By Kellen kiambati
I write this article in the wake of immoral behaviour in a bus by High School students. ‘To what extent are parents to blame on moral decay of the youth?’
Since children’s behaviour reflects the parents’, those who are workaholic fail to discipline their children, and endow them with less emotional attention, ending up raising the moral flawed children. However, some of the other undisputed factors include mass media influences and unsuitable educational system. Less futile actions by government also have to be taken into consideration.
Moral can be depicted as pertaining to good manner or the distinction between right or wrong behaviour. Its synonyms include righteous, just, virtuous, and good while decay is the gradual destruction of a society, an institution, a system. From that, definition of moral decay relevant to this article can be identified as perish of the moral values or fading of the righteous deeds or moral decline.
Moral decay can obviously be perceived in this era. Current statistics which illustrate a part of the moral decay among teens at present shows that we are going to be downgraded and if this problem is not resolved, we will lose our future leaders to rule and handle this world with justice and good manner.
Parents are the ones who are supposed to be the closest people to children. They should become the child’s idols, best friends, and motivators who can implant moral principles and produce a first-class society with successful adolescents. It is thus understandable when parents bare the brunt in the debate on the moral decay among the youth.
The author of ‘Life Interrupted: The Scoop on Being a Young Mom’, Tricia Goyer thinks that parents have not spent their time with their children due to the busy lifestyles. Hence, parents cannot provide love that is being craved by the children. This forces the young ones to look for it in each other. As a result, the children opt to spend most of their times with their peers rather than their families and if they are exposed to a wrong group of friends, they will be influenced by the unhealthy activities.
Parents bare a superior accountability than schools for a child’s conduct. Paradoxically, material goods and money are supplied as a substitute for love and concern. It is believed that most of the parents think that by granting all the child’s wishes, they consider themselves as good parents. However, their hard work to earn money for the child should not be misjudged. If the child could have spent the money wisely and the parents themselves do not overlook into moral aspects, the moral decay among the youth can be reduced.
Parents are failing to discipline their children. Besides that, there are also parents who are not bothered about their children’s lives and future but more apprehension on their own status and popularities. Some parents think that school textbooks and house helps are responsible to educate their children into an all around entity, but in fact these cannot teach the children about morals and social values. Other than love, parents should always think the form of discipline and conveying ethics. Sadly, parents nowadays prefer not to discipline their children, unintentionally, spoiling them rotten hoping against hope that that their children will become better as they grow older and more mature.
A child’s behaviour can be corrected as long as it is done from an early age. By allowing the child to do as he or she wishes is likely to mess up there future.
Therefore, parents must strengthen the family institution to withstand the demands of a changing society. This can be done by spending more time for each other in order to construct a close-knit relationship among family members.
It is undeniable that some parents are trying their best to supervise their children but some kids do all the bad things behind their parents’ backs and portray angelic behaviour in front of them. There are also some parents who are overprotective and as a result, the kids opt to rebel. Thus parents should know how to protect and monitor their children effectively yet give them some space to enjoy their teenage life.
We, however cannot be blind to extraneous factors such as mass media influence and ineffective education system. Technologies particularly television and the Internet have contributed to wild needs from desires. Television and movies frequently show violence and causes trauma in some children while others tend to watch them persistently. As they grow, those actions contribute in shaping their personalities, values and beliefs. As a result, the kid will become aggressive or lose a sense of differentiating reality from fiction.
Our education system fails to instill core values in students, such as mutual respect, civility, honesty, and social responsibility. Teachers spend too little time to educate children on conventional moral principles. To resolve these issues, the education system should provide a compulsory moral and ethics classes to all students. The teaching method should not just be exam oriented. It should also incorporate some practicals. A continuous education and evaluation will help too. This is because if the lesson is just for exam purposes, the students would not take it seriously and they tend not to practice what they have learnt in life.
There is also the issue of less futile actions by the government. Enlargement of government has brought a politicized life and this has weakened the moral fabric of society. Individuals lose their moral bearing and they become dependent on welfare, as they are not held accountable for their behaviour.
The internal moral compass that normally guides individual conduct and is supported by loving parents, religious teachers, and community standards will no longer function when the government ‘has pointed the needle in the wrong direction’. With a conscious effort to make public education a moral, government rewards dysfunctional behaviour by sending the message that people have a “right” to welfare (that they are entitled to other people’s money). It is wrong to educate children that premarital sex is all right as long as it is safe.
In conclusion, parents should be blamed on moral decay among the youth, as they are the ones who carry the responsibility to shape up the children. However, other factors that are also accountable to the shooting up of moral decay among youth comprise of mass media, ineffective educational system, and less futile actions by the government cannot be neglected.
