Children need more than food
How moving was the letter of young Shafeen Mahmood (Class 1X) titled “Young generation need guidance” published in this column on October 12, 2011! Typical of young people everywhere, he is crying out to be given 'the basics of life'. They are told they are the 'future' and that they must study but no one tells them how to live! Their 'treats' are fast food and a visit to the shopping mall but where are the playgrounds and trees to climb? Television is useless. They know that life is more than 'getting good grades' and using the Internet. Where, he demands, is 'guidance'? I hear him asking us, “Where is 'North' and the moral compass so I have something to make my own decisions with?”
For all the demand for Moral Education, few are doing it but I have done it - and created folders of worksheets for children of all faiths and none, happy to discuss topics and be wonderfully creative in their class- and home-work. Some parents told me it was the most important subject the school taught. (I can share the contents of these folders with anyone interested.)
We must answer children's demand for guidance towards the decisions they will make for themselves about the purpose and meaning of life and how to live it. Otherwise they will be seduced by a consumer culture, or drugs or the kind of religious extremism that does not allow them to be fully and joyfully human - as well as rational. The soul cannot stand the emptiness.
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