By Fr Mathew T.O.Praem –
Three sections of the society, never ready to learn and ever ready to teach are said to be boisterously, Parents, Priests and Teachers. The contradiction, however, in the process of modern education lies in the triple coherent activity of parents, teachers and children. In the traditional society of India, education of children was merely in the hands of teachers, although family was considered the first school.
In the light of the “web world” “mobile phones” and “electronic media” that carry the young away from the traditional values of the society and real “family and social network”, the “eye sight of the parents get cob-webbed” by the hitherto unknown behaviors of their children. It is further accelerated in the context of “on line learning” of “Covid era. Herein lies the importance of “parenting the parents” for “Education for Life”. In the eighties, I am introduced the term “generation gap” and “historically dislocated generation” which today seems to deliver its urchins, estranged from the parental values and culture which to some extent explain the cruelty of parents towards children, the hapless KHAP, taking various forms. When such cruelty takes an upper hand among the educated parents like doctors and engineers, the situation warrants immediate attention.
It is to be admitted when professionalism in every walk of life demands qualification; parents become parents by chance, rather by a natural urge of physical and psychological if any. Understanding the complexity of issue and the increasing number of divorce, the Catholic Church in India began the ‘Marriage Preparation Seminar’ for the catholic couples in the past decade for three or four days. ‘Marriage Encounter’ is yet another attempt in the Church to train the parents on deepening their bond in the upbringing of the children. However, such ongoing formations of catholic couples are limited to the few urban elite. The rest of the parents belonging other Religions and castes have no forum to hear their family problems of whatsoever. Under the new education system of SSA (Sarva Sikshya Abhiyan), presently known as “Samagra Shikshya Abhiyan) the Kerala government made an attempt to hold the meeting of the parents once a month to discuss the problems of their young, especially of their educational and emotional crisis and requirements which however, did not produce much fruits due to overload of the teachers.
It is observed the very motif of nucleus family is “small family, happy family”. Having one boy and one girl, the parents “love them possessively” as if their children are their “dolls”. They fulfill all their demands from the childhood, giving them the best of everything they could. Until their teen age, the parents play their dolls in turn, taking all the decisions themselves and if the parents are highly educated and professionals, their ambition soar up to the sky for their sons or daughters. The poor too are equally ambitious although their dreams are beyond their means. The divorce of such children from their parents begins with the teen age. Already the new developments in their physical and emotional life “estrange within themselves” whether boys or girls, leading to “emotional turbulence” backed by a sub conscious of aloofness with a “bottle milk on the left hand and a T.V remote player on the right” from the childhood, now the left replaced with a mobile or laptop. While the girls become more “coy”, cutting off the apron strings especially of the father, may lean towards “birds of the same feather” for a few years before they develop a yearning for the complementary sex. Some of them hate their parents so cruelly they turn a homo or lesbian, nevertheless wanting to lead a normal heterosexual family life.
As some of the parents in the megapolis go for work and return late at night, no communication takes place between parents and children, stretching too far the communication gap. If the children are not trained to make clear choice of their life situation from the childhood, “the apple of the eye” would soon turn “sour grapes”. As Coleridge sang,” O Lady, we receive, but what we give…”, the children can give to the parents only what they received from the parents viz. “ego centric” They were loved selfishly and so they in turn become selfish, so much so that nobody can dissuade them from their “fixation”. As Shakespeare puts, “Love at first sight” and the popular concept “Love is blind”, the windows of their mind will be shut for ever which infuriates the parents and shut down their windows of reasons. Thus, ruled by passion and not by reasons, the parents venture to exterminate themselves or their progeny and often leading to “family suicide”. Thus, a deep analysis will show the complexity of situation which at times warrants even against “circumstantial evidences” against the “victimization and helplessness of both the perpetrator and the victim.
The ignorant parents on the other are very badly cheated by their children. Such parents do not know the rudiments of “chats and social networking” while their children demand for lap top, smart phones and other electronic gadgets as part of their technical studies. There are also ‘Net Cafes’ that misleads the children in the name of ‘computer learning”. Thus, the parents fail to update with the modern scientific and technological developments which in turn bring about a “change of values and behaviors” in the life of their children. Like any other addiction, once the behavior pattern is conditioned by the multi-media, family background and technological necessary evil like mobile or laptop, they become a helpless victim. While some of the parents adjust, others wildly react when things go out of their control. Thus, both the parents and children become equally victimized in this “global village of networking’. The debate conducted by the NDTV some time back at the backdrop of Supreme Court’s intervention nullifying the verdict of the Delhi High court on c.377, decriminalizing the unnatural sexual act and co-habitation of the Homosexuals-Lesbians, I could watch the helplessness of the parents as much as the helplessness of their children. In one case, both the grandmother and her grandson were literally crying and another father said, “what to do, he happened to be my blood”? Such instances show how much care a parent should take in re-orienting the child in proper time.
To conclude, governments, NGO’s, Educators and Religious heads should pay greater attention to train the parents to manage, orient and re-orient their children as useful members of the family and the Nation with freedom to shoulder responsibility as they grow up rather than making mere ‘DOLLS OF PARENTS” and pleasure seekers. Besides providing some basic knowledge of technological developments, the parents are to be furnished with ‘child psychology’ and even some techniques of Counseling.