childhood to adulthood.
My idea of a good school is one which leads its students from a position of relative ignorance to a state of greater knowledge with a parallel movement from personal immaturity to maturity through inspiration and discovery, rather than coercion. Given the innumerable pressures exerted on both the teachers and their charges such as the unwieldy size of classes, the diversity of the students’ social backgrounds, and the various administrative constraints, to mention just a few examples, the realization of such an ideal might be nearly impossible in any typical school setup. When such a conception of a school’s mission is made its overriding concern, it does not take long for the students to sense its presence and power and to respond to it positively by adapting their own conduct appropriately.
Most young students, even the childishly unruly ones, know when teachers are genuinely interested in their welfare without being told explicitly about it; they perceive it in the teachers’ work and their attitude. They will not often articulate their appreciation as readily as they would make it manifest in their behaviour towards their teachers.
The inspirational way of educating the young is never so easy as I may have suggested here; it is easier said than done, because there are many constraints that both teachers and students must contend with. Teachers and students sometimes do not agree about how best to move and clashes are bound to occur. But confrontation is least productive form of interaction between teachers and students.
It is best for young children when parents and teachers are able to inspire them through exemplary conduct.
The third category of adults comprises those who have an inevitable link with the young as members of the society at large, be they parents, teachers, or those of any other position with no direct connection with education. On a national scale all adults are parents and teachers and all the nation’s young are their children and pupils. Although the bond between the young and the adults they come into contact with outside the home and the school is obviously not so strong or intimate as the bond between parents and their children or that between teachers and their students, the intentional or unintentional influence that the adult world at large exercises on the youth of the country is significant. If all the adults behave responsibly towards the young though they may have no relationship with the latter as parents or teachers, then they will be acting in the best interest of the country.
In this capacity the third group of adults too occupy a position of potential authority with regard to the young, because the latter watch the behaviour of older people in their instinctive attempt to understand the social norms implicit in it. In schools children are taught the ethical principles governing our conduct in society. The effect of that teaching is undone when children see grown up people outside the school conducting themselves in ways that contradict those standards.
Sadly however, as far our society is concerned, there is no reason for any complacency on this score. As we know, it is the very people who are duty-bound to set a worthy example to the whole country who conduct themselves in the most despicable way, and that too in the most public manner.
Our children are condemned to live in a social environment steeped in violence resulting mainly from separatist terrorism, sectarian politics, and common criminality. The perpetrators of this violence are not from another planet. They are our own people who form part of the anonymous mass of the third group of adults we are here talking about. They all affect the young negatively.
Although ideally a society should be completely devoid of such undesirable elements, the inescapable reality is that violence is part and parcel of humanity’s lot. However, though it cannot be totally eliminated, it can be controlled. And this should be done by the good people of any society who, fortunately, are always in the majority. It is they who should both protect the young from those antisocial elements, and wean them away from being drawn into criminality.
In this essay I have considered the adult world as consisting of three main sections in terms of their interactive relationship with the young – parents, teachers, and others – only for the sake of description. The adult world is a unity. It is when all adults act in harmony with regard to the youth of the country in a responsible, supportive, and inspiring way that they can create the right environment for the healthy physical, mental and moral development of the youth, thereby ensuring a bright future for the whole country.
Rohana R. Wasala
