Horror stories abound these days. Men barely out of their teens kidnap and bump off people so that they can buy gifts for their girlfriends with the ransom money.poor children are employed as bonded labour in middle-class homes with nary a peep of protest from neighbours or peers. Animals are abused,resources are brually exploited, laws are flouted,merit is bypassed, corruption is accepted as the price for effeciency.Only candle-lit vigils,Anna Hazare rants and Munnabhai-esque Gandhigiri gestures offer very picturesque yet ineffectual protest.
I am not surprised. Just a few days ago, I requested a teacher friend to ask his class 12th standard students in one of Delhi's best known schools the difference between good and bad,right and wrong. Not one teenager had an answer or even an anecdote to explain his or her understanding of these basic cncepts that should be the moral and ethical compass for any self-respecting civilization.If they grow up in an atmoshephereof moral ambivalence-where it is okay or even necessary to coerce,bribe or cheat-such concept will indeed seem irrelevant and annoying.
Ranking single-minded progress above cognitive instinct instead of making them complementary is what causes this amazing inability to see nuances and crucial forks in life's pathways. The fundamental deficiency lies in the fact that children are coached to jump through a thousand scholastic hoops, yet by far the most important decisions they will make are about whom to marry and who to befriend, what to love and what to despise, and how to control impulses. on these matters, they are almost entirely on their own. No theories come to help them.
Lofty isssues of morality and ethics have engaged enlightened minds down the millennia, but ordinary people like us used to grasp at least the rudiments from grandma's cautionary tales,tedious moral scince classes, even Amar chitra katha comics as kids, and later on from peer groups and the like. Those students in my friend's class could have at least quoted a tale if not a modern day allegory, but those pit stops for value addition are given the go-by in our mad race to crack examinations and land jobs as success is measured in starting salaries not eventual achievements.
At a neighburhood restaurant located at V3S mall, Laxmi Nagar, a young couple walked in with a toddler and a tribal maid who could not have been older than 10. They, like all the other diners , ate and enjoyed themselves as the child looked after the infant, her face devoid of either curiousity or joy- the two hallmarks of the wonder years.
We protest indignantly the cases of racism in Australia. Yet, when we see around us that a young mother feels nothing for someones's child, a friend thinks nothing of killing a classmate to fund a holiday and so-called educated people commit or condone horrific injustices all around us, we behave like ostriches. What does that say for our culture and civilization? Clearly, India has also reached that stage of development where we are good at teaching technical skills, but when it comes to the most important things, like character, we have almost noting to say. Vashistha Ray.
I am not surprised. Just a few days ago, I requested a teacher friend to ask his class 12th standard students in one of Delhi's best known schools the difference between good and bad,right and wrong. Not one teenager had an answer or even an anecdote to explain his or her understanding of these basic cncepts that should be the moral and ethical compass for any self-respecting civilization.If they grow up in an atmoshephereof moral ambivalence-where it is okay or even necessary to coerce,bribe or cheat-such concept will indeed seem irrelevant and annoying.
Ranking single-minded progress above cognitive instinct instead of making them complementary is what causes this amazing inability to see nuances and crucial forks in life's pathways. The fundamental deficiency lies in the fact that children are coached to jump through a thousand scholastic hoops, yet by far the most important decisions they will make are about whom to marry and who to befriend, what to love and what to despise, and how to control impulses. on these matters, they are almost entirely on their own. No theories come to help them.
Lofty isssues of morality and ethics have engaged enlightened minds down the millennia, but ordinary people like us used to grasp at least the rudiments from grandma's cautionary tales,tedious moral scince classes, even Amar chitra katha comics as kids, and later on from peer groups and the like. Those students in my friend's class could have at least quoted a tale if not a modern day allegory, but those pit stops for value addition are given the go-by in our mad race to crack examinations and land jobs as success is measured in starting salaries not eventual achievements.
At a neighburhood restaurant located at V3S mall, Laxmi Nagar, a young couple walked in with a toddler and a tribal maid who could not have been older than 10. They, like all the other diners , ate and enjoyed themselves as the child looked after the infant, her face devoid of either curiousity or joy- the two hallmarks of the wonder years.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThanks a lot Basu for provoking our placid souls. Unaware, actually when we slipped into the pit of decadence we don't know.Alarmingly, we have mastered the art to live with our depraved values and bland sensibilities.Modernity is the garb we have adorned to cover our naked selfish desires and aspirations.Time has changed; yet this is not the alibi.By blurring the right and wrong,in fact, we have gone far-distant from the very ethos of our own lives and our culture at large
ReplyDelete