Value education for children

THIS refers to Aruna Rathod’s "Are we teaching our children the right values?" (January 5). With fast spreading consumerism, socio-cultural priorities have undergone a sea change. Now it is the material gains that draw our attention more than moral and ethical values.

Such a mindset has turned our children into unfeeling and materialistic beings. Professional education and training might have led them high in the corporate sector or made them rich businessmen, but it is doubtful whether it has helped them become good, honest, responsible and dependable human beings.

Blaming the media, particularly the TV, for all ills would amount to ignoring reality. It is our own indifferent and evasive attitudes and a lack of a sense of responsibility in their physical, intellectual and moral growth that is the cause of many evils amongst the youth.

Ved Guliani
Hisar

This refers to Reeta Sharma’s write-up "Training cops to be gender sensitive" (December 22). Police training schools are so brutal that they succeed in transforming even a dove of peace into a fire-breathing dragon. One can’t imagine the vocabulary of abuses used by police instructors.

The Police has to coerce and compel all citizens to obey laws enacted and enforced without the consent of all citizens. Punishment always degrades and brutalises those who punish and those who are punished. Cruelty can never bear good fruit.

Avtar Narain Chopra
Kurukshetra

This refers to "Golf — a victim of its own success?" by Mohinder Singh (December 29).

Originating in the fifteenth century, golf was once played in India by gora sahibs only and now by the brown ones. It is an elitist sport, having a snob value.

A slow-moving game, it is played at a very relaxed pace. Surprisingly one day’s golf provides less exercise than an hour’s brisk walk. And it requires acres of land to make a golf course.

Some golf courses advertise their exotic locations with lush green manicured courses, serving equally exotic gourmet lunches and drinks.

Interestingly, Himachal Pradesh has the world’s highest (6,700 ft.) and perhaps the oldest golf course, laid by Lord Curzon, at Naldehra, 21 km from Shimla.

New entrants to some golf clubs will have to wait for more than 20 years to join them — so long is their waiting list!

Roshni Johar
e-mail