Stork talk is no child’s play

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IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL

The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarina (with her permission). SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find. Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.Reach her at her very own blog at http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/ Please.

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Wednesday February 29, 2012

Stork talk is no child’s play
Musings
Marina Mahathir


Nobody disagrees that we should have sex education. But with the impasse that we have now, the more aware and concerned parents have to do their own educating.

I MAY be getting long in the tooth these days but I’ve always held high hopes for the youths of today.

Everywhere I go, whether here in this country or abroad, it is the young people who I find most enthusiastic and energised about the world, ever eager to contribute to society in one way or another.

As much as we like to think of the youths of today as lethargic and apathetic, there are certainly also plenty who are bright young things, sparkling with new ideas.

I saw that recently at the United Kingdom and Eire Council of Malaysian Students (UKEC) conference in London where many of the students got up to ask some really sharp questions.

And I’ve seen that with the young women students at the Asian University for Women in Chittagong, Bangladesh.

Every visit I’ve had there has been nothing short of inspiring.

Of course, let’s not forget the youth-led revolutions in the Middle East, where they have helped to mobilise people using social media.

Meanwhile, back home, someone who calls himself Yoof was making a rare visit to a bookstore, probably heading to the magazine section to look for short reads on cars and football, when he came to a screeching halt in the kiddie section upon seeing a book called Where Do Babies Come From?.

Instantly donning his righteous cap, he quickly scanned this book meant for eight-year-olds, utterly shocked at learning how babies are made (all this time he thought they came from Aisle B at Tesco), blushed and made the sort of thoughtful decision that only Yoof can make: ban this book, it’s obscene!

While youths elsewhere are conducting revolutions and changing the course of their countries, ours are banning children’s books. Way to go, Yoof!

For decades, the seemingly endless debate in our country about sex education has revolved around only one question: who should do it?

Teachers are reluctant to handle the awkward questions that may arise while parents think it’s better done in the more formal setting of school.

Nobody disagrees that we should have sex education.

The best formula is actually to have both teachers and parents do it; teachers do the fact-based bits while parents deal with the many emotional issues that are bound to come up.

But with the current impasse that we have now, where essentially our kids are not getting any sex education, the more aware and concerned parents have to do their own educating.

Every day we read of children being sexually abused, unwanted babies being born and often dumped while sexually-transmitted diseases including HIV continue to spread.

It’s obvious that to at least prevent some of these, we need to educate our children about both their bodies and about sex.

There have been enough studies overseas to show that there is a strong correlation between good school-based sex education and low rates of teenage pregnancies.

Now, if parents want to educate their children – they have every right to do that – then some teaching aids are needed. Good simple books are very helpful.

When I asked the inevitable question at age 11, my mother brought out a cartoon book, not unlike Peter Mayle’s, to explain the facts of life to me. It helped her and me a lot.

I suppose the easily shocked Yoof is not a parent yet or is going to leave the educating of his children to someone else (the Internet perhaps?).

And our equally easily shocked Home Ministry, which is probably embarrassed that it was caught out sleeping for the past 30 years, immediately banned the book.

So now, perhaps Yoof would like to check all the Education Ministry’s materials on sex education, too. Or perhaps, the ministry can write its own sex education book. No doubt a book that says babies are made when Daddies put their ahem-ahem in Mummies’ dot-dot-dot would really be helpful.

By the way, you’ve heard the story of the nurse who told a woman to put her diaphragm at her “door” and then was puzzled when the woman came back a few months later pregnant, right? Turns out that she’d been putting it at the door to her bedroom.

Meanwhile, Yoof and friends have offered to go through every single book there is to ensure that no others will make them blush.

I think that’s a great idea really. It’ll keep them well occupied, make them better informed and perhaps improve their English. Might be a way to keep Mat Rempits off the streets, too.

The rest of us, meantime, will carry on with, oh you know, unimportant things like trying to survive in this economy and bringing up our kids to be decent well-educated children

Common sense not so common

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IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL

The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarina (with her permission). SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find. Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.Reach her at her very own blog at http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/ Please.

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Wednesday February 15, 2012

Common sense not so common
Musings by MARINA MAHATHIR


We learn much folk wisdom – some couched in semi-superstition – either from other people or simply from experience.

I USED to muse that there seems, these days, to be a lack of common sense, the wisdom that comes from basic knowledge and experience. Everyone seems to be more interested in fantasising about imaginary things or providing far-out solutions when simpler ones may do.

People in leadership positions seem to have the least common sense of all, probably because they think people expect something different from them instead of the obvious.

I am reminded of this more and more lately. People are so obsessed with getting from A to Z that they skip over B and C and don’t realise that the wisest outcome is in fact D.

So we get, for example, people who think the ultimate goal is to bring out a website in English but who forget that in order to do that, one needs to first find someone competent in English to do it.

Or who, without checking a simple encyclopedia, wish the wrong people greetings for a religious festival. All it takes is some care and common sense.

There are of course worse examples. Sometimes it makes better sense to say nothing than to open one’s mouth and disclose that one’s head is full of rubbish. It can be jaw-droppingly embarrassing for all observers, if not for the one speaking.

Sometimes we can’t blame those laying out such nonsense. Common sense comes from having some basic knowledge handed down from teachers and guides, as well as lived experiences and just plain intelligence.

Getting websites so excruciatingly mistranslated or sending out wrongly targeted tweets is not so much the fault of whoever wrote them but whoever supervises them.

If supervisors and leaders have not had the sense to lay down some basic rules and procedures, then it’s not surprising that such faux pas happens.

I recently had a request for an interview for a student research project. Reading their proposed project, I was appalled by the entire premise of their topic, one so nonsensical that had it been a foreign university, they would have been laughed out of their room.

But then I realised that it’s not the students’ fault. Such a research proposal should really not have passed by their supervising faculty at all.

Their lecturer should have questioned them much more, made them read more background material to come up with something that made better sense.

Then I had the awful realisation that maybe the lecturer, too, thought it was a topic worth researching.

In our lifetime we learn much folk wisdom either from other people or simply from experience. Some are couched in semi-superstition.

Our mothers would tell us not to cut our fingernails at dusk. It may have sounded a bit mystical but the real lesson was that if we cut them at a time when the light was bad, the chances are we’re likely to cut ourselves.

Or we would be told to close our mouths with our hands when we yawned so that the Devil would not enter our bodies, when in fact it was so that we would not rudely display our open mouths to other people.

When dealing with the public, simple psychology will often do. Nobody really likes to be berated all the time. Often gentle persuasion works better.

Most people have a certain innate sense of decency and justice, so will tend to take the side of the underdog. Thus wielding a stick too heavy-handedly over someone much weaker will only elicit sympathy for that person.

Being humble, even if suspect, usually wins over arrogance. Doesn’t take a genius to figure that out.

But repeatedly, all we see is the opposite of such common sense. Perhaps some people feel the need to be too clever, or assume that the audience must be simply too stupid.

This is the worst mistake of all. If there’s one of you and millions of them, chances are there are probably lots of people much smarter than you out there and they’ll outgun you with brains any time.

The trouble is, like those students, once there is no common sense at the top, the bottom takes the same cue and loses all ability to think clearly, too. Whatever is the prevailing logic on high, no matter how absurd, becomes everyone’s logic, too.

The illogic when unquestioned is accepted as gospel. Thus a talk becomes a seminar, a party becomes an orgy, a gathering a riot. The simple matter of supporting evidence is ignored.

Where on earth will this collective stupidity lead us?

Will it make us stand tall and proud as Malaysians, punching above our weight, as someone put it, all round the globe? Or will it make us increasingly isolated and provincial?

Or don’t we care?

All awash with phobias

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IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL
The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarina (with her permission). SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find. Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.Reach her at her very own blog at http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/ Please.
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Wednesday February 1, 2012

All awash with phobias

MUSINGS
By MARINA MAHATHIR



If ever there’s a phobia one can promote, it should be a true loathing of graft in any form, regardless of it being the petty everyday variety or the major million dollar ones.

I’VE been thinking about phobias lately because there seem to be so many around. I have a phobia about snakes; I simply don’t like their slitheriness. I know lots of people who have phobias about spiders, cockroaches or even cats.

To have a phobia means to have both a fear and a loathing of something. There are people who have a total phobia about germs, and are obsessed with keeping things clean, because they fear if they don’t, they may get ill.

Phobias have nothing to do with evidence or reasonableness; most times they are irrational. Hence it was with that 21st century pheno­menon called Islamophobia, the fear and loathing of Muslims by those of other faiths.

It leads to all sorts of irrational acts, including blaming Muslims for every single human infraction there is, and insisting that they are going to do things that they have no intention of doing, for example, setting up syariah law in the United States.

Witness the current Republican primaries. Almost every candidate has said something Islamophobic as a way, they think, of getting votes among the conservative right-wing Christian population.

In the UK, Prime Minister David Cameron has said that the biggest threat to multi-culturalism is young Muslim men. What else would account for such a shocking and outrageous generalisation but a phobia about Muslims?

It has to be said that such religious phobias do not go one way only. The response to Islamophobia has been Christianophobia, where Christians are irrationally blamed for every social ill and accused of plotting to take over Muslim countries.

(This fantasy always prompts the question in my head of why anyone would want to take over a Muslim country these days, when so many are ill-managed and under-developed.)

Judanophobia, the fear and loathing of Jews, also known in the West as anti-Semitism, is another one that goes a long way back, although Judaism is often wrongly conflated with Zionism.

There are some common features to these phobias. The first is that the target of the phobia is not one that the phobic actually knows. Most of the most rabid Islamophobes have never met a Muslim in their lives.

Secondly, it always involves reducing the human target of the phobia to negative stereo­types: “All Jews are tight-fisted” or “All Muslim women are submissive.” If you point out anyone who doesn’t fit the stereotype, then they are regarded as exceptions to the rule.

It helps to remember that every time we stereotype any group, someone somewhere is also stereotyping us. And those stereotypes about us are no more reasonable than any we make of other people. But what do phobics care about such fairness?

Thirdly, while some people may complain about being the targets of phobias, they also often have no problems having phobias about other people.

Many Muslims who complain about the injustices and oppression wrought by Islamophobia have in turn no qualms about oppressing their own women or groups who may not fit into their idea of mainstream Islam.

Homophobia, for instance, is a pretty routine reflex among many Muslim men, especially those men who are the most likely to be picked out at an American airport for further questioning.

In the end, we have to ask in what ways do phobias like these help to advance society? If the US becomes more Islamophobic, will it make Americans happier, richer or safer?

If Muslim countries become more Christiano­phobic, will their people be less hungry and better educated?

If our societies allow homophobia to become the norm, will our schools be better and our public transport more efficient?

Are phobias even worth using to get votes? At the beginning of this year, Jamaica’s People’s National Party won a landslide victory on a platform that explicitly rejected homophobia and promoted greater inclusiveness.

What’s more, Jamaicans even elected their first-ever female prime minister, Portia Simpson Miller. It just goes to show that using negativity to win votes is a losing strategy because people really want positive and inclusive leadership.

Perhaps, if there was a phobia to promote, it should be a phobia about corruption. Our society should develop a true loathing of corruption in any form, whether it is the petty everyday variety or the major million dollar ones.

We should get to the point where instead of joking about it, the very mention of any form of bribe would be met with severe disgust and rejection.

Coupled with this should be a phobia for the sense of entitlement and impunity that some people enjoy while disregarding other people’s feelings. Instead of simply putting up with this, we should collectively and decisively say it’s simply not acceptable.

Now, that would surely be worth a vote or two.

Free speech goes both ways

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IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL
The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarina (with her permission). SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find. Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.Reach her at her very own blog at http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/ Please.
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Wednesday January 18, 2012

Free speech goes both ways

Musings
By MARINA MAHATHIR



Howls of protest are heard when attempts are made to block hate speech, which is ironic because very often the speaker has no interest in respecting anyone else’s rights either.

I JUST returned from a symposium on social media, freedom of expression and incitement to hatred in Asia.

Forty Asian delegates as well as Frank La Rue, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, gathered to discuss what is happening in our countries and what can be done to meet the challenges that the Internet, particularly, poses.

The good news is that Malaysia is not the worst country when it comes to laws restricting freedom of speech on the Internet.

This is not to say we don’t have such laws but we are still grappling with the whole issue.

Delegates told of how, in some countries, if anything said by an individual online offends anyone, then the person who said it can be prosecuted.

Thus, if you opine that someone is a nobody, or that you don’t like someone’s hairstyle, then that person can say he’s offended by it and report you.

In many countries, there are laws preventing people from insulting various entities, including the government, royalty and religion.

The trouble is often the definition of insulting is vague and governments tend to be insulted on behalf of other people who may not care at all.

But that would be reason enough for them to prosecute someone.

Thus this leads to much abuse by these governments, especially towards people they don’t like.

The right to freedom of expression is of course balanced by responsibilities.

As Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, the exercise of the right to freedom of speech carries with it special duties and responsibilities and therefore may be subject to certain restrictions.

However, these shall only be such as provided by law and are necessary “for respect of the rights and reputations of others” and “for the protection of national security or of public order, or of public health or morals”.

Our own Article 10 in our Federal Constitution allows the freedom of speech, assembly and association, but is then restricted by certain other provisions and laws.

For instance, it should be clear to everyone that child pornography, which violates the rights of children, should be prohibited and nobody should object to the blocking of such websites.

However, the Special Rapporteur reports that most governments rely solely on blocking of such websites and not on prosecuting those who produce them.

Also, despite child pornography being a by-product of child trafficking, most governments have done very little to tackle this root cause of the problem.

Another legitimate restriction to free speech is to censure hate speech, especially those that incite others to violence.

Even these have to be carefully enacted, so that only speech where there is a clear and immediate danger of violence occurring towards anyone or group is restricted.

We know that sometimes people say things in the heat of the moment they don’t really mean or intend to carry out.

On the other hand, sometimes there are people of influence who seem to encourage their followers or supporters to take steps to harm others.

Those are the ones that need restricting or even prosecution.

The other issue is privacy.

In order to be able to express their opinions freely, people need to have their right to privacy protected.

However, we now see governments requiring real name verification before comments can be made online.

This discourages many people in countries where there is legitimate fear of persecution for different views.

Even worse, there is little done when the personal details of people are posted online causing them to be harassed and even threatened.

We have seen very little will in governments to protect the privacy and security of these individuals, just because they may have different views.

Sometimes, it is not just the privacy of these individuals that are violated but also those of their families and friends.

Clearly, in Malaysia, these violations of privacy and of freedom of speech overall are made not just by the government, and by their supporters, but also by those opposing them.

Hate speech has of late been allowed free reign on the Internet.

Every time a blog owner tries to block someone who posts hateful comments, we get accused of restricting freedom of speech, which is ironic because very often the blocked person has no interest in respecting anyone else’s rights either.

Unfortunately, most Malaysians are complacent about these issues.

But as the Special Rapporteur pointed out, the freedom of speech, opinion and expression facilitates other rights such as the right to information, to education, to take part in cultural life and to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress.

Violations of free speech, whether through laws or just intimidation, affect all of us.

We should always be watchful when it happens.

No fresh start to 2012

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IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL
The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarina (with her permission). SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find. Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.Reach her at her very own blog at http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/ Please.
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Wednesday January 4, 2012
No fresh start to 2012
MUSINGS
By MARINA MAHATHIR


The last year was one where there were particularly high levels of obliviousness. Why not, in 2012, for the sake of doing something different, have a campaign called “End Stupid Statements”.

IT’S 2012 and if the Mayans are to be believed, the world ends this year. For me, the world didn’t start well because we got up on New Year’s Day to dry pipes. No water in the toilets is not what you call a fresh start to the year.

Could someone make a resolution to replace the old pipes in Bangsar, please?

Otherwise, we Bangsarites will go on a shower strike and stink the place out until our demands are met.

And, yes, our smelly mob will assemble in the streets to protest.

For some other Malaysians, especially some students, the New Year certainly did not start well at all. It makes one sigh again with frustration.

Let us see this clearly; the only people capable of using force on others are the ones with the batons and guns.

Generally, those aren’t civilians, and especially not students.

If this is the way the year is going to start, then we have learnt nothing from 2011, nor will we do anything new in 2012.

We will continue to exhibit our fears by clamping down on those who think differently, or who are simply different.

We display our paranoia by immediately looking for who is behind those who think differently.

We cannot imagine that people can think for themselves, without someone telling them how and what to think and do.

It’s the ultimate indictment of our education system, that every single thing anyone does, especially if contrary to what the establishment wants, must be attributed to a sheeplike disposition to be led.

Well, surely, if those who are contrarian are doing it because they are sheep, then those who are conformists are also sheep.

After all, everyone went through the same school system, no?

The last year, for me, was one where there were particularly high levels of obliviousness among those who rule us.

Oblivious to what people really think and want being chief among them.

Whether it’s deliberate or not, I can’t tell, but somehow there’s mild comfort in believing that it’s just natural gormlessness, and not willful blindness.

I am hoping that this year will be a year of greater imagination.

It would be nice if our leaders suddenly had the imagination to trust their people to be able to think on their own.

And to trust that people thinking on their own is not necessarily a bad thing, nor necessarily a move that will backfire.

I’d also like our leaders to start believing that their people are generally good people, who get on with one another and simply want to live their lives as best as they can.

And they can do all that without any interference from those who think they are leading us.

I don’t need anyone to tell me how to get on with my neighbours; I already do.

I do need someone to tell off those people who keep telling me to constantly be suspicious of my neighbours, including when they are nice to me.

Apparently this is only because they want to dislodge me from my faith.

In that case, my being nice to them must be equally effective at dislodging them from their beliefs.

Why not then have “Be Nice to Your Neighbours” campaigns?

Indeed, why not in 2012, for the sake of doing something different, have a campaign called “End Stupid Statements”.

Every statement uttered by a public figure that simply does not stand up to scrutiny gets printed on a big banner and then symbolically thrown into a giant dustbin at Dataran Merdeka.

My first candidate: Jews and Christians Are Taking Over the Country! (My test for the credibility of that statement is to ask: what for?).

I’m sure it’ll be a full dustbin.

But what am I saying?

We have an election to look forward to, which means there’ll be an endless supply of dumb utterances from all sides of the fence.

We should arm ourselves with deflectors to shield us from the inanities that are bound to rain upon our poor heads.

Or helmets at the very least, because it’s bound to injure our craniums.

But let me remain optimistic.

The first person that says all Malaysians are equal under our Constitution gets my vote.

Or who says, men and women are equal, or who outlaws child marriage.

And I’ll even give some grudging respect to the first person who says: “I lied, I’m sorry, I’ll step down now.”

But I suppose that would be like expecting to see porcine flying objects. Life trundles on, folks.

Try and have a good year!

Year that was for the protester

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IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL

The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarina (with her permission). SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find. Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.Reach her at her very own blog at http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/ Please.

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Wednesday December 21, 2011
Year that was for the protester
MUSINGS
By MARINA MAHATHIR


The silly season is already on us and no doubt will be a fractious and prolonged one going into 2012.

IT’S the end of the year and, like everyone else, I’m going to try and summarise what made it an interesting year indeed.

Time magazine named The Protester as its Person of the Year in 2011.

I couldn’t agree more, because really few people have made an impact on society than protesters this year.

From the protesters in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya and Syria to the Occupy Wall Street protesters and its many offshoots, these largely peaceful protests have forced things to change in their societies.

In the Middle East, corrupt and authoritarian leaders have been forced to step down. In some, it’s still an ongoing battle.

Of course, these steps towards democracy are not perfect. Nor are the results.

But that’s democracy for you.

Just because people don’t know what they want is no reason to dismiss democracy.

It is the fact that they finally have choices is the triumph, after so many years of not having any.

For those who insist on equating the London riots with the Arab Spring, do get your facts right.

The former was not about changing an authoritarian government for a more democratic one, nor was it meant to be peaceful.

The latter was a peaceful demand for change; the violence came from the government response.

If you want to equate the London riots with the Syrian government’s response, perhaps it would be more accurate.

Time magazine has mostly recognised the Arab, Spanish and American protesters in their essay.

But perhaps they should have also looked eastwards.

I think the Bersih rally goers, protesting peacefully for clean and fair elections, are also deserving of the award.

For the first time, ordinary Malaysians went out to demand what should be their right, to be able to vote fairly.

Young and old of all races and religions, Malaysians marched to protect this basic human right. And were demonised because of it.

While the Government responded to the Bersih demands by establishing the Parliamentary Special Committee on electoral reforms, at the same time the so-called Peaceful Assembly Act – aimed at curbing any other rallies like Bersih – was passed.

In any case, it is delusional to think that curbing protests will curb rebellious thoughts. These will continue to thrive in 2012, that’s for sure.

Perhaps 2011 was also the year of the Strong Woman.

On the international scene, not one but three women won the Nobel Peace Prize this year: President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, Leymah Gbowee, also of Liberia, and Tawakkol Karman of Yemen, the youngest-ever recipient.

It’s interesting that all of these women are rebellious women, who refused to accept the established, and patriarchal, way of doing things.

Instead, they found their own way, and worked for peace in their countries.

Malaysia, too, has its share of strong women. Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan is the prime example of someone who has had to withstand personal attacks from all quarters like no other person has had to in our country, yet still carries on with her strong principles.

Let it never be said that she lacks courage.

For women to get ahead, it really is imperative that they have the sort of integrity and display the sort of ethical behaviour that we often find lacking in men.

This year is, of course, also the year of the Obedient Wives Club, hardly a great leap forward for womankind.

Nevertheless, the OWC knew exactly how to get publicity for their causes.

And, I suspect, despite the sniggers over their sex manual, there are many who actually agree with their basic premise, that a good wife is one who blindly obeys her husband even when she doesn’t feel like it.

Finally, this year has been a bad year for justice and equality.

Children born less than six months after their parents married are considered illegitimate, thus forcing them to bear the sins of their parents.

Even if legitimate, children can be married off at even 10 years old, surely a blight on our society if we are to consider ourselves progressive.

Muslim women still don’t have the same rights as their non-Muslim sisters when it comes to marriage, property and inheritance.

And people of different sexual orientations are not regarded as full citizens.

I’d like to be optimistic about 2012 but that does not look likely.

The silly season is already on us and no doubt will be a fractious and prolonged one.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, folks!

Gimme, seems to be the easiest word

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IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL
The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarina (with her permission). SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find. Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.Reach her at her very own blog at http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/ Please.
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Wednesday December 7, 2011
Gimme, seems to be the easiest word
MUSINGS By MARINA MAHATHIR


In a land of opportunity for all, people should remember John F. Kennedy’s famous words: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.

THIS is going to be one long sigh of exasperation, folks. I get like this when I think of my country sometimes and despair at the sheer shallowness of how we talk about her.

How, amid protestations of how much we love her, we insist on treating her with such disdain and thoughtlessness that in fact we are ruining her every day.

Once upon a time we used to talk about our country and what we could do for it. We used to think that what John F. Kennedy said – “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” – was so admirable.

We wanted to make our country so good that we could hold our heads up high anywhere in the world. Instead, all we hear these days is what can I get from this country, how can I get rich off this country.

While this should be a country of opportunity for all, why is there this attitude that this country owes us a living? Indeed, some of us think that we are entitled to be cosseted and pampered to the nth degree for as long as we live.

When I was little, my aunt gave us children a book that taught us about how to be good people. Basically, it meant expelling from our vocabulary two phrases: “Give Me”, and “I Couldn’t Care Less”.

People who used these phrases often were selfish people who were not considerate of others; indeed, thought the whole world was only about them. We learnt that it was better to give to others than to take, and to always care about other people.

So my jaw has to drop to the floor when I read the papers these days, and almost all that anyone says is “Give Me” and “I Couldn’t Care Less”.

“Give me,” they say, even though they have done nothing to earn it and even though it will bring ruin to the country. When asked to consider the feelings of others, basically they show a finger and say that they could not care two hoots.

Obviously nobody gave them the same book.

It’s hard enough to teach values to our children these days without adults showing every day in our papers and on TV that they have none at all.

How do I teach my children that nothing comes without hard work and discipline, and that consideration for others is not just a value but a duty as a human being?

As a little girl, I was taught one of the biggest sins was telling lies. Nothing made God angrier, it was drilled into me, than telling untruths, especially about other people. To this day, I cannot fib much, not even about my age or weight.

But nowadays people tell such blatant lies. You can always tell when a person is lying; they always feel the need to shout it out, as if sheer volume makes it truthful.

I’ve never known people with clear consciences to ever be anything but calm. So you watch this lying and you have to wonder how come their parents didn’t scare them to death about God as mine did?

Of course you only tell lies because you think that people will actually believe them. Which means that you think that such people are fools.

And indeed they often live up to the label. The astounding thing is, why are there so many of them? Are there absolutely no smart people around?

People who see through all this, and say something about it, are somehow made to feel as if they are unpatriotic.

Just because we don’t buy into the improbable stories, we are not playing by the rules. Of course, nobody wonders if the rules are good in the first place.

Actually, rules have been broken a great deal in these past few years. The rules of simple civility, for one, are long gone. I used to think of my people as the gentlest, most polite people on earth.

Until I saw a video of a meeting with much shouting and screaming, and someone pulling a chair from under an old man. We don’t censure behaviour like this, but we tut-tut at people kissing. Go figure.

I struggle to teach my children to be kind to others, to mind their manners, to never emulate those who are doing things that are wrong.

I tell them that whether it’s five ringgit or five million ringgit, if they take what’s not theirs, it’s called stealing. And if they make up stories that can cause harm to others, they must own up and apologise.

But when adults are the ones doing these things, what do I tell them?