In Poland children and teenagers spend a lot of time at school. During my college years I would have up to 45 lessons weekly plus 2-3 hours of homework if someone could be bothered. Primary school was not much better.
We were taught number of subjects like Polish literature, Polish grammar, math, physics, biology and many, many more. There were even lessons teaching how to be a good citizen - pretty sound idea, sadly its execution was much worst therefore this subject has been canceled, which I think is shame as we are not born with knowledge and skills of being a good citizen.
What we were never taught was how to be a human. That goes without saying or does it? For some reason we assume that our children will simply be decent people, ignoring everyday example of kids who are everything but decent people. Papers, TV programs and the web are full of contemplation on reasons of teenagers bad behavior. To me the answer is easy: we do not teach our children how to be helpful, noble, respectful, so they do not know it. We cannot blame them for lack of knowledge and skills we never taught them, can we. Of course we can and we do.
It seems to me that teachers should pay more attentions to moral side of education and try to teach their pupils and students how to be a good human, how to notice other people and their misery.
Poland is mostly christian country and it is still common for children to attend religious classes where they are told about rules and laws, about sin, about redemption. But are they told to be a good human being? To help elderly person with their shopping or not to bully collegue at school? I cannot recall anything like this. Even more priests that I remember bullied some of us themselves. I could never agree that Christianity is about laws and rules, nor any other religion for that matter. However you will not find out during those classes about it. Jesus (as) was a great man not because he knew religious laws, but because he saw people and helped them.
We are what we are taught. If no one teaches us how to be a good man we end up not being able to be a good man. We believe that profit and company's efficiency are the most important values in our lives.
We need classes of humanity, we need teachers to teach children to be good. We really do need it. We have to tell our children that other human is far more important than any company in the world. Otherwise they will not know it.
Many of us fear "Matrix". We are creating now.
If we want man to love another man we MUST teach our children to do so.
We were taught number of subjects like Polish literature, Polish grammar, math, physics, biology and many, many more. There were even lessons teaching how to be a good citizen - pretty sound idea, sadly its execution was much worst therefore this subject has been canceled, which I think is shame as we are not born with knowledge and skills of being a good citizen.
What we were never taught was how to be a human. That goes without saying or does it? For some reason we assume that our children will simply be decent people, ignoring everyday example of kids who are everything but decent people. Papers, TV programs and the web are full of contemplation on reasons of teenagers bad behavior. To me the answer is easy: we do not teach our children how to be helpful, noble, respectful, so they do not know it. We cannot blame them for lack of knowledge and skills we never taught them, can we. Of course we can and we do.
It seems to me that teachers should pay more attentions to moral side of education and try to teach their pupils and students how to be a good human, how to notice other people and their misery.
Poland is mostly christian country and it is still common for children to attend religious classes where they are told about rules and laws, about sin, about redemption. But are they told to be a good human being? To help elderly person with their shopping or not to bully collegue at school? I cannot recall anything like this. Even more priests that I remember bullied some of us themselves. I could never agree that Christianity is about laws and rules, nor any other religion for that matter. However you will not find out during those classes about it. Jesus (as) was a great man not because he knew religious laws, but because he saw people and helped them.
We are what we are taught. If no one teaches us how to be a good man we end up not being able to be a good man. We believe that profit and company's efficiency are the most important values in our lives.
We need classes of humanity, we need teachers to teach children to be good. We really do need it. We have to tell our children that other human is far more important than any company in the world. Otherwise they will not know it.
Many of us fear "Matrix". We are creating now.
If we want man to love another man we MUST teach our children to do so.
