Human beings are in principle conservative creatures; they feel safe within certain traditional patterns and tend to resist to 'unknown' changes. Moreover, people tend to cling on to prejudices. With these two givens, a society's behaviour is explained - though only superficially. How to effectively break through such a pattern, especially when we have to open society to become more transparent and progressive. I am referring to situation, where a specific society has suffered from a totalitarian past and desperately needs changes to become truly democratic in values and deeds.
We can think of a variety of true life examples to demonstrate the aforementioned: One that comes first to my mind is the case of Germany - especially the former West-Germany. It needs no long elaboration to describe the pre-1945 status of German society. Immediately after Germany's capitulation, an educational programme was implemented, that should educate young people to become democratic members of their new post-war society. The overall success was perhaps, as it was 'imposed' by the occupying allied (Western) forces. As to the morality of whether a triumphant power should be able to impose their political views on the other shall not be the subject of this blog. It can be argued, that in the case as it was of the Third Reich-ideology the necessity is clearly without any discussion.
Currently, as I regularly report on the political situation in Slovakia, we can clearly see evidence of the opposite trend. Whereas political mismanagement thrives, the change against its unethical behaviour is minimal - rest a few individual exceptions. Nevertheless, the majority is either indifferent, ignorant about the possible repercussions, or too passive.
While we should not delve on non-scientific approaches by claiming e.g. that such is "in the genes of the people or nation", there is however indeed a clear cause for these deficiencies in society: Education. It is not so much, that education taught this society for more than 40 years that the Soviet Union was a paradise, which of course is not the case any longer. After 20 years since the 1989 revolution, textbooks are - to an extend - leaving totalitarian socialism behind them. It is more a problem, where pupils are hardly taught about values beyond these textbooks. Teachers-Old-Style prefer subservient students - you do not ask critical questions to your teacher, you learn to recite what he told you, giving a (wrong) signal that it clearly doesn't pay off to be critical, to question injustice, etc. It's safer to keep quiet, go with the flow: The bully will win.
If such basic skills - those that we take for granted in the West, are not instilled onto young pupils, young grown-ups have hardly an example to follow. Society has only a superficial coating of being a modern and a free society, while inside the old structures still ravage and very successfully. The fact that schools lack money - and it is not really about having a pc for every student - it reflects on the payslip of staff, who is - and let's be honest - grossly unmotivated and for a part unskilled enough to face this task.
It has been throughout history a repeated slogan; our youth is our future. Whether anyone will remember such slogans from darker times, it must be admitted that it is a true statement. Ignoring youth will eventually lead your society down the slope. There will be no competitiveness - economically that is - and the fading of ethical or demacratic values leads to political instability. Education is not about learning an alphabet, or being able to add, subtract, divide and multiply. It is a value, which is vital for a society to survive, and therefore beyond any value. It's worth it!
MS
No comments:
Post a Comment