FB in our midst
“Facebook face-off” by Kalpana Mohan was an enjoyable read. You instantly felt like laughing at the writer's misery while at the same time you empathised with her. Poor lady! On a serious note, social networking has really come to occupy a major chunk of our day-to-day lifestyle. Today, when we think of any occasion in general, the first thing that comes to our mind is taking photos, uploading them onto Facebook, and enjoying the “likes” and “comments” that follow suit. This might be a healthy trend considering that you get to see what is going on in everyone's lives, but when the same thing becomes a mania (as in the writer's case), it is bound to irritate our near and dear ones.
Shivanandini Prakash
Nanganallur
Time for solutions
The life of a young girl gets ruined every three seconds. This is one of the striking realities of the world today. We are so inured to such hollow “rituals” that they no longer sound devastating to our ears. It is criminal to stay silent over these biting truths of our society. As the author writes, it is ‘time to leave it behind'. Only if each one of us stops staring into the face of ugliness and choose to fight it instead, would there be solutions. Let's not dream of an utopian society..let's build one before we become History
Saumya Dwivedi
Complex problem
The findings of a study that “children exposed to more video game violence became more aggressive over time than those with lesser exposure” (“Consuming violence” by Vikram Kapur) are really shocking while the popular belief is that the films and TV serials portraying violent scenes have a telling effect on children in pursuing the violent behaviour. We, Indian parents, feel happy when we buy video games for our wards as they are happy with them. Though the behaviour of adolescent children is complicated, influenced by various factors including video games, the above findings should be an eye-opener to every parent if they want their children not to land in the situation the 15-year-old Chennai student killing his teacher has found himself in.
A. Jainulabdeen
Chennai
The recent murder of a teacher by a 15-year-old student has given rise to a lot of discussion on the reasons for this unbelievable and tragic incident. In my opinion, commercialisation is the main reason for almost all the evils we see in the field of education now. Self-financing schools, colleges and universities, started in large numbers in recent times, are interested only in making money, throwing all moral principles and values to the wind. The teachers who work in such institutions are treated almost like bonded-labourers, with low salary and no job security. They are harassed by the management to produce good results, somehow or other, to be flaunted to get more students, which means more money. The poor teachers, in turn, harass the students to achieve this goal. Unfortunately, most of the parents are also interested in their children getting more marks and better ranks only, without giving any thought to their interests and abilities. Innocent and helpless children are caught in this vicious cycle. If some of them turn criminals, it is mainly because of the suffocating educational system, in the grip of money-minded people sans morals and values.
D. Samuel Lawrence
Madurai
