Ricky Poca
Observing our community recently, I personally observed the need for parents to play bigger roles in the lives of their children.
Children today, whom the national hero Jose Rizal once described as the future of our country, lack discipline, responsibility and respect towards others. They are unmindful of the many responsibilities that come with their lives today.
Unlike before when children showed so much respect to the elders by greeting them either by kissing them on the cheek or on their hands, today you seldom see those gestures because they don’t consider it “in.”
Simply put, today’s generation lacks good manners and right conduct (GMRC) that we learned from our parents and our teachers.
I remembered being taught about Christian values in elementary school. I was taught the value of caring in accordance with what the church taught us.
In our religion subjects, we learned stories of unselfish love, charity and others. The lack of respect and kindness of children today can be blamed on the parents who abdicated their responsibility to raise their children on these Christian values.
In a macho, patriarchal society, the father is more concerned with having children and leaving the important role of molding the children on the mother, who is also busy trying to feed them.
Some of the perversions plaguing our society, cyberpornography comes from the erroneous belief of indigent parents that they can make money off their children by letting them pose nude for foreigners without these predators touching them.
Indeed like many others, I am very sad with our society today and I pray that the people get closer to God and practice the values taught by God. One cannot also blame the church since their hands are full ministering to the faithful and the needy.
We must remember that our parents are our first teachers and we learn so many good values from them because they teach us at home.
It is also said that our people individually and collectively should be part of the solution and not part of the problem.
We should teach children to become people for others by thinking about the welfare of others and not just their own.
Many people have lost hope for our society’s future, but I for one am not giving up. I still believe in the city and its people we have always led our country in economic performance and production.
But Cebu City may be overtaken by its runaway population growth which is caused by people from other provinces making their home in the city. I love Cebu City. It is here where I was born and where I would probably be buried.
My forebears came from Cebu City, but I realize that we are only temporary occupants of the world. So let us take good care of it so that future generations would have a better world to live in.
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