A child raised in a farm learns about the land, the seasons, the behaviour of animals and birds in relation to human life. A doctor’s child plays with spoons and a string in place of a stethoscope. “Say aaah …show me your tongue! 221; and tries to give everyone “injections”. Every school-going youngster wants to play “teacher” at some point or other. Children are natural imitators and the law of Nature is that the young grow up watching and subconsciously mimicking and following their elders.
Approval from the elders is the first training ground children function in. So how responsible are we when things go wrong? Wholly and entirely.
Why then are we shocked into seminar rooms and discussions when a child is killed by fellow students but not moved to the same outrage when adults design games that encourage young children to pursue, track down and “shoot” as many “enemies” as possible in a virtual game?
Killer instincts
When by implication and through the toy-market we announce to children that it is perfectly all right and even admirable to demonise imaginary people and develop a killer-instinct about them, we are saying that for no clear reason “they” that is “some persons” need to be destroyed.
Who is this nameless enemy? Who might this collective “they” be? It is none other than ourselves because in destroying others, we also maim ourselves.
When a number of aggressive feelings have been stoked, the psyche looks for gratification of those same feelings. Suddenly there appears a perfect outlet — someone who has offended your sense of justice.
The training received by the virtual game kicks in and the phantom mentor in the game who instructed you to pick up a gun pushes its virtual “get set Go!” call through the centre of your consciousness. The alert young brain picks up the signals and goes looking for weapons because now there is a “real enemy” who needs to be eliminated. The excitement that this generates along with a sense of “duty” to the angered self is a terrible cocktail of our times — it is the lighted match to stored gun powder.
On learning about the bloodshed in a Gurgaon school, parents and teachers everywhere in India must be extremely anxious wondering when this might happen in their schools or to their wards. Surely there is something we can all do to prevent the rise and spread of such anti-life thoughts and actions?
Raising the young, both consciously and subconsciously drawing up a blueprint for their own lives, is the greatest and most vital responsibility of adults. It seems we have sent out many signals about how to be “happy”, being “successful” financially and materially. We have succeeded splendidly in that department of the time-table of life but have been rather negligent of the spiritual and imaginative training of our children.
Emotional intelligence
We have neglected their humanity. More and more schools would rather have yet another club or activity centre where “success-skills” or “knowledge-skills” are taught rather than keep that hour aside for reflection and development of emotional intelligence, a class where the trusted adult in a child’s life, the teacher, can explore self-management and discuss or conduct a class about it with her group who are the same age and bound to have many problems and doubts in common.
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