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Right to Die debate should be discussed at home, not school
We have five bright, healthy teenage granddaughters. The two oldest are becoming interested in clothes and make-up, just like I did in my mid-teens.
So I was puzzling over the right age for girls to begin to present themselves as young adults, after reading a couple of newspaper articles on how much younger girls are now dressing to impress, when I received the following letter from a 10-year old boy.
“You are trying to pass a law to let people ask the doctors to kill them (if) they tell them to. I think this was wrong to do because if someone was ill and was in so much pain there might be a cure but it might take a month to cure it completely and I don’t think that doctors should be allowed to do this sort of treatment.
“Some people might think that they have to die because they are ill and they get really worried about it so that’s why I think this law is wrong. Please take back this Bill.”
This set me off thinking about the best time to start exploring the dilemmas posed in the adult world, how the topics are best presented, by whom and in what setting.
The boy who wrote to me, along with a classmate, the similarity of whose letter and the thoughts it expresses were, I would guess from reading them, too young to adopt fully informed opinions.
But since the letters are so similar, and had a primary school address, I would hazard a guess that they’re the end product of a classroom inspired project.
Personally, I wouldn’t like any of my grandchildren to have been introduced to the topic of assisted dying, or my Bill currently going through the Scottish Parliament, by a teacher — no matter how gifted a communicator.
I’d much prefer children learned about values, behaviour and morality in their family environment. However, I know some parents can’t or won’t, so it falls to school teachers to provide the opportunity and place to consider the rights and wrongs of situations, decisions and events that are in the news.
Realistically, teachers have to raise such matters with classes, not individual children, even though a class of 10-year-olds, as is illustrated by my two letters, may be at different stages of growing into maturity.
Also, parents should know when their children are mature enough to properly understand complex situations and choices, and which of these should be deferred until they are older and better equipped to form opinions on war, drugs, sex or, in this case, assisted dying.
Moral right
For example, how much will the class of 10-year olds be taught about the war in Afghanistan? Their child-like comments on my Bill suggest that they are not nearly old enough to come to a decision on whether the UK has a moral right to be there?
And at what stage are children wise enough to consider the situation from the Afghanis’ viewpoint? One of my young correspondents writes, “I think it is wrong that people should ask others to kill them.” Does this extend to wrongdoing on the part of people who may kill others in the course of their job, quite legally, like soldiers?
And what should a teacher do when classes reach conclusions they know to be based on half-understood information and influenced by an external organisation, for example, the BNP or Care Not Killing?
These questions are now more difficult to answer because of the range of gadgetry on which children can access information.
So I’ll send my young correspondents copies of my Bill and suggest that they take them home and discuss the issue with the adult who looks after them.
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Margo
MacDonald
