by Kenneth Schonmeier

Created on: November 05, 2006   Last Updated: May 02, 2007

What we need to do in the future is go back to the past. I remember learning such things as good etiquette. How to introduce people in which order and more important yet simpler things like saying please and thank-you. Yes I have heard all of the arguments about how the parents should be teaching that but the simple fact is they arent! Children are not taught how to treat others and show respect, so they grow up giving none. I dont know about everyone else but I probably remember at the most 10% of what I was taught in classes, simply because I never used it again. I am not saying that social studies and such is not important, but I believe teaching children to be respectful and polite is much more important.

Another idea we need to take from the past is corporal punishment! Okay here we go, I can hear it now... "No teacher better not ever lay a hand on my kid!", and a hundred other forms of the same remark. I dont believe the teacher should be aloud to either, but I do believe there should be a way to send the kid to the office and have a specified individual deal it out with witnesses if the principal finds the teachers reasoning good enough. When I was in school, I had a teacher who would give the backs of our hands a swat with the ruler every time we got out of hand. Nothing serious, just enough to let us feel a little pain and know we better not do it again. Back then the kids were quite respectful to their teachers and one thing is for sure, the teachers were not going to work in fear of their students. Today, children are far more violent, disrespectful and unruly than they were when I went to school. A large reason for this is because we live in a society that looks down on parents disciplining their own children much more so the schools doing it. No I am not talking about abusing, but disciplining! Their is a difference. One is done out of anger and the other out of love. When you discipline out of love you are not going to break bones or leave welts and such. When you discipline out of love you explain to them why you do it so they can learn. Yet we live in a society that no longer distinguishes the two apart and in doing so, we teach our children that there is no consequences to there actions.

The future is a future of technology and imagination. Yet what kind of future are we looking at if our kids are killing each other because they are not taught the difference between right and wrong?

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