I stood behind a mother and her teenage daughter in the supermarket. The queue was long and protracted and they stood there chatting. In the mother’s right hand she held a piece of rolled beef and in the other a bottle of wine; obviously celebrating, I thought.
The girl poked the meat and watched with fascination as the blood, held in place by the clear plastic wrapping, squished around the piece of meat. She recoiled and with a disgusted look on her face exclaimed a loud, “Eur! That’s disgusting!” Her mother laughed and pointed out she will happily eat it once it is cook.
“But that’s different, its not full of blood, that’s just gross.”
I thought back to when I still taught in schools and remembered the growing response to any form of biological inspection of the inside of anything.
In the early 1980s we still showed the position of organs within an animal and dissected one for them to see it in reality. Some would find it repulsive, but they were few and far between maybe one or two in a class of 28. There were always children fascinated by what they saw and it engaged them enough to not only switch them on to biology but also get some of them to understand the actual size and positioning of organs within themselves. By seeing it in reality they made the connection of it being real, and that these parts were real within them also. In many ways it helped them appreciate so much more, they made connections between animals and the bits they ate. They could connect the idea of breeding for the express purpose of killing for our consumption and this gave them the opportunity to decide whether they continued to buy into it or opt out and become vegetarians (all be it everything except burgers!).
Something changed, I am not sure what it was, but it was fuelled by government intervention which pretty much banned all dissections, so much so there are doctors and surgeons who haven’t seen a live specimen of a human’s insides until they get a chance to operate for real. A scary thought.
So today there are children who have the knowledge to make bombs, use machine guns (in the 3D world of gaming) and spare no mercy when it comes to people they come across. The mow down people in this gaming world and then press the reset button to kill them over again. Do they realise the connection between guns and real blood and real death?
Do they still have any concept of the pretty little lambs bouncing around in a field one minute and lamb burgers in Iceland the next? I was already hearing answers to simple questions such as, where do you think lamb chops come from as being “The supermarket Miss.”
If we allow our children to become so disassociated from the world of reality, death and what makes our bodies tick, how can we hope to save the world for our species survival?
Changes come from society when the majority make the decision and cause the tide of change to occur. The remainder then follow on afterwards until within a period of five years the new way becomes the norm. So lets stop and think, what are the tides of change in this country and what has become the norm?
How about the belief that money is something which does grow on trees, called loans, and that when you are about £40 000+ in debt there are companies which will help you to become bankrupt and write off most of the debts for you.
That eating convenience foods is easier and quicker than cooking for yourself. Cooking is something others do for you and the kitchen is the place to make tea, coffee and microwave whatever you have got from the chiller cabinet of M+S.
Cheap clothes are easy to buy and when you are bored with them, throw them away and get more.
False is perfect, and the more one looks like a dummy in the shop window the better. Thin is in, but reality is, obesity is common. If you have photographs taken, then air-brush out the fat bits and create a new look, a false look. If you don't like the shape of anything you have, then go for plastic surgery.
Meet people on line, they never have to see what you really look like or experience your personality, you can be whoever you wish in cyber space. Even better, create a little cartoon of what you think you look like and flirt to your hearts content, after all its not real.
And that is the part that seems to be growing in our youth today, its not real anymore. If you don't like it, then change it, money is easy to get hold of and parents will give them everything, right?
But then, what sort of world have we given them to grow in? The world has shrunk and if a butterfly sneezes in Africa we know about it within hours. The worlds media has to create stories to fuel the obsessive need for news and our passion for the macabre (as long as its not us that is experiencing it of course). Bad news is good news and we lap it up. As a consequence of all this bad news, we have wrapped up children in cotton wool and made them scared to interact. They are forever looking over their shoulders for the next paedophile, rapist, murderer or gang member with drugs to sell. I know of children who have become scared to walk down the road because of the people they don’t know walking down the road at the same time as them. Now that is scary! They are imprisoned within the car and who has given them that fear if it isn’t their parents. They go round in gangs because it is the only way they feel safe and yet the older generation are made to feel threatened by them being in gangs because of the news. They have heard on the TV how many people have been killed by the gangs of youths. Yes, some of them are rough but most are no different to how we used to be when we were their age. Maybe they haven't been taught that respect is a foundation of human interaction but that again is a sign of what parent do and do not teach.
I looked at the teenager in the queue ahead of me and wondered what she would be like as a mother and what she would be teaching her children? That meat when it is raw is dirty and not to be touched? That drinking a litre of vodka when you are 15 years old is OK as long as you don't get caught? That the place to live your best life is sitting in front of a computer on one of the social networking sites playing at living but not actually doing it because you may meet someone and they may attack you? That when you go out you do this in large groups because you are safer that way and will get left alone, except by the boys who will treat you to a beating if you don't do what you should? Or maybe the girls will beat the males because they are showing how ‘laddish’ they can be?
I smiled and thought of the teachers who have the unenviable job of teaching the latest crop of pregnancies how to live a full and rewarding life when half of them don’t really know themselves. I hope there are enough well balanced children out there to keep the country and ostensibly the world on an even keel so we didn’t blow it up or render it an unnecessary part of their computer interactive life.
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