I refer to the call by GPMS to introduce the concept of National Service in the schools.

In fact the education should start earlier and it should not start with the children but with the adults, especially the parents.

It is well known that the formative age for any child is between the ages of one to eight, not when they are 12. By then they have already started to distinguish differences and similarities, good and bad values and differing values of ethics and morality.

You can bend them still by good logical thinking and education. This can be obtained from the friends they mix with and mentors they look up to.

Who is responsible for their formative period? The parents are. They are the ones who show them the way. The child learns and picks up from his parents and the adults. And here we fail them.

We are the decision-makers. Throwing rubbish out of a moving car, being unfriendly to our neighbours, parking indiscriminately to name a few. These look like small habits but these are the habits that lead to the children repeating them again and again.

The government runs advertisements on protecting the environment etc. But who are they directed at? The children. Most advertisements, whether for protecting the environment or keeping the neighbourhood clean are directed at children rather than adults.

But it is adults who put money first before ethical and social values and it is they who show the child how to be corrupt. It is also frustrating to see adults sitting as chairmen and managing directors of companies that flout the law in destroying the environment etc.

We should re-educate the adults so that we show them the way. In the 1970s most of us in campus had study groups that were multi-racial. Why was that so? It was because our own parents did not look at things racially. And we, as parents, encourage our children to be like that too. It is this small group that still hangs on to such values.

But it is no longer the case with the larger population now. The values have been changed by the mass media, the new parents and today we have such a society in Malaysia.

The adults should be re-educated and not the children who are in school behaving in the same manner as their parents behave at home or in society at large.

As for the current National Service programme, the Perlis MB should visit some of the camps as a parent first and not make statements based on random observations. Ban the handphones , indeed. Why not ban parents from visiting the children next so that 'inaccurate information' is not passed to the public.

Please do your homework, sir, before making assumptions based on random observations.

Children in their first month's of stay at the National Service camps have been having unhealthy food (there was more oil than the curry) and lots of other deficiencies. As a parent, I have visited the camps and obtained this news first hand from the children.

This is basically a poorly planned and managed scheme. One month to plan a scheme of national proportions. As said in my earlier, my daughter was excited but slowly she is learning more about the shortcomings of the entire scheme and the way the organisers are confused about almost everything.

The children of today are not like we were 30 years ago. They are more aware and more literate than us. Right from day one, when every minister jumped on our former prime minister's idea and praised it, no body realised what it would entail.

The first problems cropped up when the letter announcing the selection came late and my daughter had to call the centre twice before the letter came. And then the letter with instructions comes just the day before her departure.

When parents met at Bukit Jalil, it was another case of confusion all over. Buses left four to five hours later. Most of the parents were complaining of the late arrival of the instruction letters. There was so much concern amongst the parents but yet we all agreed that the NS was a good idea.

But a visit to the camps showed utter confusion. On the day of the visits, there was insufficient staff to man the posts. When asked why, the answer was they too had to take leave and visit their families back home. The children can do National Service but the trainers can take leave? Is this the way of showing leadership qualities?

The only thing this exercise is teaching our kids is the deficiencies present in our administration. They are integrating and understanding each other at a different level but this is not due to the NS scheme.

They integrate because they have to take care of each other in the confused state of administration present in the camps. For instance, in the case of the different religious festivals, they are passing information to each other on how to apply for leave etc through their handphones.

They seem to understand and assist each other. While they are learning about each other, they are also realising the kind of irrelevant statements being made by the leaders, administrators and some of the trainers. And the students at the universities are more helpful to them then the administrators.

Random observations and assumptions are not the answer to the problems the students are facing at the National Service camps.