Q: Young people should obey their elders without question.’ What do you think?

Give examples to
support your views, which can be from your own experience if you wish.

It is all very well and good to generalize that young people should always respect and obey the older
folks. However, in real life, respect and obedience sometimes do not go hand in hand. I feel that respect
has to be earned. As for obedience, I believe that we should obey only if we are convinced that what we
are being asked to do is right. Otherwise, it would be blind obedience.

Respect for elders is one of the most important Asian traditional virtues. Since young, we have been
taught that we should respect those older than ourselves such as our parents, grandparents, employers
and teachers. We should give them due respect because of their seniority and years of experience. We
can show our respect by greeting them, helping them around and buying them gifts as tokens of
appreciation. By being polite and listening to their viewpoints, we are also displaying a form of respect.
These little gestures mean a lot to the elders and do not require a great deal of effort from us.

However, there are some elders who simply do not deserve our respect because of their behavior. For
instance, there are some parents who do not show respect to their own parents. They shout at and
scold the elderly folks in public. As such, it is not surprising that their children take after their behavior
and treat them in the same manner. If they want their children to respect them, they must set the same
example for their children to follow.

Obedience is also another key Asian virtue. Again, we have been taught form young that the young
should obey the old. However, we cannot expect to obey them if we know that what we have been told
to do is wrong. For example, some older folks may advise us to cut queues and corners when we work
because they have always done that in order to get ahead. In this instance, do we then obey their so-
called wisdom? If we do, we would be outright naive and immature. It is again blind obedience. Hence,
we should obey depending on the situation and circumstances. We should use our common sense,
question the motive and not obey wrong advice.

In conclusion, in most cases, we should respect those older than us. However, we should distinguish
between wrong and right before we carry out our elders’ instructions.