Dealing with the Young

A few months ago, George Menezes was asked to preside over the inauguration of a College Summer Camp. In the course of his address, he recounted how a teacher had dropped in at his house in Colaba to inform his father that his brother had failed in the maths paper of his matriculation examination by just a few marks. “The moderator is expecting a telephone call from you, Sir,” he said “and the rest will be taken care of.” It so happened that in that particular year Mr. Menezes Senior was Under-Secretary for Education; the boards, colleges and schools all came under his jurisdiction. But the father was blunt with the teacher. “If my son deserves to fail, let him fail. It will teach him a valuable lesson.”

Having finished this salutary tale, he looked expectantly into the faces of his young audience. But instead of appreciative murmurs he was greeted with sniggering which began to reach embarrassing proportions. Then a young man jumped up and shouted, “Your father must have been a fool! If he had done that to me, I would have killed him!”

Such blatant irreverence has become no uncommon thing among the younger generation of today. But where does the fault lie? The blame for this attitude must be placed fairly and squarely at the door of those leaders who act as rabble-rousers, who inculcate hatred and foster enmity in students purely to serve their own private ambitions. The students are there, en masse, on the university campuses and, being easily approachable, can be swayed and exploited.

As a result, time-honoured traditions of courtesy and respect are broken with. In fact, all reasonable norms are flouted. Friends and foes alike become engulfed when matters get out of hand, and it is high time we halted in our tracks and made a thorough reappraisal of what our social commitments ought in all sincerity to be, so that a pernicious leadership cannot set the feet of the young people of today on what can only be described as a collision course for the future.