The character gap between the educated and uneducatedBy Maximo Tumbali, Forum MemberIt’s rather worrisome and discomfiting to see the educated among us becoming more undisciplined than the uneducated, and shamefully even less disciplined than the carabaos (water buffaloes) we often see walking single-file along our highways. Despite our sense of reason, many of us humans often demonstrate worse behavior than animals in good, old GMRC—Good Manners and Right Conduct (remember from our grade school days?).
IMAGE CREDIT: CROWDSOURCED FROM FACEBOOKCARABAOS PROVE TO BE MORE DISCIPLINED THAN MANY
OF THE SUPPOSEDLY EDUCATED AMONG US
The more our lives get flooded with all sorts of newfangled inventions, the more we lose our humanity. We quickly succumb to the lures of modern living and turn our backs on the basics.
Now what do we see around us? Chaos and disarray! Our natural environment and ecosystems are destroyed, the air around us terribly polluted, our seas and rivers and streams contaminated, our morals degraded, our communities abound with drug addiction and criminality.
How is it that we have become the sorry and sordid beings that we are today? Should we be content in being this way forever?
We surely hate or disdain to be called animals, yet we find ourselves no different from, if not worse, than the animals in our midst! Our minds and moral senses seem to have been dulled or numbed by our excessive attachment to material things and mundane pleasures. We have become hedonists, seeking only that which gives pleasure—that which tickles, ignites, and satisfies the flesh—rather than the moral contemplation that nourishes the soul and enlightens the mind.
How uplifting to see an unschooled individual unconsciously and spontaneously act in ways so befitting of a civilized human being! In stark contrast, how annoying and embarrassing to see a person pedigreed with all sorts of academic honors and degrees but behaving like a pig—a pig that, whether in the wild or in the pen among its kindred, epitomizes filth, rudeness, greed, and vulgarity!
Are we to blame the kind of education we have been getting all these years for what we have become? Unfortunately, we greatly misconstrue our education simply as a medium for acquiring knowledge and skills from the schools we attend. We equate failure to go to school as failure to acquire any education at all.
Sadly, this is the wrong way most of us view education. We are getting education that gives less or no room at all for character-building. So it’s not really any surprise for us to see VIPs in both the private and public sectors who are so arrogant and so disrespectful particularly to those who are in the lower levels of our society.
The education we expect and are acquiring today glosses over or ignores character-formation to such an extent that we see, hear, and read stories about all sorts of social misbehavior in our schools. We find bullying and sexual harassment being blatantly committed not only by young pupils and older students but even by teachers and professionals in academe themselves.
It’s so irritating to hear educators and social do-gooders clamoring for stronger character-building and moral education when these very people are clearly and sorely lacking in character and morality themselves. This is indeed very problematic, for character-building can only happen when the builders themselves are perceived by others as exemplars, as pillars of good moral character.
Those who advocate moral regeneration but lack morality themselves are bound to fail in their advocacy, and to think that many of them are the same people who righteously parade themselves in the streets or appear on both mainstream and social media screaming “Stop corruption!” and “Avoid immorality!” at the top of their voice!
But hardly anybody listens to these self-appointed moral reformers anymore. They can’t effect change at all because many of them are nothing but noise-makers and no-good do-gooders. Even more perturbing is that they are multiplying like flies!
With such people as vociferous advocates, our yearning for an education that puts premium on moral values just gets flushed down in the toilet bowl or goes straight to the gutter. This is why we have a ridiculous situation where the dividing line between the uneducated and the educated has become so abysmally thin—where, in fact, the uneducated appear to be far more disciplined, honest, reliable, humble, law-abiding, and responsible than the supposedly educated who can’t or won’t even follow simple traffic rules.
There is thus a pressing and very urgent need for our society to reinvent character-building and moral education to make sure that its recipients can, at the very least, acquire the good character and moral values already admirably possessed by those who are uneducated among us.
