There Must Be More to Life

I’m a skilled IT engineer. I’ve got a job that pays well, a nice house, a warm bed and as much food on my plate as I want. I should not have any reason to be unhappy, should I? And still, I feel unhappy at times. Here’s a reason why…

Today in the news: families leave for a trip for the Easter holidays taking their young children with them 2 days before the holidays start. And this story has been in the news with every school holiday for the last 3 years. Reporters head down to Brussels airport and interview families with children as they leave on holidays. When the parents get asked the question whether they know their children should still be in school, almost all of them answer that they know. But all of them think it is OK that their children miss a couple of days of school. “We are allowed to write a sick-leave note for our children for up to 2 days per year”, they argue, “and we use them now to leave for holidays.” Even though their children aren’t sick.

Most teachers put a lot of hard work into educating our children. I know all of my friends who teach do. But the system–i.e. we, the people–and our children’s parents seem to put much more effort in teaching our children to cheat, take shortcuts and cut corners.

Our school system is very good and relatively cheap. We all pay taxes to help our children through school. And teachers spread more than just knowledge. They try to give our children a sense of justice, moral values, respect as well as social skills. If our sons our daughters punch someone else in the nose, they get punished by their teachers. We hold that to be self-evident. But when it comes to showing respect for our school system, the law and our teachers, it becomes a totally different story.

I guess it is hard to teach our children those all important moral values, if we are loosing them ourselves. But maybe I’m just overreacting…