FIGHTING DIABOLIC FORCES
S ROMAN AHSAN interviews
Shaukat Ara on how to inculcate ethics in children
‘Sunday Plus’,
THE NATION, Lahore
– Published December 14, 2008
As the signal turned red on the busy road, the traffic halted. An old man started his lame walk on the zebra crossing, but of out of nowhere a speeding car came and hit him with all force. The man was thrown into the air and then struck the ground, knocked out of his senses. The driver in the speeding car never even bothered to stop, nor offered any help while the poor man lay, painting the road red with his blood.
Scenes like
these are reminiscent and recurrent in our lives, though their intensity
varies. The question arises why do we see so much evil in this world? Why do
most of us ignore the voice that speaks from the heart? Is it so easy to act
numb while humanity is suffering? Before proceeding to search the answers to
these questions, let us delve into the nature of evil acts. There are some
wrong-doings that are liable to be punished by the hands of the law like
committing forgery in banks, killing innocent individuals, destruction of
public property on streets and assaults on women, for instance. Yet, there are
scores of others, which go unpunished, at least in this world. Some of these
relate to general attitudes towards our fellow beings such as treating our
servants as if they did not deserve any respect or sympathy, taking advantage
of the weak, not doing justice to our job, the list is endless!
A quick
analysis would confirm that for all these acts, the underlying problem lies at
the root. Though apart from genetic influence we are born pure, but our
respective upbringing, environment and the people in our lives, nevertheless
also play an active role in shaping our inner character. If we nurture
children’s minds with all that is good in this world then this would definitely
help in diminishing the effect of other forces that tend to lead individuals to
the doors of wickedness.
‘Sunday Plus’
called on Ms. Shaukat Ara, a former principal of school and an educationist,
who now spends her retired life writing short stories in Urdu for adults as
well as children. She is a regular contributor to various local digests,
newspapers, magazines and periodicals like “Family”, “Taleem-o-Tarbiat”, “Seep”
and “Biaaz” amongst others. She takes her themes mostly from her own real life
experiences but the emphasis is on conveying morals to the public. She always
aims to cultivate feelings of compassion, patriotism and loyalty in the readers
through her writings, and is also the author of four Urdu books for the
beginners in school under the caption of ‘New Education System’.
Though Shaukat
Ara is not a renowned writer, and one who never cared to be in the limelight,
yet she has a very active life profile to her credit. During Indo-Pak partition
1947, she was one of the National Guards who volunteered to provide first aid
to the injured refugees arriving in Pakistan at Walton camp. While
treating the injured, she came across a small girl whose parents had been
killed during migration. Due to her strong affection for children, she took the
small child home, and asked her mother to adopt her who also did not refuse.
These tendencies later on paved the way for greater achievements. In 1957, she
requested her father to buy a house in Baghbanpura, Lahore with the intent of converting it into
a school. She herself became the principal of that school which she operated
for 47 years, before finally discharging her duties in 2004. Having
administered the matters of a school where her primary focus was on inculcating
moral values in children, she has some pearls of wisdom worth sharing.
Ms. Shaukat
Ara states that the character of a person is inherently dependent on the
earlier impressions gained in the formative years as a child. Hence, we should
endeavour to provide the best care to them in order to reform them. She declares
that adults sometimes treat the children in a very crude manner. For instance,
a child should never be forbidden directly when he or she insists on getting
something, which is not good for him or her, as it undermines his or hers self-confidence.
Instead, the adults should create stories explaining the situation to the
child, just like children derive moral lessons from stories in books. She
elaborated by giving an example that if a child wants to play with a fragile
vase, then an adult should spend some time explaining to the child that the
beautiful vase should be placed at some higher place, as it looks better there.
“Cultivating
book reading habit in the tender minds is very necessary as they form a fantasy
world; however exposure to computers at an early age is seriously hampering the
natural inclination of children towards books. Computer studies should be
introduced much later in schools to children, or there should be some control
like allowing the children who are below primary level, access to computers
only one period per week. At homes also, the parents should monitor computer
usage by small children who normally play games for hours, which is not a
healthy exercise. Similarly, there is another custom of letting children watch
cartoons on cable TV for prolonged durations, which is not favourable for them
as a child’s mind is vulnerable and susceptible to draw wrong ideals,” she
explained.
She said that
people need motivation to undertake noble acts, and what could be better than
to help develop such attitudes in childhood. The elders should make a conscious
effort to praise the children for positive deeds like cleaning their rooms or
surroundings. At school, she would announce that children should keep their
school tidy, with the result that small kids would come to her room with scraps
of paper collected from the ground expecting appreciation from her.
Describing the
old days, she said “The elders used to read out such stories to the children,
which contained some moral lessons for them, like ‘lies cannot be hidden’, ‘the
one who deceives others loses all respect eventually’, ‘cruelty does not go
unpunished’, ‘humility earns you respect’, ‘one who shows patience gets good
reward ultimately’, ‘one good turn deserves another’ and many others. However,
if parents are not practicing those values themselves, which they are conveying
to their children, then it will fail to create the desired impact. Mohammad Ali
Jinnah is a shining example in this case. He worked for a cause with a sincere
heart and was an excellent role model. His impact was so great that once he
requested for donations in a public gathering, and the ladies took off their
ornaments and readily gifted them. This was only due to his honest and upright
demeanour being a man of ethics otherwise the world is full of hypocrites
today.”
Relating her
experiences she said that the adults should not form imaginary characters like for
example witches or ‘jinns’ to scare the kids as this makes them timid
creatures. Also, the urge to carry out mischief in over-active children could
be transmuted into positive activities, by letting them vent their anger
through physical sports like soccer, Judo or others that leave them exhausted.
When asked why she chooses the theme of compassion for animals in her stories,
she replied that if the children inculcate sympathy for pets or animals, then
they would also learn to be merciful to human beings when they grow up.
The challenge
is two-faceted for us. We do need to make our children excellent human beings,
but we have to first make sure that we are striving to present ourselves as
worthy examples also. We are just like mirrors. What we reflect to the innocent
minds, will act as a deciding factor in shaping their personalities later on.
So, let us embark on the mission of improving ourselves so that our little ones
do not get confused when we teach ethics to them!
A brilliant piece mashaALLAH...beautiful pearls spread throughout...touched on a very significant aspect of how to raise our next generation and I really believe that this is one of the assets we still have in our hand, so it's better not to let this opportunity go wasted.We will surely be accountable for this on the Day of judgement.We certainly are like mirrors for our young ones.
ReplyDelete