Where have their moral values gone?
I read in the papers today that a motorcyclist was flung off his bike after being hit by a car making an illegal U-turn, and while he was trying to get up, an oncoming mercedes ran over him. Accidents are common, but what shocked me about this particular one was that none of the two drivers stopped to help him. The mercedes driver even went on to the airport to fetch her hubby, then went home, as if nothing happened!!! If not for other helpful road users, the two culprits might not have been caught at all.
This is really getting too much for me to digest. The definition of conscience is "the awareness of a moral or ethical aspect to one’s conduct together with the urge to prefer right over wrong". Seems that these people are aware of what should be done, but they chose to do wrong. Whatever reasons they might have, I think they are definitely not more important than saving a life, what more that of somebody whose death they had caused.
Parents nowadays teach their children everything, but moral education is conveniently forgotten, or rather, dismissed as unimportant. This is strongly evident in the rising number of youngsters who have an "I am a customer, and customer is king" attitude towards everybody. At least they think that they are customers in school, and take society for granted. In other words, it’s everyone for himself. In this aspect, it is unfortunate that I have endless anecdotes of appalling behaviour by students in my school, such as rudeness to lecturers over test marks, hiding reference books from fellow school mates, demanding "customer service" from the school, etc. Even in customer service, I attribute the behaviour of rude sales personnel to their upbringing, not to the training provided by companies. Many times, these people probably were not brought up to have basic courtesy, so they do not understand why and when they should say "please", "thank you" or "sorry".
Many important values in life stems from moral well-being, but many do not realize it, or rather do not hold these values with high regard, probably because they do not directly bring money and material comforts for those blinded by the need to be successful in terms of standard of living.
The bottomline is that parents play the most crucial role in moulding the future generation. In fact, they are the only ones who can determine whether their children grow up with moral values because upbringing is an irreversible process, like metastating cancer. Once children are given the wrong values in upbringing, there is a limit to how anyone can bring them back onto the right track once they are past a certain stage in life. If parents choose to push this responsibility to the schools, which is a favourite excuse for many, then our society is only going to deteriorate in the moral department, which is already a recognized phenomenon. In fact, I am already counting a blessing for every well-brought-up person I meet in life. How sad.
June 6th, 2007 at 9:29 pm
if adults are already behaving like this.. irresponsible and obnoxious.. can you imagine their children.. ?