Bipolar,

Nice long post. Some of your anguish over lip services to morals is definitely commendable. I'm with you - one must practice and be exemplery before preaching / teaching morals.

However, the whole post isn't addressing the "real" morals, at least some of those higher principles that I was taught in school. Let's separate this "Thamizh culture" thing from morals. Morals are applicable to all humans, Thamizh or otherwise. Examples - Positive rules like "love your neighbor as yourself" or its negative expansions such as "you should not murder or steal or lie etc." These are universal and not related to one single set or group of people.

When I posted on moral education, I meant such things and not some localized customs which can be good for a place and time period and cannot be applied everywhere or for ever.

That people don't practice self-sacrifice does not mean that "being selfish" is the best policy. Neither does it mean that nobody should teach such higher principles to young minds, if we want to live as humans. I think our species has the rare quality of altruism (which to my knowledge is not practiced consciously by animals, expect by instinct toward their younger ones in some cases).

Either way, your long post does talk about some social evils but does not say why high morals should not be taught in schools. Agreed, home is the first place to teach them and parental example is the most important requirement . However the community has a respo too and it's necessary to have it in schools (another reason is even the basic family structure is in trouble for quite sometime worldwide and home may not be the best place to learn certain things)