Family structure

FORMER First Lady Barbara Bush once said, “Your success as a family, our success as a society, depends not on what happens in the White House, but on what happens inside your house.”

This reaffirms what we already know: that the foundation and cornerstone of society is the family at home. No global treaty emanating from the UN and EU that take away parenting rights and responsibilities will diminish the veracity of this truism.

Spare the rod and spoil the child is an age old adage in existence well before the UN and EU were a glint in their sponsors eye. And the hook-line-and-sinker acceptance of the diktats of the UN and EU bureaucrats without any regard to local traditions and culture by the government indicate an inclination on appeasing some people and ignoring the most important stakeholder, parents, who are their electorates. Some things out of UN and EU are OK such as highlighting and exposing domestic violence, but for government officialdom to take over parenting just because they pay some of the bills is to forget where funds for those bills come from anyway. Parents should be restored their right to discipline their own children and teachers their right to throw students off their classroom if these children are habitually disruptive and ill-disciplined.

If government cannot even manage the economy, then I do not want them anywhere near having a say on how I should discipline my children. Parents should strive to give wellbehaved children to teachers to teach and inform, not straddle them with unruly and ill-disciplined ones.

Give back to parents their God-given rights, and to teachers their classrooms, and to government the opportunity to figure out how to patch the $1bn black hole.

Why is this common sense approach so hard to organise around? MAREKO VULI Wainibuku Rd, Nakasi