Word study. Pre-reading task

PRE-READING TASK

1. Answer the questions.

1. How can you define the term “moral duties”?

2. What moral duties do you have?

3. What do you know about The Ten Commandments?

4. Should people live according The Ten Commandments?                  

When President Bush and congressional conservatives were going to join their efforts to ban gay marriages, the debate over moral values was renewed. Asked to name the most serious moral crisis in America today, 28% of Americans cite ”kids are not raised with the right values”; followed by 22% saying “corruption in government/business”; 17% saying “greed and materialism” or “people too focused on themselves”; and 3% citing “abortion and homosexuality”. The survey demonstrated that the moral issue people worried about most in their daily lives is connected with the family, mostly with children and it is not surprising.                                                                          Over the past several years there have been several incidents scattered over the United States and Canada where outcast teens have made threatening gestures against their peers and their teachers and even fatal shooting at schools has taken place.                                                                                                  The entire society – children, parents, educators, law enforcers, politicians, clergy – are talking about this manifestation of what at first glimpse is seen as completely demented and unexplainable action by young teenage males. The unsatisfying conclusion often reached in endless debates about this dilemma is that there seems to be no single answer for it. In various proportions, blame is placed on parents, the educators, entertainment media – movies, videos, music, and the news media for giving the incidents too much publicity. There is also an almost universal lament over the quickly deteriorating moral fiber of today’s society.                                                                                                             However, as new incidents of kids shooting kids are reported and past ones are re-examined, a common denominator is being finally identified in almost all of the shootings and threatening confrontations. In discussions there now are people who voice thoughts that begin to approach the root cause of these incidents. There is finally recognition that the perpetrators were ostracized by their teenage peer community. There is evidence that in many cases these social undesirables had withstood long periods of slights, taunts and even physical abuse by their peers who collectively regarded the outcasts as a lower tier, if not a lower class, in their society.                                                                         The problem with unpredictable young people can be encapsulated by the words from a popular old American song: “You have to be a football hero to get along with the beautiful girls. ” There is a much broader meaning, characterizing American culture (particularly the culture of the young), contained in the words of that song than what one would notice at first. There are also in that refrain vestiges of the primeval instinctive drive for dominance by the physically fittest in the herd, pack, or tribe. Of course, what comes to us from nature we cannot eliminate, but we learn to control and subdue it. That’s a part of being “civilized”, and culture is one of the instruments we use to do so. But, there is also general esteem of success in competitive activities and adoration of the socially debonair in American culture. This leads to an unwholesome veneration of testosterone-driven athletic triumph, particularly in a team setting. The result is a regression to primitive urges in young males to exact submissive obeisance in all aspects of social interaction from the athletically inferior members of the group. Of course, a problem of this severity has causes that run deeper than just culture. The heinous cold-blooded killings were done by male teenagers who exhibited a complete lack of conscience and none of the basic moral sense of “right” and “wrong”: the universal standards by which we measure our humanity across all cultural borders. We can say that the reasons for the psychopathic behavior by adolescent males are to be found in some failure or flaw in the moral and cultural areas of human interaction in this society. It is proposed that the societies which we know as the democratic West are now in a hopeless moral crisis, because - so to say - the string has run out, the con based on a hoax that worked literally like a charm for many centuries can now be sold only to the very credulous. It is not the loss of belief in a religious dogma that brings on the crisis. Religions have come and gone throughout history. Rather, it is because moral standards that have been, in this instance, made completely a part of the religious dogma for many centuries, are now being dragged down along with the religious dogma. Therein lies the moral disaster facing Western civilization.                                                                                   Is there any hope for rejuvenating the moral and ethical development of Western man after centuries of neglect? It is highly unlikely that any thought could be given at this time to starting a mandatory program – call it Moral Duties – that would encompass the best of what both Western and Eastern philosophies can offer; a program that would teach the persuasive logic of a Socrates and a Confucius and gradually imbue the minds and hearts of the children from an early age on with moral and ethical feelings and concepts that are virtuous in their own right and devoid of religious coloration of any kind.                                                                                                                Comprehensive instruction in moral duties would make all children better persons both as individuals and as a society. There would be few psyches that would become twisted because they were starved of moral nourishment. If the young were to be inculcated vigorously with a code of morals and ethics drawn from the best that Western and Eastern philosophies have to offer, it would also eventually modify the American cultural tradition, in which the “testosterone tyranny” that idolizes the male athlete and spurns the physically inept would be moderated by a general awareness in everyone that it is not physical prowess but the practice of the moral virtues that make a human being worthy of admiration.                                                                     Cultural traditions are slow to change; so are the moral and ethical traditions; in many respects they are one and the same. Before a program of instruction in the moral duties at schools is possible, there must be a cadre of teachers trained to give it. It is better yet, if the parents of the child also understand and try to live by the moral duties. It would indeed be a miracle if society suddenly comprehended the crying necessity for instructing the young in the moral duties based on the achievements of our own intellect that reach back into antiquity. Perhaps that will happen sooner or later. [31]

                                                     GUIDE