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Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Obenieta: No kidding
By Myke U. Obenieta
So to Speak
Neither a laughing matter nor a child’s play, that tough nut called law enforcement. Where peace and order and a sense of decency remain as exciting as hide-and-seek or as compelling as a stand-up comic’s antics, only the innocent would drool dream-eyed at a danger-free idyll.
Particularly unleashed by those throwing the kindergarten essentials of catechism or etiquette out the window, social ills and a host of other problems are pretty much summarized in a wag’s smug remark: These aren’t solved by getting older.
Where a bloodthirsty cabal of vigilantes stays on the loose even as petty criminality stalks the streets, the children appear to be the last stronghold for hoping against the heartburn of moralists. Or against the headache of authorities. Not a few of whom, by the way, wear their wrinkles on the skin of their eyeballs and ears. See no evil, hear no evil. Thus they call this basic rule for survival where monkey business blurs the distinction between corruption and conscience.
Because law and justice continue to roll downhill in spite of the police and other pillars of enlightenment, how to nip venality in the bud might be as tricky as reinventing the wheel.
That, however, hasn’t stopped the Cebu City Council from making the tricky matter of solving crimes into a classroom lesson or homework for kids.
No one’s grizzled enough for a crash course on “responsible citizenship,” and it had better start early. Or so Hilario Davide III proposed in his resolution that the City Council consequently approved. “One way by which the moral, intellectual and social well-being of children may be promoted and protected is to equip them with the basic knowledge of law and order while in school,” he explains his pipe dream involving the Cebu City Police Office and the City Schools Division in a joint program that provides basic instruction on law and order to public elementary school students.
And so, in due time, some Cebu City police officials “may have to set aside their firearms and handcuffs for a while in exchange for chalks and blackboard erasers.” As intended, this would prevent children from becoming either victims or perpetrators of crimes in their own homes, schools, and communities because of poverty and lack of proper guidance from their parents, elders, and teachers.
Hopefully, too, the children won’t get cross-eyed at the comprehensive guidelines inside the classroom and at the rudeness of reality check outside where the headlines remain smeared with the blurred delineations between good and evil.
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (September 5, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
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