Proper education is fundamental to a child's success in life and, on a larger scale, it is fundamental to our country's success. However, equally critical to a child's development is moral education.

The Ministry of Education does put in effort to introduce moral education to children in the form of character and citizenship education lessons in school.

However, these are not taken as seriously as other subjects because they do not affect the child's grades. The child does not care much and, worst of all, parents are apathetic towards the subject.

More often than not, parents are fixated on their children getting exemplary grades. In the race to make their child a top scholar, moral education is cast aside.

The impact of this negligence on moral education can already be seen in our society.

On the streets, many shared bicycles can be seen parked in the middle of pavements or even lying on the ground, creating an obstruction in the middle of the road.

There have been cases of the elderly being abandoned by their family in nursing homes and we have also seen many Singaporeans being rude to the elderly. All these are examples of the lack of proper moral education and civic responsibility.

It seems that the more our country progresses, the more our society deviates from civility.

If parents are raising their children with a lack of values, no sense of responsibility and the idea that someone will always clean up after them, I do not believe that the child will go very far in life.

Success in life does not come solely from straight As - it comes from developing a strong moral compass as well.

Helen Chong (Miss)