First published in Column 8, on the 19th February, 1992
The week the national secretary of the Principals’ Federation of New Zealand, Mrs Marilyn Yeoman, was reportedly concerned that a certain morals kit intended for use in schools should be getting some funding.
Curiously, her main concern wasn’t about the fact that she’d
never heard of it, but about two other things. Firstly, the kit promoted the
teaching of ‘traditional values.’ Secondly, the federation hadn’t been involved
in the production of the programme, and she questioned whether it was ‘religious
education’ in disguise.
Quite honestly, I think her concern might have seemed more
sincere if she’d queried why the kits had been such poor sellers – only 30 in
10 years. Are they badly written? Out of date?
But to query them because they may have been ‘religious
education in disguise’ seems to me to be a bit of a red herring.
(Note that the ‘religion’ in question will no doubt be Christianity.
Some people in education have a real hassle with it. When one of my kids was in
kindergarten, I was told that the kids wouldn’t be singing carols at Christmas,
because it might offend someone who didn’t have Christian views. Never mind
that it might offend me not to have Christmas carols.)
The producers of the kit say the programme promotes the
teaching of ‘basic universal values’ as honesty, decency, purity, trust, faithfulness
and chastity. I don’t see those values held dear only the religious; in fact,
every time we have another murder, or rape, or child abuse case, or spate of
burglaries, or when we see the divorce figures for the year, I have a feeling
most people deep down are concerned with those values.
Do you get up in the morning, grab your newspaper or flick
on the radio in order to enjoy the reports of what devilment has been abroad in
the past 12 hours? I don’t think so.
I think most of us feel outraged at the constant curse these
things are to us, rather than revelling in them.
If I was Ms Yeoman I’d be glad of anything that promoted
honesty, decency, purity, trust, faithfulness and chastity amongst our kids. After
all precious little of the entertainment on the box or in the movies these days
promotes these values.
Rather, Hollywood and the television moguls seem hell bent
on promoting every sort of vice and perversion that’s going, over and above
their unrestrained attitude to sex and violence.
So, I’m puzzled why a spokeswoman for a teaching association
should feel threatened by a programme that encourages the very things that most
of us want as the norm in our society.
Surely she doesn’t still hold the outdated theory that all
children are born perfect and it’s society that comes along and upsets their
equilibrium, turning them into naughty little creatures. Or that there are no
moral absolutes, and we must take every situation as it comes along and then
decide what’s right. I would have thought that kind of woolly thinking had gone
the way of the dodo.
Anyone who’s ever brought up kids will know that there’s a
struggle going on in them all the time, a conflict between wanting to do what’s
right and winding up doing what’s wrong.
Maybe the Principals’ Federation needs to take this kit
under its wing, rather than rejecting it. New Zealand’s kids can do with all
the help they can get.
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"The darkest corner of hell that is reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis." Courtesy: Hasanisawi, wikimedia commons |
Almost 36 years later and this column remains as valid as ever, particularly since our society has gone so far down the tubes in the meantime, basically by gradually eroding all sense of honesty, decency, purity, trust, faithfulness and chastity – and other values – and mocking those who try and keep to them. And yet, day after day in the newspaper (I no longer watch the TV version of the news) or online we have people who plainly do understand the morals on which our society is based, and rail against the way in which they are being undermined at every turn by people who ignore them.
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