Where have morals gone?

Jun 25, 2009 Editorial

A move is afoot to revive moral standards but one must wonder whether it is not too little, too late. In the first instance, the home for the greater part is not what it should be. Parents seem to have surrendered control to their children, once these children attain the age of puberty.
Sometimes, the children do not even wait to attain the age of puberty when they begin to rebel and sadly enough, many parents allow them to. For one, the parents are not trained in parenthood, particularly those in the city who became parents at a very young age when peer pressure was such that every girl thought that the best way to prove to her friends that she was grown up was to have a baby.

This past week there was the shocking revelation of two very young schoolgirls who had left school to go on a tryst with some young boys in Guyhoc. One was said to have been in bed with one of the boys while her friends kept watch. The police raided the home and took everyone down to the police station where the mother of one of the girls eventually asked that the police take no further action since she did not want her daughter to be condemned to the New Opportunity Corps.
The matter is still engaging the attention of the courts and it could make for a talking point in the days ahead.

The law is clear but the problem is with enforcing it. For example, if adults encourage sex involving an underage girl then that person could be prosecuted for reckless endangerment. There were at least two adults at the home that day. Then there are the teachers who, having been convinced that they deserve to be better paid, opt to do precious little. Indeed, there are the dedicated few, but even these often succumb to the pressure created by their colleagues. But in the school system, teachers were people who loved what they did. They basked in the achievements of their pupils and students. They ruled with an iron hand; today the hand is made of a feather and the children have grown disrespectful to the point of even slapping teachers in the school. We have even had male and female teachers making love to the children they teach. There needs no further example of moral decline.

To compound the issue, men appear to be reluctant to accept work in the public sector so that increasingly, the schools are staffed by women who are often not commanding enough to discipline some of the grown boys in the school. The absence of the men who could serve as role models, then, compounds the situation to the extent that discipline is lacking and soon indiscipline becomes the norm. The complaints about bad office practices are numerous. These are the adults who left a school system where morals were not enforced. People coming from great distances are often left to wait while the office staff chats with a colleague or fiddles with something far removed from the job at hand.

The complaints have often fallen on deaf ears because even the administrator seems unable to act for fear of either being made to feel guilty or simply because of ineptitude. But this decline is not only evident in the schools and the offices. Just about every aspect of society has been permeated. The roads are no longer safe. The old and infirm are often ignored by motorists, sometimes as these less than agile people seek to use the few pedestrian crossings.
Young children are at even greater risk. They are very mobile, active and people with relatively short attention spans. But this means nothing to motorists. At one time there was a rule that motorists exercise due care and attention in school zones. This is observed in the breach.

Indeed, there are a few who would halt, even if it means stopping the traffic behind them to allow children and the infirm to cross the roads. In the city, more and more one can see this happening.
And what has become of the salutations, particularly as one passes each other on the streets? There was a time when it was mandatory that the young salute the elders. Failing to do so often resulted in a chiding and most times, a beating from the elder or the parent. Not so today. Children are not even averse to using foul language in the presence of elders.
Disrespect knows no bounds these days and this trend is getting worse.

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