Do we really know what our children read ? - II

 

THE trouble with ‘we the people’ of today is that we really, really don’t have any control on what our children -- of all ages -- do or read. Or, in other words, we also do not wish to expend our thought and energies on knowing what our NextGen people do or read. For, if we really try to take control of these areas of our young people’s lives, we will only ‘buy’ trouble for ourselves in the short and long terms. So, why worry at all ? -- as many of us tend to think (though many may never want to verbalise this attitude). This is, of course, a rather harsh indictment -- as most would tend to say. But let us not go by our biases or prejudices or presumptions. Let us try to look at the social scene without any tint to our glasses. Then alone will we realise that many of us have already stopped caring for what our young generations do or read or think. This is certainly a bad reflection on our society at large. Yet, the larger society does not appear bothered about its own indifference toward an important area of the life of young generation.

 

There is certain casualness about the way we let our children off the tight leash -- whose one end must be in our hands any way. That is the reason why our kids return home late almost every evening -- and never get chided for that lapse. Or, in other words, in most families, the kids coming home late in the evening is no offence, so to say. In many homes, evening prayers, too, have gone missing (about which the loud-thinker wrote extensively in the past). The institution of family-dinner also has gone missing in countless homes. However, the subject of this discourse is not missing prayers or family dinners; it is our lack of control on what our little ones should do or read -- so that their personalities evolve into fine human entities. Time has come for us to see things are they are and accept the reality that we -- as a society -- have little control on what our kids do or read. For, anybody whose senses are alive and alert will realise that many among us treat their children most casually, most indifferently.

 

We may, of course, spend a lot of money on our kids and dote on them. Despite that, it must be stated without hesitation that we really have no control over what our kids do or read. This missing familial attention has now started showing in our collective social conduct -- with increasing numbers of young people turning out to be non-serious persons with little awareness about what is happening around. For example, good numbers of young people in their late teen years are terribly poor in general knowledge. Many of them have never heard the names of personages such as Indra Nooyi or Kiran Majumdar-Shaw or Kumarmangalam Birla. Many of them have not read books in their own native languages in the past several years. And most of these young people would not be able to tell what part of Kashmir has been occupied illegally by Pakistan.

 

They also may not be able to name the Seven Sister (States) of Eastern India. Many youngsters do not even know how many major cities or towns they crossed as they travelled by car or bus from Pune to Nagpur, for example, or from Raipur to Nagpur or Bhopal to New Delhi. This is happening because we are least bothered about helping our young generations to acquire sensible awareness of the surroundings -- near and far. This is because we never goad and guide our young ones to reading sensible material that would help them become better human beings and better Indians. In other words, this social scene can be interpsreted as our failure to control the intellectual inputs into our kids’ heads and hearts.