Values We Must Teach Our Young
Saturday, January 01, 2000
We are faced with a growing crime rate - ever more of it amoral - such as the cowardly bashing of the elderly. Even children are not safe. We have yielded up the outdoors - where we used to play - to the antisocials. Our children languish indoors.
When religion waned a generation ago, morality ceased to be a fashionable topic. Religion doesn't own morality, but the two had long been linked in people's minds. Certainly, the most powerful influence on the young is the behaviour of their elders. But the second most important - and often the saving grace - is the sincere expression of moral values by the adults in their lives.
We have trained teachers not to "get involved" in value issues. But however a government department may define a teacher's duties, children see them as elders to whom we entrust them. The "neutrality" of teachers is lesson in itself. It pretends that "cool" adults - as opposed to huffing and puffing parents - don't care about morality.
We should have learnt by now to recognize morality as valid, independent of religion. And we should have learnt by now to realise that all societies need morality to be communicated to the young. Our children are born the same as the Vandals and the Huns. Any civilising factor works through the way we raise them.
With or without religion, children must be taught that stealing, cheating, lying and hurting are wrong - and that kindness, respect, honesty and service are right. Any society that does not do this is heading downhill.
Philip O'Carroll