Hypothetical. Suppose the controversial video presented instead two ordinary people, say a construction worker and a housemaid, do you think it would be able to infiltrate the social media spheres and sell like hot cakes to netizens? Suppose further, that even if indeed the video presented actual students, only that they weren’t wearing their school uniforms, would this entire hullabaloo actually reach to this level of mega-stardom?
My answers to both questions are a double “Noâ€. The sheer fact that one of the actors in the video was wearing her school attire became the one and only hallmark responsible for its blockbuster character.
But the recent sex scandal, for me, actually silently re-personified the pressing “problems†faced by today’s society. And I decidedly put the word “problems†in quotation because at least they were once thought of as threats, as forms of abnormal growth that had to be stopped right there and then, but are now trying to challenge our norms, thus seemingly becoming widely-accepted as normal and cool.
I am talking about premarital sex. I am talking about weakening foundations of parental guidance. I am talking about misapplication of education.
Clearly, whatever anyone says of the matter, this issue transcends the whole sexual act. From another perspective, it gives humanity a sneak peek to where the youth is standing at this point in the question of morality. And the clues the video gives can drive us down to a generalization that the youth’s morals nowadays are critically endangered.
I have yet to prove my worth as a lover, but one sure thing is, I honor and give value to women. I recognize how important the roles of our mothers, of our sisters, the marvelous roles of our girlfriends. (Without women, to paraphrase a book, we’d all be gay, art would be dead, texting will go down considerably, plastic surgeons would go out of business, and men would definitely be smarter.)
But the moment a lady engages in a sexual act with a man, who is not married to her, she instantly devalues herself in the same way that a man devalues himself too by taking part of the act. Premarital sex tears away our values and doesn’t promote them, when we all should be building up our morals and upholding them.
Furthermore, what have our parents done so far to place the necessary safety nets against the doom of their children? Does this video tell that our parents have been so gripped with work that they have somehow bypassed the equally vital role of shaping the values of their kids?
Our homes are our first schools, and the values we hold dear in life are primarily learned within the confines of our dwellings. Our schools are only there to reinforce those values or are there to probably add one or two, but our homes, these are where we first learn to be honest, to be respectful to self and others, to have dignity and decency; and our parents, our first teachers.
Now if you go out of the house and start lying, disrespecting others, and showing dishonor, it’s either you haven’t been a fine learner or your parents, who are your teachers, have failed to include those drills in their programs.
Finally, for what purpose is an education anchored on but to the goal of educating the person. The application of all these lessons, however, ultimately goes back to the student’s or the person’s own command.
Often, this is where most of the danger lies. Because youth are vulnerable individuals and can easily be corrupted either by their own feelings or by other people’s influences. But this is also the ultimate test for them, a chance to show that lessons aren’t just pieces of letters interwoven to create words and sentences. That instead, lessons are exactly what they are—knowledge—and therefore must be applied in real life, in all situations, in all instances, with or without the school uniform.