That irritatingly high-pitched sound you hear is just me whining.

Lately, I have been both troubled and saddened by the realization that the nay-sayers may be right and we are going to hell in a handbasket.

Our journey is being paved not so much by good intentions as no intentions at all.

A vast void exists where ethical and religious values once resided.

Our children, although exposed to enormous amounts of knowledge thanks to quantum leaps in technological advancement, are receiving no moral context in which to assimilate all this data.

In the past, part of a child’s information always involved ethical education and religious grounding. Now parents are far more concerned that little Jimmy makes soccer practice than Sunday School. (I said I was whining!)

Besides my obvious self-interest, there is a genuine concern that our kids will have virtually no foundation for grappling with the crucial issues of modern society. With thousands of hours spent in front of TV's and hundreds more spent in self-indulgent shopping trips and Nintendo noodling, how are our children being prepared for the future?

The older I get, the easier it is for me to see the wisdom of our past. Our forbearers assimilated religious formation into the equation of what made for a healthy and liberal education. Catechetical instruction or the preparation for Bar Mitzvah were often the means for this education to take place. Now such commitment is dismissed as irrelevant and an irritation to our busy lifestyles.

Is it so arrogant to suggest that our world will be a much better place if our kids spent a little more time studying the wisdom of the ages than the quarterback sneak?

I am enough of an optimist to believe that such a path to perdition can be altered but not without great effort.

We must begin by reinstating our commitment to educating the whole child. The old description of self as body, mind and spirit needs to be reappropriated and integrated into our educational system. The healthiest body and the keenest mind are ultimately useless without a moral compass to guide them. We need to be allowing for such guidance to take place.

With such vital matters as this at risk, maybe my whine is more a siren of alarm.