THE EDITOR: With World Education Day observed recently, we should critically analyse the health of what is supposed to be the ultimate tool for liberation - our education system.

Now this topic is as broad as it is wide and would require an in-depth and diligent study to understand the wisdom of education truly. Nonetheless we should examine three vital elements: the goal of education, the focus of the curricula and the responsibility of education.

This brief will focus more on the latter and in so doing perhaps one will see and understand that although the majority of us have acquired the ability to read, write and reason, it has proven insufficient to battle against the growing numbers of murders, rapes, home invasions, preventable life-threatening diseases and overall divisiveness and corruption.

Is it the agenda of the various stakeholders to corrupt students' minds? If such is the case we know that the corrupted mind is the vehicle that facilitates mayhem, which pollutes homes, communities and our country. However, who is responsible for instilling the values in a student that would allow that student to grow to understand the fallacies of the world's wisdom? Who presents the original thoughts which shape the student's reality?

Ultimately, the parent is responsible for shaping and moulding the student-child mind. Even though the education system teaches the art of being an individual with the animal instinct for individual survival, the transference of moral values would make the difference.

While the schools may teach the child to survive or become successful, it is time-tested transferred moral values that would empower the child with the paradigm and competencies to care for others, to be respectful and honest. The home has a special responsibility, a privilege, to oversee the educative environment. It is the primary place where teaching and learning take place.

When parents take themselves out of the equation of teaching their children to look for and predict cause and effect, we are left at best with certifiable, corrupted and stupid people-educated illiterates. People who would treat only symptoms of our social problems because they know that if they acknowledge the cause of the problems we face, it would be to make a moral judgment. What would it take to act upon the fact and truth that the solution to our problems is to eradicate the cause?

Parent, educator, the mind of a child-student is like a vacant lot; if left alone, neglected, it would produce undesirable behaviours/risky behaviour, getting involved in notorious activities, easily influenced, vulnerable to actions that would lead to pain and suffering. However, if cultivated with the right thoughts, it would bring good behaviour across all situations in life. Just as a plant cannot exist without a seed, so actions without thoughts would not exist.

Thoughts affect how we live our lives. Therefore, irrespective of if the child's mind is neglected or cultivated, it will produce something. Behaviours that are either desirable