Teachers: Take A Moral Stand
Courier-Mail Tuesday, July 05, 1994
We need teachers to deepen their involvement with our children - not to add another subject, but to reveal themselves in a more personal way.
Crime is growing and becoming more amoral, like the cowardly bashing of the elderly. Even children are not safe. We have yielded up the roads where we used to play to the anti-socials. The US has taught us that more jails, harsher penalities and executions do not stop crime. Let us not follow it downhill. There is another way.
The greatest influence on the young is behaviour of their elders.
The second-greatest influence, and often the saving grace, is the sincere expression of moral values by adults of their extended "family". Today, for better or for worse, this means school. Teachers have been trained not to "get involved" in value issues, but children see them as relatives, entrusted by parents. The neutrality of teachers implies that "cool" adults don't care about right and wrong.
Teachers are wary of bringing politics into the classroom, and we are glad of that. However, there is a basic morality that stands before any ideology.
With or without religion, children must be taught that stealing, cheating, lying and hurting are wrong, and that kindness, service, honesty and respect are right.
Philip O'Carroll