In today's article I want to address the challenging issue of the development of morality in our youth against a backdrop of the much talked about youth indiscipline in our homes, schools and the wider society. I sense a strong desire to correct the situation given the numerous attempts and initiatives that are being taken by various government and non-governmental organisations to deal with the "youth problem." But before addressing the issue specifically, we need to take some time to understand the nature of human development and to get a better understanding of what moral development is all about. Human development is about moral progress. It is about forging social harmony in the society. It is about people respecting each other as human beings. It is about hu-man beings progressively seeing and feeling their human equality and human dignity. It is recognising that all humans share common moral values that are the basis of their human equality. Development only occurs when the moral progress of one generation is rolled forward to the next generation, thus establishing a higher moral base for the further advancement of the society. Societies decline and disintegrate when the moral base of the society declines over time.
However, the unifying concept of morality becomes blurred in societies in which people are polarised by race, ethnicity, religion, politics and any combination of these. In such societies some people see themselves as superior or inferior to those they perceive to be different from themselves; hence group interests often tend to prevail over societal interests. The result is a society of group conflicts, which can sometimes lead to social unrest. Any activity that promotes the interest of any one group over another fuels social instability and further dilutes the common morality that should be catalyzing the development of the society. Fundamentally, morality is living in the interest of others. It is living the truth of our humanity. It is allowing our human goodness to prevail. It is about loving and caring for others. It is about role-modelling the best that humanity can offer. Every generation has a responsibility to protect and to further enhance its moral state. At the core of this responsibility is the provision of a stable and nurturing environment for raising the next generation, hence the central role of the family unit in advancing societal development. Parents play a major role in helping children to become conscious of the moral values they share with other human beings. Therefore, the family household is the nursery for the raising of a morally conscious generation. And when it fails to do so, we see the result in the indiscipline displayed by our youth. The family unit, then, is the key for advancing societal development through the cumulative moral growth of each succeeding generation.
Another key institution in enhancing the moral growth of our children is the school. Children spend a lot of time in a school environment under the supervision of teachers who have a key responsibility to guide their children's development as these children make their way towards adulthood. But how can parents and teachers best contribute to the moral development of our children? Can they teach them morality in the same way they teach them English and mathematics? Further, if the parents and teachers are themselves morally wanting, can they really impart moral education to the children in their charge? Can moral education ever become part of our school curriculum in this diverse multi-cultural and multi-religious society of ours? To answer these questions we must take a closer look at morality. As human beings we are naturally endowed with human goodness, which confers on us a state of morality that we can all express. We sense it best when we speak of our conscience as an inner compass to help us to determine right from wrong. As human beings we are all endowed with this divine gift that makes us all moral and spiritual beings. Hence, our morality is not given to us by other human beings, but rather it is something that we all have and the challenge for us is to become more conscious of our inherent moral state. So morality is not something that we receive from the outside but rather it is something that is innate to our humanity and which we are challenged to become more conscious of. As parents and teachers, our job is not to give our children morality but rather to nurture the development of their consciousness towards greater moral expression.
It follows then that we cannot learn what we already have within us. We have to discover our morality by becoming more conscious of our inner selves. Hence moral growth is a self-discovery process. It is connecting with our spiritual selves. The process involves learning to trust our inner selves so that we are directed from within. As adults, we can best awaken others to their morality by role-modelling through our own behaviours rather than just trying to "teach" morality. And therein lies the dilemma of trying to develop a curriculum of teaching morality, because it is not something that can be effectively taught through the instruction-driven process of the normal classroom. So the parent or teacher who displays immoral behaviours in their personal lives will find it nigh impossible to teach their children morality by just instructing them on what to do or not to do. In the business of morality children best learn from the behaviours displayed by the most influential adults in their lives. It follows that the real problem that we have in developing the morality of our youth lies with the expressed morality or immorality of our parents and teachers. And perhaps if we develop a national programme to help parents and teachers to become more conscious of their own morality and their immoral ways we will have a better chance of developing a more morally conscious generation of children. But therein lies another dilemma. If the drivers of such a programme are themselves trapped in group interests and failing in their own morality then such a programme becomes useless. In one of my earlier articles I made the observation that "fish smells from the head" as a way of highlighting the importance of having good role models among those who hold leadership positions if we are to begin to address this problem in an effective way. In conclusion let us recognize that the "youth problem" can only be fixed when we, as parents and teachers, become better moral role-models to our children.