Dear Sir, Everyone knows the world’s gone mad, but do they know why it’s gone mad?
Bernard Madoff is jailed for 150 years for taking people’s savings. At 71 years of age, what will he serve? If God is kind, 10 years at most!
The Statham family – mother, father and six young children – were engulfed in a fireball when a 40-ton truck ploughed into the back of their people carrier. It was subsequently reported that the truck driver’s attention to his laptop had caused him to be “grossly distracted”. The truck driver was jailed for three years. For taking six lives! What will he serve? If the law is kind, two years at most! Clearly money, and indeed the “right” to be an irresponsible driver (ultimately a dangerous driver), attracts more consideration than life itself!
Our Government is now proposing that if children are not responsible pupils, it’s their parents who should be punished with the likes of heavy fines, jail and parenting classes. Badly-behaved pupils can not only ruin their own future, but (in the worst scenario) can ruin the future of every other pupil in the school. So what about badly-behaved drivers? Don’t they risk both their own lives and those of all other road users who they come into “contact” with? Ultimately this could mean no future at all!
If grown-ups don’t recognise the need for rules, authority and discipline, and indeed show little respect for their fellow human beings – as is so often the case when they get behind the wheel – then how can children be expected to turn into anything other than a disrespecting clone of these grown-ups? Monkey see, monkey do!
So if all pupils who have behaved badly were barred from applying for a driving licence and all badly-behaved drivers had to go to classes on “how to be a responsible driver”, might it just bring some measure of sanity back to schools, if not the world? Better still, teach everyone to ride a bicycle before they’re allowed to drive a car (isn’t the health and well-being of the average Dutch child a great deal better than its British counterpart?) and if not an even greater measure of sanity then certainly a greater measure of understanding, co-operation, road safety, carbon/pollution reduction and good health.
Allan Ramsay
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