THE EDUCATED UNEDUCATED: Correct them with a light cane

THE article by A. Kathirasen "Rise of the educated uneducated" (NST, May 31) was not only good reading, but it has also generated a discussion on the subject.

 The younger generation, that is,  the "educated uneducated" (I would call them  uneducated literates) who read the column would not  appreciate the writer's meaning as they do not know what life was like 40 to 60 years ago.

 One needs to  compare the present with  past to realise the decay that has taken place in  society. It is overall decay: the fast food and junk food illnesses that people suffer from; the sedentary life that many  practise; the many causes of stress; the moral and ethical values that have been thrown out of the window; the neighbourliness that is hard to find; entertainment with  negative values that people enjoy; and  the indifferent, aggressive, uncultured  behaviour that inflicts society.  

 To those who can  make a comparisons with the past, society has suffered tremendous decay; to those who cannot make such comparison, but are practising unacceptable behaviour through no fault of theirs,  life is normal.

 The latter group would ask: "What is wrong with the way I behave?  I learnt to be like this from the examples around me. I  imitated what I saw and heard, at home, in school and  around me.

"When I was learning this behaviour, nobody said I should not follow such behaviour, and ensured that I did not.

"When, as an adult, I  practised what I had learnt as a child and what came naturally to me, why did  you condemn my behaviour, when I knew no other one?"     

 About 30 years  ago, a teenager was charged in a Malaysian court for committing a  criminal offence. When he was sentenced, his parents cried.

He told them not to cry for him, but to cry for themselves, as they had not corrected him when he  misbehaved as a  boy.

 This was reported in the press. Was the teenager being insolent towards his parents, who had raised him, cared for him and loved him? The answer is no.

He spoke from his heart and was  correct. Were his parents to blame?

 Yes, if they had known that   his  naughtiness could have led  him to become an aggressive, uncultured, even criminally-inclined person, but took no  action to correct him.

 No, if they were ignorant of the way children learnt things, acquired habits and behaviour and did not have the knowledge and skills to take  action.    

 There is a school of thought  that states that it's the responsibility of parents   to raise their children to become cultured, civilised adults.

It dismisses  suggestions of schools  being held responsible.

 I beg to differ.  Parenting skills do not come naturally.

 It is not something boys and girls are born with and which will come into play  when they become adults.  

 Parenting skills have to be learnt. Where and how do   parents  learn parenting skills?

Parenting is not just about  providing  shelter, food, clothes and  sending them to school and tuition classes.

 It is about the  development of the child, that is,  his mental, physical and emotional health, his value system, his schooling and  his recreation.

 Having children is a straightforward matter, but raising them is not.  

There is a  high failure rate among parents to raise  children to grow up to become  like Kathirasen's gentleman on a Raleigh bicycle; my father, too, had one and I used to ride it a lot.

  In the good old days of living in extended family homes,  skills were handed down from the elders, and young parents had informal on-the-job training in child raising.

 Today, they no longer have the benefit of  on-the-job parenting  training. This vacuum, therefore, needs to be filled.

This is true, but how and  by whom?  

 The social and moral diseases affecting the  younger generation  are rooted in their upbringing.

It is a tragedy  that this is not recognised by those handling or working with children, or making policies affecting children.

 For example, child misbehaviour is let off on the excuse that being  young, they do not understand what they are doing, or that they are just being playful.

But as they grow older, they will begin to understand good and bad and change for the better. Nothing could be further from the truth.

 It is  absurd to think that children will change  as they mature.

On the contrary, misbehaviour that is not  corrected as soon as it  manifests  itself, regardless of the age of  the child, is repeated over and over  and gets embedded in the body and mind and follows the child into adulthood.

 Thus, to  misbehaving adults, it is normal and natural behaviour.

 Another serious misconception is that any physical punishment of a misbehaving child is offensive and violates the child's rights.

One must remember that the child also has the right to be brought up as a well-behaved, cultured person.  

 The child cannot articulate this right, neither does he know of it at the critical character-forming age, or  even during his lifetime.

So, how is this right of  children to be brought up as "educated people" to be carried out, when  the children  themselves are  unaware of those people?

Similarly,  children are   unaware of their right to be given medical attention when they are   ill, but this we do. We are even prepared to let them be operated on.

 The difference is that an illness is  obvious, and the result of treatment is also seen quickly.

Character development is a  different kettle of fish and it takes many years.  

 Everything that  children do, is allowed to do and imitate, has a cumulative effect on their character development. The results become obvious when these children reach adulthood.

 Society then becomes saddled with a generation of "educated uneducated", and from then on, goes into a chain reaction that produces further generations of "educated uneducated".  

  It is a tragedy that some people, like doctors who can influence public opinion and action with theories about child rearing, have condemned spanking to check child misbehaviour.

 This is not to be confused with violent spanking of children.

 One  example is Dr Benjamin Spock's book, Dr Spock's Baby and Child Care, published in 1952,  that made spanking look like a despicable act.

What followed after people took his advice has turned out to be a tragedy of enormous proportions.

The Malaysian "educated uneducated"  are  part of this  global tragedy.  

More than 20 years after the publication of his book, seeing the generation of children brought up according to his prescription,  Dr Spock regretted having propounded the theory that spanking was an uncivilised way of correcting child misbehaviour.    

  Sixty years later, the magnitude of its destructive, multiplier effect has set some people taking a serious look at today's society and its young, whose parents were taught child upbringing by the book.

As a result, the centuries' old use of spanking is  promoted again in none other than the United States.

 There is a  good paper titled "The Science And Statistics Behind Spanking Suggest That Laws Allowing Corporal Punishment Are In The Best Interest Of The Child" by Jason M. Fuller.

It should be read by all those who think that spanking is a devilish thing to do.       

 Finally, it needs to be stressed that schools, mainly  primary schools, are the place to inculcate good values in children as that is the best time to do so.

The cane was used in schools for a long time, not on everyone, but on the few who had no respect for school rules.

 Teachers did it out of love for the children, for they wanted the children to grow up to be well-behaved people, regardless whether they got 10As or 10Fs.

 Character development was a core responsibility of  schools of the past.

This required principals and teachers to be skilled in  child character development, but none seems to have this skill these days, and the lack of political will to arrest the problem of problematic children  in the schools does not help.

 That  schools have abdicated the responsibility of character training is the mother of all tragedies in the area of the development of a nation of educated persons.

 A light cane in the hands of a properly-trained person is indispensable in correcting  child misbehaviour during the critical formative years.

 The education reform that the government is embarking on is meaningless if the core area of a child's education  is not addressed in a way that  produces positive results.

 Moral Education, an examination subject, has been a big slap in the face of those who introduced it to produce  a society with good moral values.

Like Dr  Spock, we should have the guts to admit that a grave wrong has been done with the demonising of spanking as a vital medicine to correct   child misbehaviour when other methods fail.

 What is needed is to train parents and teachers on the proper use of this tool, not the banning of it.

The culprit in child abuse cases is the wielder of the cane,  and not the light cane.

By the way, even bare hands can be used to abuse children.

The  abuser is the one that needs counselling or psychiatric treatment.

 Do we have the political will to make our schools the character- training grounds  they were half a decade ago?

No political party has come up with  proposals on this issue. Is it not of national importance? 

Students with cane marks on their bodies. Parents and teachers need to be trained on the proper use of the cane in correcting misbehaviour during the critical formative years.

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