Recently I’ve heard several instances where teachers who
punished students gets blamed for it by the parents, while the culprit goes
scot free. The most famous incident was where that Pradeshiya Sabha member made
a teacher kneel down for punishing his daughter for having a short skirt
length. I put that down to total mental retardation. Wouldn’t expect much more
form a politician these days. Sadly, this seems to be becoming the norm, rather
than the exception.
Our parish priest gave a sermon recently on the same theme. Before
mass starts, he goes around the church and checks if children are hanging
outside of the church and drives them inside. He has reserved the front pews
especially for Sunday school students. Apparently some parents are not happy
with that. I mean, he’s just asking them to come inside the church during mass,
but that seems to be a big problem for some. He used to ask the adults to come
in too, but adults being adults, never listens, so he gave that up. It’s the
same at the school too. Punish a student and the parents come crying foul,
without even considering what the child has done.
I don’t think it’s wrong for the priest to ask people to
come inside the church during service. Regardless of your religion, if you are
participating for any religious observance, shouldn’t you participate whole
heartedly? Nobody forces you to come to church or temple. If you don’t want to
participate in the ceremonies with devotion, then why bother to come at all?
Stay home without becoming a distraction for rest of the worshippers.
A teacher I know says a similar thing. If they punish a
student and the parents come and make a big fuss about it. Yes, teachers
shouldn’t be allowed to punish indiscriminately or dole out severe punishments.
There should be some checks in place with competent supervisory roles
established to control them. But teachers should have authority and freedom to
help students rectify their mistakes.
Someone can argue that it’s better to teach the child the
right from wrong rather than punishing them. In a perfect world, children would
listen to adults and behave accordingly. But in the real world, saintly
children like that are a rare minority. We were all kids once, and we know all
the things we did back then. I was punished by teachers, but I didn’t go home
crying ‘boo hoo I got punished’. If I had done that, my parents would’ve said “you
probably deserved it”. Think about it. Would you have not done certain things
back then if the threat of punishment was not hanging in the air?
If a child doesn’t listen to good advice and keeps doing the
same wrong thing, shouldn’t they be punished? What happens now is that children
know that they can get away with anything. If someone punishes them, they go
running to their parents, knowing very well that the parents will blame
everyone except the child.
This is even happening with grown up children. A family I
know runs a Pharmacy and employ two young girls for sales work. It’s not a high
paying job, but the employers are very lenient folks. The girls on the other
hand are not that reliable and tends not to show up sometimes without prior
notice. Recently, both of them had gotten late coming in the morning and the
employer had bit sternly suggested that they try to come on time. One of the
girls has gone home and said this to her father, and the father has decided not
to send the daughter to work from there afterwards. The girl actually wants to
keep the job but the father seems adamant. It’s like that they have no work
ethic, and when the employer tries to rectify it, it’s somehow the employers
fault. If you don’t want to work according to rules, then fine, it’s your loss.
It’s funny, but people complain that it’s hard to find a job, but then they
don’t make the effort to keep the job they have. The topic of work ethics is a
whole another discussion.
Parents today are too result oriented. First, the
scholarship exams, then the O/L and the A/L, the whole target being getting in
to a university. So they are forcing kids to study from the day that they start
school. Add to that, they are white washing the wrong doings of the child. You
don’t have to be a psychologist to know that there is something wrong there. We
are just nurturing a generation of insensitive, immature people who will have
unrealistic expectations of society, and who will not have the necessary skills
to survive the real world.
