I remember my parents bemoaning the state of the youth when
I was a teenager, and yes, I’m now at the stage where I look on at the
behaviour of young people today and find that I’m significantly detached and
unable to identify with the culture, music, language and fashions.
“Our
youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show
disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no
longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter
before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.”
This quotation is often attributed to Socrates or Plato which
would make it 2500 years old, however it has been challenged as to its source.
Recent investigation may reveal that it was taken from a Cambridge dissertation
written by Kenneth
John Freeman published in 1907. Either way it appears as if each generation
likes to assume that the young people of today are worse than they ever were. There
are though some problems in our world, where regardless of whether or not the
situation has got worse, or just appear that way, still requires our attention,
care and participation it changing it.
I wonder to what extent parents hope and dream that their
children grow up in a world that is just a little bit better than the one they
experienced. Parents look for greater opportunities than they had,
opportunities in education, health, sports, the arts; opportunities to grow,
mature and develop.
I was disturbed this morning to read the BBC’s article[i]
calculating the number of families without fathers or any positive male role
models. While I want to tread carefully here, and acknowledge that for some
families the husband, father or partner’s presence in the relationship has been
a negative and traumatic episode which required radical and swift action to
protect both mother and children.
Rather than looking at ways in which to bring in incentives
which create a façade in family relationships, I wonder if we need to look at
how we invest in our young men of today, enabling them to grow up to be the
fathers, they, and we want them to be.
It’s not a lost cause! Just because one generation has been
failed, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the next generation is doomed to make
the same mistakes. Some of you may remember the horrific stories of ‘Ceausescus
Orphans’. Nicolae
Ceaușescu was the Romanian leader until 1989. So neglected were the orphanages
under his regime that the children stopped crying for attention, knowing that
no-one would come. When foreign aid workers entered these orphanages they were
shocked by conditions these children were kept in, but mostly by the silence.
I wondered what hope there was for these children after the
trauma they endure, and was encouraged by an article that the independent
published in 2010[ii]
revealing that with the right encouragement, investment and care we needn’t
necessarily carry the damage of our past into our future.
We’re working hard at the Child
and Family Centre in helping our little ones grow up with confidence and
hope. We’re also investing in our young men and women who come to the City
Centre Project. Our hope for them is that if they experience commitment,
affirmation, discipline and love here, that in turn they’ll grow into men and
women who can show commitment, affirmation, discipline and love to others.
No comments:
Post a Comment