“We must educate men”- 2 July 2014.

There is no doubt that despite her progress in all fields, the woman as such still keeps suffering at the hands of the male of the species because his insensitivity. He expects her to everything — a good wife, a good lover, a good mother, a good sister, and good home maker, a good wage earner, a good house keeper, a good caretaker of the elderly … And as he expects the woman to do all these things excellently, he himself feels that he owns all the freedom to be exactly the opposite of what he wants his woman to be — sluggish, lethargic, bad father, not so good a brother, a sloppy caretaker of the elderly, a disastrous manager of the household …
Of course, there are exceptions to the rule in both categories, men and women. Some men as very good, and some women are … ! – on all these counts.
Yet, the overall experience is that the male of the species has a tendency to keep the female of the species down under his thumb. This is the traditional picture, which women are now trying to change. But their efforts come to naught mostly because there is no system in which the men are educated about their duties and rights vis-a-vis women.
Therefore, the need of the new times is that men be educated not just in schools but also at home on the values they should hold dear — like utmost respect for women, empathy for women, understanding women’s physical and spiritual needs …!
And this education should come from both the places, schools and colleges, as well as homes. Here, schools and colleges have a lesser role to play, while the home has the maximum work to do on this count. For, it is home that a child’s basic instincts are groomed into fine values, it is at home that wrong instincts are corrected and right instincts are enhanced in the form of values.
Limiting our discourse to the Indian society, we must say that on the value front, Indian male is not very properly oriented. On the contrary, he often carries wrong ideas about himself, thanks to the wrongly-oriented education at home. In most homes, as we all know, the male child is groomed on different parameters, while the female child is often treated as a second class citizen, somebody who will be transported out of the family at the time of marriage.
Unless these values change, there can be no positive change in men’s attitude in general. Of course, in civilised, cultured homes, the overall cultural refinement helps evolve finer values at all levels. But in a larger number of homes, such grooming is often found missing. As a result, the male of the species is not educated properly about how he should conduct himself vis-a-vis the people of the opposite gender.
If the women are to be given a freedom to flourish on all fronts, then the larger society has to carry out the onerous responsibility of grooming the attitudes of the male children right from the beginning.
This is not just an essay to be penned for a competition; this is a very basic issue with which all civilised communities should concern themselves. Educating men in their values and attitudes towards women, thus, should be treated as a matter of social priority.
If this task is done in great depth, then women’s liberation will assume a more meaningful profile. This thought comes up in the mind for one simple reason: What should be the reason of this persistent malady of wrong attitudes of the males of the species? And the only answer seems to be that men do not change their attitude because they have not had an appropriate grooming.
So the suggestion — to educate our men thoroughly.