The lack of good role models

Some weeks ago, I attended a parents sharing with Martin Jalleh and the parents from my church. Martin Jalleh asked us what are some of the most challenging situations in our parenting journey. Most of us have children in their teens.

I told him I personally find the lack of good role models to be the most challenging to me. Our children are now exposed to the make believe world on the internet, TV and other media. That to me, is still not much of a problem because I believed I have guided them well in that area. What they see on TV is not real and what celebrities do, are just for show.

However, closer to home, it is very depressing to see the kind of animal circus played out by our politicians. Long time ago, if you ask a student what their cita-cita is, they probably say polis, askar (btw, that’s my cita-cita when I was 10), Perdana Menteri, peguam, doktor and other patriotric stuffs like that.

Now, almost every profession has been tainted with fully blown scandals. The doktor who has a personal friend. The lawyer who is always correct, correct, correct. The paklalala paklalala always sleeeeeepingggg….the polis lagi teruk and maybe, so far the askar remains untainted, yet.

Like today, I read that a group of UMNO Youth members cornered a disabled man in a wheel chair. This man is old, frail and part of his arm shriveled. The stern, bearded, white hair man you see on TV or on print is only an image or an icon. In reality, one naturally feel a certain compassion for a person like that when you see him in person. However, those youths certainly do not find that kind of feelings in them.

Kejadian itu berlaku pada kira-kira jam 2.30 petang tadi ketika ahli parlimen Bukit Gelugor itu masuk melalui pintu utama bangunan tersebut.

Kira-kira 20 hingga 30 ahli Pemuda Umno terbabit dan mereka dipercayai dari Selangor and Kuala Lumpur

(malaysiakini)

Yet, their leaders defended the action of the Youth members. What kind of message does this scenario tell our youths? They can bully anyone just because they think they are untouchables? Of course, there are parents who are there to guide their children on the rights and wrongs. But the majority who are making ends meet, certainly do not have time to bother about this.

Then, there is this issue on the teaching of Science and Mathematics in English. I just read that the PIBG from the whole country supported the movement to change it back to Bahasa Malaysia. Who died and elected the spokeperson to represent us?

Pengerusi PIBGN Datuk Mohamad Ali Hassan berkata, sokongan majlis tersebut terhadap GMP bagi mendesak pemansuhan PPSMI, termasuklah sedia terlibat dalam perhimpunan raksasa 100,000 orang di Istana Negara pada 7 Mac.

“Kita minta kerajaan membuat keputusan segera. Jangan sampai ibu bapa turun buat demonstrasi, termasuklah di jalanan secara haram.

(malaysiakini)

If those elitists, language experts, poets or whatever who hold dear our national language wish to demand for the teaching of Science and Mathematics in BM because they love BM, then, I can accept that. But parents also want to get into the circus? Doh…think of the long term benefits. Our children will be much more equipped to face the real working world where English is needed. When we parents send these sort of ‘tak boleh jadi’ attitude to our children, of course the children will continue to ‘tak apa’ and will fare badly.

Thank God my youngest son is going to Standard One next year and they have no way of changing the language to BM again.

The way I see it, in another 10 years, all our children will live with the adat fitnah-menfitnah, aib-mengaib, korupsi, penipuan, gangerism and a lot of bad morals shown by our current batch of politicians. That’s why it is very important for me to get children anchored with some religious or faith formation so that no matter how black the world is, there is some light.