Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Pillorying dignity

An article from Ovi magazine by Thanos Kalamidas

It started late last week from a popular UK tabloid and gradually took over all the tabloids all around the world. By Sunday it is somewhere in all the media agencies all around the world, the issue a thirteen year-old boy and a fifteen year- old girl that became a father and mother. A boy who still spends most of his time playing computer games, football and going to school and a girl still playing with dolls and in the back garden with her friends were sexually active; so active so the girl was taking the pill and because she forgot to take it a few days she became pregnant.

But let’s get to the other elements one by one before we move to the new parents. Newspapers and especially tabloids live and thrive with stories like that and that’s the reason they literally hunt stories like that ignoring everything that has to do with human dignity, even the basic rules. So we all know – and by all I mean the whole world – the name of the boy and the girl, we all know their address and thanks to the tabloids we all had a look in their bedroom’s keyhole since all the tabloids left a lot of comments about their active sex life. I suppose a few perverts had a party with all the details that paraded in the pages of the tabloids.

Making Andy Warhol true these tabloids promise ten minutes fame to everybody pillorying the two kids because with all the photos and all the interviews with questions like “how you going to finance your new life” and answers like “what does ‘finance’ means” that’s exactly what they are doing ignoring that the boy is in the first grade and is not a surprise if he doesn’t know the meaning of the words. The media have acted like vultures over these young bodies and I’m sorry to say this is inexcusable and embarrassing but it seems like that everybody is ignoring it.

You see the tabloids after gave the chance to everybody to look into the keyhole they gave the opportunity for another blame game and a witch-hunt. So the conservative party – no I’m sorry, the most hypocrite part of the society doesn’t matter ideology - blamed the labour party and the socialists for the loss of morals. Every time I hear or read something like that I really freak out because usually it comes from people who haven’t got any sense of morals or dignity but they flag them to serve their opportunist agendas and cover their unbelievable scandals. I suppose their next suggestion is to involve the civil servants and take the baby away from the parents because they are too young completing a series of mistakes with a huge mistake.

The same people and many more will say that things like that didn’t happen in the past. This is the most amazing lie and unfortunately a lie most believe and repeat often. Things like that happened all throw the human history and they will happen in the future as well. Do you know what the difference is? The cover up and the acceptance of the fact since the accident were accompanied with a fast wedding something people today don’t think necessary. Or was it better when my thirteen-year old grandmother had her first child from a man she married just a year before with a man who was twenty years her senior? Or was my grandmother an exception? And my grandmother was lucky because she got married, how many others due to social differences were left alone with their newborn in a society that didn’t want the responsibility sending hundreds of kids in orphanages all around the world?

You don’t have to go far, just read the classics from the 19th and the 18th century to see all the examples, actually some of those classics are must to read for teenagers today. This is a very serious issue and it has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with morals but with the fact that two very young kids gambled their future due to lack of knowledge of the outcome of their acts. Otherwise that they were sexually active is not a crime! And unfortunately this is were it comes the family and the state especially the school. Let’s start from the bottom. Do you think that the teachers care or even if they care can they do something?

Unfortunately the raw answer is no, they cannot do something because most of them are hovered from exactly the same problems the parents have, insecure future, loans, credit cards and the fear of unemployment. Most of them in their hunt of survival have no time to take care of their own kids not the others’ kids. Their fears and insecurities coming with them in the classrooms living them dry to any kind of reaction. The family? Most of the time the family is absent, both parents work hard if they are lucky to cope with the necessary expenses, sometimes doing jobs they hate, humiliating and underpaid. The only time they have to deal with their kids is something like two three hours maximum a day.

I’ve read somewhere that the two families should be blamed for leaving their kids to sleep in the same room? Really? So if your twelve year-old son asks you to bring his friend to overnight the first thing you will think is that they are going to have an orgy in his room and not that they are going to pretend that they are reading and spend all the time in front the play station! If you think that they are going to have an orgy then there is something wrong with you. From the other side do you think if they want to do something you are going to stop them? You must have illusions and examples there are thousands all around us. The key for a good relationship with the kids is trust and information.

Information is the part where the state has failed, not that there are not the right books in the schools and there are not the right hours and teachers to teach the kids, what is missing is the right attitude. Our world has changed this is fact and the kids grow faster nowadays this is another fact and it is our obligation to arm the kids with this new future not preaching morals but explaining what nobody ever explained to my grandmother and obviously to those two kids, that there is a future that includes babies but first they have to make sure that they are armed to survive with dignity in this world. For this to happen we must have teacher who will not worry for their well-being but they will worry for these kids’ well-being. I’m emphasizing the role of the teachers because again unfortunately this is the thing that has changed radically nowadays; kids live more in the school yard than with their parents.

Finally the kids themselves. Personally I’m glad they kept the baby and didn’t escape to any easy solution and I really hope that this will not become the reason or the excuse to stop their studies but on the contrary and with the help of the families and the state will motivate them to study harder for a better future for them and their kid. And if we need desperately to blame somebody it would be a good start to begin with the media that like cannibals pilloried their dignity!

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