Where to, values?
Nayomini Ratnayake Weerasooriya
What do you do, when you are just ten years old, have tried your best
to pass an exam and missed a good portion of your childhood in doing so?
That’s the crux of little Lashan’s story. Lashan was hovering around
the Principal’s office after the Grade 5 scholarship results were given
out. When queried, little Lashan, tears brimming in his wide eyes,
claimed his parents had warned him not to come home if he didn’t pass
well enough to obtain a scholarship to a better, bigger school.
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Recreational activities form an
integral part of childhood development. Participating in
leisure activities will strengthen children physically,
mentally and make them brighter students |
This is the story of most Sri Lankan children, whose parents focus on
driving them to pass what is seen as the gateway to a good school. The
parents have reason enough; they all want their children to achieve the
dream of a good education, something they themselves could not. But the
view from the children’s side often paints a pathetic picture - a
childhood deprived, play time compromised on the altar of studies, the
innocence of being a child, taken away too soon, replacing it with a
long and tedious journey in search of academic brilliance.
Professional career
And the children dutifully go on to do justice to their parents
relentless pursuit of a professional career. Many overcome economic
hardships and other obstacles to become successful. But there are gaps
left in their lives. Empty places that come back later in life to haunt
them and their parents. The empty place within themselves is a place
that was meant to harbour the values, the ethics, the aspects of life
that often means more than a successful career and a fat bank balance.
In their pursuit of empowering the children with a dream, the parents
often forget to give values their due place. As we all know, lives that
have not been built centred on values become empty shells; people
leading such lives may be successful but empty inside. In an ageing
society such as ours, taking care of our elders has become and will
become one of the greatest issues facing us.
Ageing parents
Increasingly, aged parents are left destitute, some lucky enough to
find shelter in homes, others left by the roadside. If you care enough
to stop a moment and seek out their stories, the tale would sound
familiar; they spent every cent they had to educate the children. They
then went further and gave the house they lived in, to the children. The
children? Having become what their parents wanted them to, they no
longer had any use for the ageing parents who were now a liability. What
of the values? Values? What values? In the quest to study, study and
study, no one had bothered with them. The parents didn’t teach the
children and the children were too busy studying to find the time.
A long time ago, our society prided itself on its solid core values -
that taught children to respect others, respect their elders, take care
of the parents, care for one another. The rat race wasn’t here then.
Yes, children were expected to do well but even if they didn’t, they
could still live by the values, the traditions they were imbibed with.
They lived by a code of honour and ethics. It was not all dog eat dog.
Not yet. As much as they mean well, the parents often make the mistake
of failing to give a balanced outlook. A good education is vital for a
child but it must be balanced.
Value system
A sound education isn’t sound enough until you teach them the values
alongside the education. If not, the children can become the ‘learned’
uneducated; it’s the values that add flavour to life, that keep the
safety valves in place. Values teach children to do things that academic
brilliance alone doesn’t. Values keep the society going.
Values teach children right from wrong. Values keep us safe from
things we do not want to get into. A value system set in motion from
early childhood serve as a guiding light for a lifetime.
To make matters worse, today’s children are born wired for the 21st
century - they are tech savvy, able to make connections and are
intelligent enough to start fiddling with an advanced phone or a
computer from an early age. They are desperately in need of moral
guidance and advice and must develop a strong value systems and ethics
from an early age. Left otherwise, they will develop their own code,
often based on self-centred pursuits, encouraged by a global culture
that says self-gratification, irrespective of the cost to others, is in.
Empathy has no place in that culture. Respecting parents, obeying
parental and school authority, which also transforms into respect for
the law and the community, is conspicuously absent from their lives.
Eye opener
The recent riots in UK were an eye opener to many parents who had
long ago let go of parental authority. A lost generation of young
people, some as young as ten or eleven, were hell bent on setting fire
and causing mayhem in the streets. And their reason? Nothing beyond the
fact that to them, it felt good to do what they did. And this in a
country that once took pride in their values of parental authority,
empathy, regard for law and order and respect for authority.
Irrespective of economic status, children on the whole are walking
away from the kind of values that once gave them a strong grounding, an
unshakable foundation of trust, discipline, ethics and honesty.
Some are being encouraged unknowingly by parents who only want to
provide everything they could for the children. Tough love is what
children need - as we have witnessed in developed societies, now reaping
what has been sown, tough love is what will teach children
responsibility and still make them feel loved.
It is still not too late for a generation to re-discover the values
of a vanishing world. To discover that what makes a life worth the
living is not a mere acquisition of material things but to be able to
send our children into society well educated but also empowered with
value that makes them above all, true human beings.
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