Kids Don't Understand the Meaning of the Word Humility, Let Alone Practise It

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Kids don't understand the meaning of the word humility, let alone practise it

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/opinion/kids-dont-understand-the-meaning-of-the-word-humility-let-alone-practise-it/story-fneuzvve-1226474389761#ixzz2DcQT4iWl

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http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/opinion/kids-dont-understand-the-meaning-of-the-word-humility-let-alone-practise-it/story-fneuzvve-1226474389761

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The spider in Charlotte's Web (pictured here in the film version of the children's classic) spins the word "humble'', a foreign concept to today's 'me' generation. Picture Rising Sun Pictures.

RECENTLY I read Charlotte's Web to my daughter.

Remember the story? A tenacious and articulate spider writes words in her web to describe a sweet but otherwise unremarkable pig.

‘Terrific’, she spells out, then ‘radiant’. Just before she dies – because even uncommonly gifted arachnids still cark it – she spins the word ‘humble’.

“What does humble mean, Mum?” asks my daughter.

“It means you don’t have tickets on yourself; let’s say you won the spelling bee at school, you wouldn’t show off about it.”

My daughter thinks for a moment, then replies, “I don’t know anyone who’s humble.”

There, dear reader, is the voice of a generation. Humility, that most venerated, ancient and biblical of virtues, has slipped out of our lexicon, swept away by a culture that’s all about the ‘me’, not ‘we’.

As a freshly minted journalism graduate, I wrote obituaries when there were no ambulances to chase. It was brain-numbingly dull. Most of the subjects hadn’t actually died, but the editor wanted to be prepared.

So I’d eulogise on Sir...