The Island Editorial

Bans no panacea 

13th October 2015

There has been a call for banning private tuition on Sundays so that students can attend Dhamma schools, as we reported yesterday. Such calls are made from time to time by religious dignitaries and prominent laypersons as a solution to the problem of growing indiscipline in society. Their contention is premised on the assumption that students attend private tuition classes against their will and they will make a beeline for Sunday schools if the aforesaid ban is imposed.

If private tuition is banned on Sundays, students engaged in a mindless competition may stay at home and concentrate on their studies instead of going anywhere else. For, they learn very little at school and, therefore, badly need extra lessons on all days of the week to prepare themselves for GCE A/L and O/L examinations. Such a ban will adversely affect only the students attending ordinary classes. The children of well-to-do parents who can pay a lot of money to teachers for home visits won’t be affected at all.

People—adults and children alike—are made to listen to loudspeaker sermons day in day out. The electronic media are full of religious programmes and articles on religion are not in short supply in the print media. Vehicles in Sri Lanka are mobile shrines, as somebody has said. All places of worship, temples, churches, kovils and mosques, are overflowing with devotees of all ages, but the country is going from bad to worse. There is no simple solution to this complex problem.

If one buys into the argument that the decadence of society mainly stems from lack of religious guidance for laypersons and failure on the part of adults to inculcate moral and religious values in children at a tender age, how will one explain numerous instances of misconduct among the members of the clergy?

It is only natural that the clergy and the laity are concerned about widespread indiscipline eating into the vitals of society. This is a wider malaise which defies piecemeal remedies.

If students are properly taught and prepared for examinations at school, there will be no need for them to attend private tuition classes not only on Sundays but on other days as well. One may also suggest that examinations, especially the GCE A/L, be made less fiendish with the university system expanded substantially to increase annual intakes so that students will have time for other things in life and be at peace with themselves. These are issues that religious dignitaries should take up with political leaders who frequently visit them.

Gods, demons and children

This newspaper yesterday carried a picture of a recent pooja where the blessings of a goddess were invoked to protect children. It looks as if the people were now seeking divine intervention to save their children from criminals owing to the failure on the part of the so-called guardians of the law and political leaders to ensure public safety.

Time was when gods led relatively trouble free lives without having to act like police and Child Protection Authority officers. Today, they are expected to perform even chores like chaperoning children! Is it that the police, maintained with public funds, to keep evildoers at bay and create a peaceful environment for children to live without fear, have outsourced their work to gods?

Crime prevention which is a prerequisite for child protection is conspicuous by its absence. The police deal with crimes the way they tackle traffic offences. Policemen hide behind wayside trees and lamp-posts and patiently wait until a motorist commits some offence to nab him or her. Likewise, the so-called crime busters wait until someone gets robbed or killed or raped to rise from their slumber and grope in the dark unless the victim happens to be politically connected.

The country is awash with drugs and illegal weapons. The police do precious little to neutralise the underworld which is a threat to the civilised world. Rounding up men and boys in the vicinity of a scene of crime indiscriminately, taking them away, bastinadoing and beating them with pizzles, obtaining ‘confessions’ and then releasing them one by one are tasks for which we don’t need a police force.

Meanwhile, mental health has been badly neglected in this country in spite of a very high suicide rate. There are only about 50 psychiatrists for a population of 20 million, we are told. People with psychological problems should be able to seek treatment without letting them find expression in violent crimes against other members of society, especially children and women.

Much more needs to be done by the government and state institutions to ensure the safety of children. They ought to square up to the challenge. God helps those who help themselves!