We’ve spoiled the child

Over the last two years I’ve expressed my opinion on a variety of subjects from telling of those first pioneers who set foot on New Zealand soils to take up their section of bush clad virgin lands, to expressing my disgust of those in our society who continue to rubbish our amazing farming community, and my concerns and horror of the continual carnage on our roads, which we know are mostly preventable. Each and every one of these subjects are of great importance to our society and our way of life. But as well as the subjects above, we read in the

every day of the horrors of crime, from thefts to assaults, murder to drug abuse.

This is an unpalatable subject for many but I ask, what the hell is going on?

This is not the New Zealand I, or all the other readers of my vintage, was brought up in.

Why oh why have we had to become something near a ‘‘police state’’, even to the extent our new Government is proposing to extend police numbers by some 1800 recruits.

This is an absolute indictment on our society. In other words in my opinion as we have moved through the latter 20th century and into the 21st century we have let ourselves down badly by becoming a ‘‘nanny state’’ as we moved away from knowing what discipline was or should be.

There is a saying which describes this well: ‘‘Spare the rod and spoil the child’’. I also have a personal view that if your child does not know what the word no means by the time they are around seven years old you could well have lost them to the other nastier world.

I am not saying I support beating your child. But it is around the subject of discipline where each family needs to have its own way of dealing with it.

When I attended the Cardiff School, in Taranaki, through the 1940s then on to our local high school, I recall some amazing teachers and one I would like to relate about was Mr Claude Clegg, the principal of our Cardiff School.

Clegg had this system of school work for the start of the week and if we were good the last day was our fun day where we would go down to the Waingongoro River to swim, play and fish, play sport or go into our woodwork room and make things. So the theory being if we behaved we got rewarded and it worked.

But our teachers had a more severe way of punishment if a student was naughty, that being a leather strap around your backside or on your hand, which hurt. It was definitely a deterrent to being a naughty child.

Then when I turned 18 I had to register for CMT, (Compulsory Military Training), attending my 10 and a half weeks of training at Waiouru along with

69 other young lads from the Stratford area in the

13th intake. I still remember my number, 595044, which you were never allowed to forget. This was followed over the next two years with 10-day refresher courses.

If by this stage you did not understand what discipline was then you soon learned. If you didn’t adhere to the commanding officer’s orders you were immediately disciplined by having to do certain not nice duties. I must have been a good boy as I don’t recall getting into trouble.

So for me, and I guess so many other readers, looking back to when we were growing up, discipline did feature but I’m happy to say I’m a better person for it.

I never heard any CMT recruits say a bad word about the army or the discipline that went with it. But in my opinion if discipline is ingrained into you at a young age it is with you for life as you learn to understand right from wrong.

So as our nation moved into the 1970s and beyond we had these ‘‘do-gooders’’ who continually sniped until finally our politicians started to listen and introduce laws around what was acceptable and what was not, such as smacking being outlawed.

This is when our nanny state grew even bigger and now we have perhaps two to three generations who were never brought up knowing right from wrong or no means no.

Why are our jails full to overflowing? Why do we read every day of idiots robbing the local dairy or liquor store? Why do we read about these druggies who claim to the judge that they didn’t know what they were doing?

In my opinion in almost every case these offenders were brought up in families where discipline did not exist.

Now as we move into the 21st century, we as a nation have at huge cost had little option but to become what I call something near a ‘‘police state’’.

‘‘If discipline is ingrained into you at a young age it is with you for life.’’