"Fighting Diabolic Forces" - by Roman Ahsan

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!