The Effects of Foreign Cultures in Education

By: Abdul Adheem al-Muhtadi al-Bahrani

What are the most important education fallacies we live with due to the effects of foreign cultures?
Question: There is no doubt that we, due to the effects of foreign cultures, unknowingly live with educational fallacies. Would you please point out the most important of these?
The answer: Yes, there are many widespread errors that people do not notice, not even educationists. Here are some of them:
1. It is wrong to believe that education means habituating the child to a certain behavior without making him understand the goal of that behavior.
2. It is also wrong to think that the best education is the one that subdues and subjects the child to the parents’ will.
3. It is wrong to think that the correct education is manifested by the apparent behaviors without paying attention to the inward purity.
4. It is wrong to prevent a child from undertaking some tasks that befit his age and powers because if he does not become acquainted with difficulties, he will not be successful in undertaking his actual responsibilities in life.
5. It is a popular fallacy that when a child falls to the ground or collides with the wall and feels pain or cries, his parents hasten to him blaming the ground or the wall, and, in order to calm him, they beat the ground or the wall with their hands as a kind of punishment.
Here, the child learns false justification, unreality, and blaming of things instead of being shown the truth to recognize his actual mistake that caused him to fall to the ground or collide with the wall. If he is shown this fact, he will know how to avoid the same mistake again and will know that life means seriousness and not mockery.
6. It is wrong when a child falls to the ground for others around him to hasten to lift him from the ground. Thus, he learns dependency and loses the sense of independency and self-confidence.
7. It is wrong to frighten and threaten a child, and the worst of that is to frighten him by illusions or imaginary ghosts. For example, parents will describe to their child a monster coming from the darkness, or they will imitate a sound and tell the child it is the voice of the jinn, etc. In this way, parents make their child weak, cowardly, and illusive. Parents may mean, by frightening their child in this incorrect way, to calm him and make him stop crying, but they ignore the bad effects that will linger in the child’s mentality throughout his life. This is a crime that is unknowingly committed against the child.
8. Some people say bad and severe words full of debasement and humiliation to a lazy or an introvert child. This is another crime committed against a child suffering from a temporary psychological trouble that can be better solved by some lenient words, a warm kiss, or an embrace full of love and kindness.
In fact, the child who is tense at home, unsuccessful in school, and strained in society reveals the defects of his family or the deprivation his family has imposed on him. This is what educationists and psychologists notice in the personalities of the parents and close relatives of that child. Therefore, we find among the educational principles in Islam that it is prohibited to call one another by bad nicknames. Parents and others are not permitted to call the child with bad names that demean and humiliate him. Unfortunately, this is widespread in our Muslim societies!
We hear many bad words from the old when they call the young as if they were calling beasts! What would you expect from the young after that?
What is odd is that the old punish the young when they hear them uttering the same words they have learned from the old themselves! Children become confused before the contradictions of the old. On the one hand, they find their parents using such words, and on the other hand, they are punished when they themselves use these words. Children think that if these words are bad, then why do the adults use them, and if these words are good, then why are they punished for using them. It is not odd when we realize these parents, whom we call adults, have acquired this wrong education from other preceding adults, whether at home, in society, in school, or from the media. So, the problem is deeper than deep!

Would you please show me the causes of the good and bad phenomena I find in children?
Question: I am a father and a teacher in a school. Would you please show me the causes of the good and bad phenomena I find in children? With great thanks.
The answer: There are correlations between the methods of education used and their consequences. Parents and those in charge of education should realize this fact. For example, on the negative side, the child who often hears criticism learns to criticize bitterly. The child who lives among enmities learns spites and grudges. The child who is often punished without being taught what he should or should not do learns injustice and aggression. The child who lives with fears learns cowardice. The child who lives with excessive kindness and pity learns humility and regression. The child who is often mocked at learns to live with a weak personality.
On the positive side, we find the child who is often encouraged learns self-confidence. The child who is accepted by others learns to love them. The child who is given knowledge learns purposefulness in life. The child who lives under cooperation learns generosity and liberality. The child who is treated truthfully and fairly learns truthfulness and sincerity. The child who is treated with love and kindness learns that life is beautiful. The child who is taught to bear sufferings becomes patient in life.
Since you are a father and a teacher in a school, your responsibility increases before Allah and the people. I hope that you live among your family with comfort and satisfaction with what Allah has given you. Thus, you will teach your children and your pupils how they can live without troubles. This is a firm basis in education. Paying attention to this basis and other bases of the task of education is a continuous necessity that will bring for you the delight of your heart with your children, your future, and the future of your religion and society. If you are successful in this life, you will be successful in your afterlife too.
Is the worldly life not the farm of the afterlife? Be careful of what you should plant in your children and the children of other people in the school, and you and we both shall see what you and they will harvest. And tomorrow is near for those who wait; therefore, take lessons, O you who have eyes! Dear teacher, may Allah make you successful in making pious people!

How should we deal with a son who was once religious but left religion?
Question: My son used to be very religious. He used to offer his prayers in the mosque and recite the Qur'an and other books of supplications. But when he became twenty years old, he changed little by little, and now finally, he has given up these rituals and mocks at them. How do you justify this case, and why has he become like this? Do you have any suggestions to save him?
The answer: If actions of worship are done out of understanding and satisfaction, they will not die away. Rather, they will take one to the highest degrees of nearness to Allah the Almighty, to spiritual and material happiness, and then to the eternal bliss of Paradise.
However, as for the opposite effect that appears in your son, it shows that his practicing of worships was without any apprehension of their essence. Before the age of twenty, circumstances might have taken him towards prayers, the mosque, the Qur'an, and supplications, and then at the age of twenty, other circumstances might have taken him towards the opposite side. Usually man slips into bad spheres through bad friends.
If the worships of your son were done with understanding and apprehension of the real meaning and goal of worship, he would influence those with whom he correlated and would guide them towards the right path and so would earn more reward for his afterlife, but since he was not so, he failed in the test and went towards the opposite direction.
I think reforming him will not be difficult. The one who can reform him should be wise in dealing with and advising him and should discuss the matter with him in a proper way. You have to look for someone with these qualities to associate, in a clever way, with your son.