Low IQs on kids’ welfare

Batas Mauricio .

FILIPINO lawmakers are either hardheaded, or many of them simply have low IQs when it comes to the welfare of Filipino children. Did not President Duterte just recently badmouthed Sen. Francis Pangilinan because of the Juvenile Justice Law that the senator pushed some time ago which, according to the President, has become the principal reason why Filipino kids no longer have any discipline these days?

Indeed, the saliva that spewed out of the mouth of the President when he assailed Pangilinan for that law has not even dried yet, in a manner of speaking, and yet we now hear our congressmen passing a law that seeks to make our kids more ill-disciplined by prohibiting the imposition of discipline among them by physical punishment, like whipping them.

Right now, many Filipino kids have already become hardened and very bold criminals, robbers, killers, and even drug couriers, principally because of Pangilinan’s law which removed their criminal liability for any criminal act by them. But then, we are now even making it punishable if we discipline them? This will certainly push many more Filipino youth to more criminal activities.

If the truth be told, what our lawmakers and other highanking officials should be concerning themselves with at this point is the return of honest-to-goodness discipline among our children, especially the teaching, once again, of good manners and right conduct in our schools and in our homes.

The fact is that, since the government discarded the teaching of good manners and right conduct in the schools, and even the teaching of religion or other spiritual principles to our youth, and since Pangilinan’s law became enshrined in the country, many kids irretrievably descended to shameful depths of criminality. We know this for a fact because videos of children committing crimes even in public, even in broad daylight, get highlighted in social media once every so often.

Unfortunately, however, how can we impart to minors the principles on good manners and right conduct and spiritual learning when their own parents, or their companions in their homes, themselves lack discipline and lack the desire know-how? It is clear that the first stage in all efforts to teach our children the virtues of goodness starts in their own homes.

Because of this, I will reiterate and repeat once again (repetitiveness intended here) what I had been writing about here: our officials, including the president whoever he maybe, should now work towards bringing back, among our people, the fear and love of God, whatever their religious affiliation maybe.

If our people would start having genuine love and fear of God in their hearts, conducting themselves on any matter would necessarily follow God’s commands. And when our people start doing this, displaying love and fear of God in their lives, their children, and all their relatives and others who associate or deal with them, will also do the same thing.

Then and only then will true change come to our nation. Because we would be obeying God’s commands faithfully, especially the command to love Him with all our hearts, our minds, our strength and our souls, we will necessarily learn to deal faithfully with our fellowmen. In a society where no one desires to put one over the other, the march towards success would be inevitable.

E-mail: batasmauricio@yahoo.com