Dear Editor,
Reading Dave Martin’s article ‘No negative consequences‘ in your Sunday, May 13 edition, caused me to reflect on a letter I submitted some years ago lamenting the attitudes of young people, particularly students.
Bro Dave is spot on with his assessment of some parents who neglect to rein in undesirable behaviour. Some parents believe that they risk losing their children’s love and affection if they are strict and apply some form of discipline for repeated wrongdoings. This results in a loss of parental control, problems for teachers and other individuals. But do they care? Some certainly don’t. For these “The teacher gon try deh.“ If that does not work they hope the police never become involved.
I once heard a mother telling her daughter (about 12 years old) to take a message to a neighbour who had invoked her anger. The message was laced with expletives. I’m not sure if it was delivered verbatim.
Now that society has modernised and corporal punishment has been outlawed we are witnessing societal decay. Like Bro Dave, I am saddened that those parents who wanted to be “cool” with their children and allowed the wrong to go smoothly wrong now blame systems and everyone else for the miscreants they let loose on soceity.
I shudder to think how deep we’ll sink as a nation in the next twenty years, since there is evidence of moral and attitudinal deficiencies in every section of society.
Yours faithfully,
L Dunsford Dickson