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Children need models, not critics
Indeed, the children of today are tyrants, they contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers. But the younger generation isn’t really so bad, it’s just that they have more critics than models.
This statement is definitely a controversial one, but I know I’m not wrong because just yesterday my eight-year-old cousin approached his dad and asked “Dad, how much do you earn for an hour’s overtime at work?” His father was taken aback by this unexpected question and replied irritably that children are to be seen and not heard. However, the child persisted in repeating his question until the father was compelled to tell him that he earned Rs200 for each hour of overtime at work.
The son then asked for hundred rupees, but the father refused, remarking that he was too young to handle money. Again the child persisted but was scolded and sent to his room. Soon the father realized that perhaps he had been too harsh, and so he went to his son’s room and handed him the money.
The child put his hand under his pillow and fished out a handful of crumpled notes leaving his father angered and amazed. But before the father could question or criticize, the son asked innocently with the two hundred rupees outstretched in his hand “Dad, if I give you this money, will you give me one of your hours?”
The best thing to invest in a child is time. A child learns more in the first five years of his life — 85 per cent of his total learning of what he’ll learn in the rest of his life. He is like a sapling, which can be helped to grow straight, but once it becomes a tree it cannot be guided in its growth.
So, we must always accentuate the positive, for as it is said ‘if a child lives with criticism he learns to condemn, but if a child lives with appreciation he learns to commend’. If he lives with care he will learn to love and true education is the cultivation of the heart. The cultivation of love is the greatest need of today.
However, education today is a process of filling the mind with the contents of books, emptying the contents in the examination hall and returning empty-headed. We fail to realize that human values cannot be learnt from lectures or textbooks. Those who seek to impart values to students must first practice those values themselves and set an example.
Today, life has become fast paced and we have become materialistic. Parents are too busy to answer the queries of their curious children. Reprehension and criticism have trampled their search for knowledge and truth.
Moreover, since the development of NASA almost fifty years ago most human resources are being put to the cause of unearthing the truths of the universe. We have taken giant leaps in the field of science and technology but in this process the progress of our future generations is being hampered. Technology has uprooted our moral disposition and education is debasing students rather than enabling them. Instead of shaping the young into diamonds, it is turning them into coal. It is not bringing transformation in them, it is not bestowing wisdom.
While man is striving to inhabit the moon and mars, the earth is becoming a living hell. In spite of this, earth is crammed with heaven in the form of children. These children are not pails that need to be filled, but they are candles that need to be lit. Children are lamps, which illuminate the path of the nation. In order to prosper we must divert all our resources and attention towards the youth.
A child’s life is like a blank piece of paper, on which every passerby leaves a mark. The influence of parents and teachers on the minds of children is very significant. It is actually the primary and dominant influence on the child’s personality and behaviour pattern.
Kids go more by what they see than what they hear, more by actions than just words. To make them worthy citizens of tomorrow a teacher has to equip herself for her role by living the values that distinguish mankind. And if parents and teachers set the right example, the students will automatically blossom into models of excellence and bring glory to the nation and peace to the world.
Mother Teresa once said: “Capture the youth and you’ve conquered the future.”
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