COMMENTARY: Civics as a cure for social indifference

print this

By Anna Karismo
     
      In 2006, Omar Wellington, 17, was swarmed, stripped, beaten and stabbed to death in Toronto, Canada on a warm summer's day.
      The attack took place in broad daylight and in front of dozens of witnesses.
      When police investigated the case, only a very few eye-witnesses agreed to open their mouths to give evidence on what they had seen.
     
A couple of months ago in Wellington, New Zealand, a girl of 13 was beaten into hospital condition by another teenage girl in a park.
      More than a hundred people watched the assault at close hand, and some onlookers filmed the proceedings on their mobile phones and spread the images among her peers.
      According to the local police, the girl was effectively assaulted all over again by having to see the grainy videos circulated among her friends.
     
In Illinois in September, a 17-year-old boy was badly beaten in a school bus, apparently over the victim's choice of seat, although there were initial concerns that it was racially-motivated.
      Online videos show how some of the schoolchildren on the bus eagerly pile in to hit the boy, while others watch and laugh. In spite of the fracas going on behind him, the bus driver does nothing except call for people to sit down, and he drives on.
     
Assault cases in which onlookers do nothing to prevent the violence are thus not the sole province of the Helsinki suburb of Viikki (see earlier story), not are they a specifically Finnish problem.
      Equally, indifference and an unwillingness to get involved are not exclusively limited to the young.
      Adults walk steadfastly past the collapsed figure of a derelict on the street, averting their eyes.
      A few years ago, nobody came to the help of a diabetic little girl crying at a Helsinki bus shelter - she was given some assistance in the end only when two vagrants brought her some plum preserves from a nearby shop to raise her blood sugar levels.
     
"Not getting involved" is a modern phenomenon and mantra.
      When preserving face and pursuing one's own best interests have become the dominant rationale in life, the civil rights belonging to others have become a foreign language we no longer understand.
      The lives of others are a reality-TV show, which we should simply observe from the sidelines.
      Learning to respect others is something we should learn at home. But if parents either do not wish or are not capable of bringing their children up as human beings, society will have to step in.
     
On the opinion pages of Helsingin Sanomat last week, Jenni Kuusisto proposed that ethics ought to be introduced as a subject on the school curriculum.
      In Kuusisto's view, the classroom could be a forum for discussing, in ways that are suited to the world of children and young adults, "such things as human rights and the correct way to behave in different situations".
      Kuusisto's idea is worthy of consideration - even at the expense of other subjects on the curriculum.
      For instance French secondary schools already include civics in their programmes, in an attempt to "train for citizenship" and to debate core values and principles.
     
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 15.12.2009
     


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Beating of schoolgirl in Helsinki indicates that teenagers’ life is becoming increasingly aggressive (14.12.2009)

See also:
  Teenage girls behaving badly (24.11.2009)
  Sharp rise in suspected hate crimes (15.12.2009)

ANNA KARISMO / Helsingin Sanomat
anna.karismo@hs.fi