Alhassanain(p) Network for Heritage and Islamic Thought

MEANINGS AND GOALS OF EDUCATION

We will identify the lexical and terminological meanings of education, show the necessity and the goals of education, and refer to its relation to teaching, philosophy, and policy. Educationists have concerned with the above as a whole. As a comparative study, we have to pass precisely by all of the topics that we have recently presented. We will expose them in the form of a preliminary introduction to the modern educational studies as compared to the Islamic, which is the main concern of this book.

Lexical Meaning

In Arabic, the item ‘Tarbiya’ –education- stands for bringing up a child as it is mentioned in the Arabic-Arabic dictionaries of Tajul-Arus and Lisanul-Arab.

Accordingly, education refers to bringing up and caring for a child until attaining juvenility. This meaning comprises mental and intellectual perceptions.

Terminological Meaning

Educationists have paid a great attention to the explanations of the term in order to explicate its scientific purport. Yet, they have not presented a unanimous one. The following is a set of definitions:

The earliest definition of education is that exposed by Plato’s saying, “Education stands for granting the souls and bodies as much as possible an amount of aesthetes and perfection.” This definition comprises physical and spiritual education. The former is that education which sows corporal development and prosperity, while the latter is that which creates perfection and virtue.

Hubbell renders a characterization of the perfect education. He says, “Perfect education is that conserving the physical condition and vigor of pupils, and gives the power of controlling the mental and corporeal powers. It also increases the rapidity of realization and the sharpness of intelligence, and accustoms to good and precise judgment and creates gentleness in fulfilling duties deliberately.”

For Gold Simon, “Education is the way of making the intellect a real intellect and the heart a real heart.” This definition indicates that education should be the device of achieving intellective growth and nourishing souls with virtuous ethics. At any rate, it refers to the spiritual education exclusively.

Herbert says, “Education is training man for enjoying perfect lives.” Like the previous, this definition is exclusively restricted to the mental education.

John Milton defines, “Perfect education is that which helps man to fulfill any job so accurately and skillfully in peace and wars.” This definition is dedicated to the professional education.

For Mistalotzi, “Education is developing all of the potentials of children perfectly and properly.”

Hassle defines education as the manners of disciplining the natural abilities of children to make them fit enough for being in charge of a happy compartment.

Gimuel says, “Education is bringing up individuals for satisfying themselves first, and others secondly.”

Lithery says, “Education is the activities that purpose for bringing up a child or a young. It is a set of the acquired intellectual and manual habits, as well as ethical features.”

We may affirm that John Dewey’s definition is the most acceptable. He defines education as the process of adaptation between individuals and the environment. He says, “Education is a form and composition of the individuals’ activities, and then casting them in certain matrices, i.e. changing the process into a social action that is welcomed by the others.”[1]

Some of the previous definitions should be reviewed since they refer to a definite category. Logicians affirm that a definition ought to be comprehensive and inclusive to involve all of the individuals concerned.

The Educational Purport of the Term

The term has two purports, one is general and the other is specific.

The general purport is so comprehensive that it includes every intentional or unintentional action that helps in developing the corporeal, intellective, ethical, or susceptible powers.

As a general conception, education includes heredity, environment, and will, –the three factors of education- and their intentional and unintentional effects in maturing the powers and the human promptness. Every motion, activity, or aspect of the social environment that affects man’s essence or material entity, in any stage of the physical and mental composition, results in education in variant levels. All the above are within the effects of the broad-spectrum education. Steward Mill says, “Education, in its common sense, comprises all of the deeds that we ourselves do, as well as the deeds that others do for approximating us to our natural perfection. From this cause, education includes the indirect effects on ethics and human powers that create various direct purposes. As examples, we may cite laws, governmental formulation, arts, manufacture, and the other fields of social lives. Moreover, the effect may occur to the natural factors that are out of man’s order, such as climate and geography.”

Education, as a common sense, includes all of the matters that influence the process of constructing the ethics, apart from the source. Even the natural phenomena that are out of man’s control play a role in the processes of education and self- building. If we look at a nice influential thing, this will surely inspire in the development of our imagination and taste. We always hear some individuals refer to time, incidents, or events as their educators. Of course, these matters have nothing to do with self-determination.

The specific purport of education stands for the generations’ exchange of the educational and cultural bases. Some educationists delimit this purport by suggesting that it be committed to the efforts that are purposed for disposing the youth in a definite worldly affair. In other words, the specific purport of education is the endeavors and efforts that the adults exert for educating the intellects of the youth and ordering their moralities. The activities of the educationists and the practical teachers, which are aimed for instructing the youth, are regarded as the specific purport of education.[2]

John Stewart denies the common sense of education and allocates it to the specific purport. He says, “Education, as a term, refers restrictively to the culture that moves among the generations to provide the youth with factors of bringing up. These factors pass on the level of the preceding generation.[3]

At any rate, the majority of educationists argue that education, in its specific purport, is too short to build personal entities unless it coincides with the common sense, which is the social contact. T. S. Elliot says, “Schools are ready to transfer only a part of the culture to the students. Such transference is fruitless unless it is fully harmonious with the external factors. We do not dedicate the external factors to family and environment, but we extend them to comprise labor, amusement, journalism, general views, shows, and means of entertainments and sports.”[4]

The Necessity of Education

Education is a life necessity and a genuine human concern through which mental and social constituents are attained. It is surely man’s distinctive feature. As well as societies, education is necessary for individuals. An educationist says, “For individuals, education is a process of social normalization that gives the character of humanity, which is the distinctive feature. Everybody knows that individuals inherit their biological roots, such as colors of eyes, hair, tallness, and the other physical features, from their fathers and forefathers. The mental and social constituents of personalities are gained only through education. On that account, the basic chore of education helps in acquiring the human features. Hence, education is necessary for individuals and societies in an equal degree.”[5]

Education provides with the individual elements and habits the influence of which remains forever. Some psychologists affirm that babies actually rest upon others, to great extent, in the minimal needed habits, the most significant ethical and intellective specifications, and the general manners of people, life, and labor. Mostly, babies behave unfeelingly, but as soon as they learn how to imitate gentle individuals, this ethical and emotional influence will persist. Shortly, this imitation changes into a habit that is a second nature. Imitation, however, is one of the two ways through which the individual specifications are obtained, and personal ethics are constituted.[6]

It is, then, a life element and a basic principal of personal perfection since it plays the role of coinciding, developing, and maturing the individuals. An educational analyst says, “Education is necessary for individuals as well as societies because the newborn individuals can not be regarded as mature social human beings. Biologically, they are human beings, but immature since they are incapable of associating and accommodating in societies. This fact unveils the importance of education in helping in developing and maturing individuals and their potentials, preparations, and skills to maximum. In like manner, education helps in acquiring the social characters for associating and belonging to societies. Thus, it is important for both individuals and societies. It is a social necessity, and an individual necessity, too.”[7]

Education is the one and only means of achieving maturity, and raising the individual and social levels; therefore, it is a binding necessity of life and a significant part in the entities of societies and individuals.

The Educational Goals

Education enjoys serious goals and big social responsibilities. The specialists have exerted great efforts for explicating such goals and responsibilities. Yet, they have had different viewpoints regarding the question of defining those responsibilities. Some worked in the frame of the spiritual goals while others worked in the material. A third group looked upon the social goals, and a fourth sought the individual growth and the personal composition.

Spiritual Goals:

Some Islamic educationists have affirmed that the basic purposes of education and learning are self-purity, self-chastity, and the constructing of relations with God. This is the most elevated purpose and the noblest intendment. Al-Ghezali says, “O youngster! Many are the nights that you have passed with seeking knowledge and scanning books, and you abstained from sleep. I do not know your intendment. If it has been obtaining the concerns of this world, collecting its wreckages, holding its positions, and ostentation before the others, then woe is you! If your intendment is enlivening the Prophet’s practices, refining your ethics, and violating the bad-tending soul, then many happy returns will be yours!”[8]

A number of Islamic educationists specify self-purity as the provisory of receiving knowledge. On that account, teachers used to check one’s moralities before being accepted as a student. The morally wrong ones were dismissed from classes so that they would not use their knowledge in evildoings.[9]

Froble says that education is supposed to make the individuals feel their internal souls, realize nature, and confide in God’s oneness. Likewise, it must lead the individuals to the sacred pure life that is originated by the cognition of God, nature, and the human spirit.[10] He also affirms that the purpose of education should be the presentation of a sacred pure life of sincerity and goodness.[11]

Master educationists have agreed upon the idea of dismissing any edification, which does not lead to perfection and self-discipline, out of the circle of education. Willula says, “The purpose of education is improving what our fathers corrupted. We can achieve so by adopting the accurate cognition of the Lord, cherishing Him, and committing ourselves to His path through virtues.”

As he asserts the moral aspect of education, John Luke says, “Virtues are the leading purposes of education.”

The previous opinions have focused lights on the moral and spiritual aspects of education, ignoring the other aspects.

Material Goals:

A group of educationists believes that the organization of the youth for obtaining their earnings should be the main goal of education. Some English educationists have named this goal as “bread and butter goal.” This opinion, however, owns a value. Human beings, as they tend to live persistently, are required to gain the earnings and seek its means that are actually the most imperative for awarding the survival of the individuals and the dependants. It has been said, “The learning of a profession is a security against poverty.”

The wealthy should not rely upon their fortunes and neglect professions and career. God has made the lands usable, and instructed us to seek the various ways and have from His sustenance; so, we should show our sons how to seek their earnings.[12]

This opinion is interested in the material aspects exclusively.

Social Goals:

Some educationists have looked upon the matter from a social aspect. Jean Beige says, “The most significant goal of education is the attainment of the perfect boons of personalities, and supporting the respect of others’ rights as well as the basic rights. Education is responsible for substantiating the spirit of conformity and familiarity among people, including the racial and religious groups. It is also given the mission of developing the activities that are practiced by the UN Organization for keeping peace.”[13]

Kondrsie says, “First of all, education should act for enabling every individual to master the personal skills, and fulfill the required social tasks completely, and develop the makings as much as possible. In addition, it should share out the spirits of equality among people. Otherwise, it will not achieve the political equality that the law declares. The social goal of education is the management of learning in a way that produces the industrial development for achieving people’s contentment and enabling them to act the necessary social duties.”

Islam has declared most of these goals as the basic principals of the educational domains.

Individual Development:

Some educationists believe that the main goal of the educational processes is the achievement of the individuals’ perfect growth according to their predispositions and capabilities. The cultural heritage is regarded as one of the educational means. Such a heritage should be organized psychologically for fitting the various stages of development.[14]

Other educationists added the estimation of the ethics, the good behavior, and the activities in labor to the educational processes. They also added self-will, self-reliance, and the rectification of desires, respecting people’s rights, good relation with the society, forbidding evil, presenting the environmental factors, and working for developing the human societies, to the goals of the educational processes.[15]

Plato supposes that one of the educational goals should be releasing the ignorant individuals from the bonds of unawareness, and taking them from the world of gloom to that of illumination and freedom. The highest mental natures should be elevated to the ranks of practicing good deeds in this world.[16]

More Goals

Philosophers of education state more goals that achieve the individual development and self-assertion. They are the well being, the emotional and social duties, and the recognition of the natural world.

Other philosophers expose ten goals as the most important in the education in secondary schools.

1. The development of the accurate ways of thinking

2. The founding of useful habits that are related to labor and lessons

3. The development of the social trends

4. The providing of a set of suitable tendencies

5. The development of the artistic and aesthetic aspects

6. The development of social senses

7. The development of individual-social concurrence

8. The presentation of the principal information

9. The development of physical conditions

10. The development of a steady philosophy of life[17]

Teaching and Education

The general purport of education, as it has been already cited, comprises all of the categories of activities that influence the development of individuals, predispositions, and behaviors. It is not peculiar to the activities that persons themselves do, or those done by others. The purport of education covers every modification and reformation practiced on ethics and behavior. It also includes the indirect factors, such as laws, the ruling authorities, the manners of living, the traditions and the social habits and conventions et al.

Such indirect factors, in addition to the material and natural environments and conditions such as climates and geographical locations, have effects on education. Finally, all of the circumstances that help in the formation of the human beings are included in the factors influencing the processes of education.

From the above we conclude that education comprises every development or formation that does with individuals’ powers, predispositions, and behavioral aspects tending to guidance.

Teaching, on the other hand, stands for the transference of information from a teacher to a student for delivering knowledge. Hence, teaching is confined in this frame while education enjoys a more elevated and comprehensive meaning since it includes every positive progress and maturity of the individuals’ capabilities.

Education, in its common sense, takes account of the whole physical, intellectual, and ethical aspects of personalities. Teaching stands for the process of transferring knowledge to individuals. This process is one of the educational means. The positivity of teaching is estimated according to the obtained knowledge.

Knowledge may influence the individuals’ lives only when being sentient and accordant to the actuality that it can be consumed in the behavior.[18]

The imperfect knowledge leaves no effect at all in the individual composition. It creates the suspension of the practical life.

Philosophy and Education

Philosophy and education have a firm relation. Fichte affirms this relation in the essays he wrote to the German. He said, “Without the benefit of philosophy, education cannot attain a state of perfect clarity. There is an interrelation between the two any of which will be imperfect and ineffectual without the other.” John Dewey exceeds this point. He says, “The classical philosophy would not have been existent without the pressure of the educational questions on the intellectualities. The foremost naturalists were a single chapter in the history of science. The educational affairs obliged Sophists and their opposites on philosophizing. Their educational wording led them to instigate the philosophic theories.”[19]

Hobart Spencer says, “The accurate education can be practical through the accurate philosophy only.”

Psychology and Education

Psychology could find a way to the educational affairs when it has taken in all of the materials of education. It has analyzed such materials to the preliminary elements that involved the potentials and the intellective processes. There have been psychological analyses for the educational courses such as reading, writing, mathematics, languages, and composition. Likewise, arts and the practical materials of painting, carving, and ornamentation have been psychologically studied and analyzed into the preliminary matters, whether intellectually or manually. Such studies and analyses enabled teachers to select the most appropriate method that meets the pupils’ predispositions, taking in consideration the age and the grade. In addition, teachers could use such studies in choosing the most adequate courses.

Psychology is regarded as the major guide of teaching and educational processes.[20]

The Educational Development

In the initiation of the history of humanity, houses were the only means of education. The preliminary tribe had individually the mission of educating the children physically, intellectually, and ethically, by arranging the means of the life preparations. This continued until the opening of the ancient ages. The Roman families, in their oldest ages, had full and exclusive supervision on bringing up and educating their children in the various aspects according to distinctive systems that were independent from any public authority. Education was one of the responsibilities of houses. Such educational efforts were confused with other indifferent activities to the degree that education was seen as an unintentional process. Afterward, houses began to look upon the educational affairs intentionally. After the invention of writing[21] , education depended upon the familiarity with the experts of the previous generations, thanks to the recordings of the explored facts. This added a new household job, which is teaching in the meaning of private tutorials.

Fathers, kinsmen, and the elder members of families and tribes did this job to the children.[22] With the shining of the illumination of Islam, a great change occurred in all of the aspects of life, including education. Islam paid the greatest attention to education. Muslims have been encouraged on learning so that they would review the references of knowledge and culture for improving their lives and raising their levels.

Policy and Education

Each political system needs the support of an educational system. The political and social revolutions paid a great attention to education and teaching for keeping up the ruling and explaining their philosophy. An educationist says, “Social dominance through education comes to surface evidently when a political, martial, or social revolution occur. When such a revolution achieves success in the political objectives, it should turn to education to use it as an instrument of achieving the social objectives. Without education, revolutions are narrowed in a scope that is isolated from the society and the individuals. Time will not be too long for terminating the isolated revolutions that lack the social publicity of their goals.”

Reliance upon education is one of the most significant means of the modern systems that believe that education and knowledge should be the slogans of the cultural revolutions. Communism used all means for the propaganda of their ideology, and founding units in the educational and teaching institutes to betake the students as soldiers that support such ideologies and combat the collapsing camp of capitalism.

At any rate, policy, in its common sense, used education as a method. Education should be an inevitable necessity if such policies tend to survive and continue.

FACTORS OF EDUCATION

Generally, education is an essential base of the behavioral results if it depends upon the factors that influence its structure and composition. Without the reasons that lead to the foundation of education, the fruits will be absent. Summarily, the reasons of the educational foundation are as follows:

Heredity:

Psychologists ascribe individuals’ intelligence and idiocy to heredity. “Directly, intelligence and idiocy lean on heredity,” they said, and added that intelligent children will easily receive the educational and teaching systems. Besides, intelligence is one of the most significant elements of the intellective growth and the scientific maturity. In the same way, idiot children will encounter difficulty in receiving the educational and teaching methods entirely. Hence, methods do nothing in the progression and prosperity of such children. It is seemingly necessary to have a look on heredity for its being one of the most significant means in the process of structuring the educational entities.

Definition of Heredity:

Heredity is defined as the branches’ natural tendency to imitate the origins in the physical composition and physiology. Other hereditists define it as the branches’ copying the origins.

Scientific analysis:

The scientific analysis of genetics implies that human beings being a single small cell called gamete, which is the most marvelous, mysterious, and minute in the universe. It refers to the immense potency of the Creator. This cell is arisen from a process of fecundity of two diminutive cells, which are the ovum[23] and the spermatozoon.[24]

The union of these two cells produces the nucleus of a new individual. In that very moment, it is determined whether this individual will be male or female, short or tall, intelligent or idiot, or blue or honey-colored eyed. All of the descriptions are decided unchangeably in this cell. Heredity then is a set of specifications that concentrate in the fecundated ovum.

Laws of Heredity:

Laws of heredity are within the involuntary matters that coincide with the individuals all over the life phases.

One of the clearest and most familiar laws of heredity is the branches’ copying the origins in the extrinsic appearances and the private specifications. This fact is quite evident in all of the creatures. Seeds of cotton yield nothing but cotton, and seeds of a flower produce nothing but flowers that copy the mother in colors and characters. This copying is more obvious in animals. A small cat is being like its parents in shape and other characters. For human beings, babies bear resemblances to their parents in the general, as well as the most diminutive, characters. The black give birth of black ones and the white give birth of white. In a like manner, intelligence and idiocy are inherited characters. This is because –as hereditists decide- human beings enjoy private qualitative parts, called germ plasma, that never expire but extend in the offspring. Wiseman says, “A baby is his father’s half brother since each has a mother. In the very moment at which the ovum is fecundated, it divides into two parts. One keeps the father’s qualities to move to the new generation, and the other is consumed during the processes of growth till it changes into a fetus.” Byron says, “It is true that my son is mine, but I see his forefathers have hands in this darling thing. They deform his self-purity and bother his integrity with the unknown evil tendencies that they bore in their hidden, and he had to receive by heredity.”

Copying heredity is classified into three parts.

1. Heredity by partiality:

It stands for the branches’ copying one of the two origins in all, or most, of the qualities. Boys who bear almost all of the physical and mental qualities of their fathers are examples of the heredity by partiality.

2. Heredity by coalition:

It implies that the branches oppose the origins’ qualities. When a man from the east, for instance, marries a lady from the west, the son will not bear the same physical qualities of the parents.

3. Heredity by association:

It means that the branch copies one of the origins in definite qualities and copies the other in others. A child may receive the intelligence and tallness from the father, and the colors of hair and eyes from the mother. Asserting this point, Mendel says, “Majority of the genetic qualities move from one or both origins to the new generation without any separation or changeability.”

Individuals may receive the forefathers’ physical and mental qualities. Dr. Alexis Karl says, “Time extends just like the extension in emptiness beyond physical edges. Individuals’ boundaries are not more accurate or firmer than their extensive boundaries are. Individuals are connected to the past and the future through the essences that cannot extend to the present. As everybody knows, our individualities are brought forth when the spermatozoa find a place in the ova. The elements of essence are existent before that process. They are scattering in the tissues of our parents and forefathers because we are made from the cell materials of our forefathers and foremothers. Those materials stopped in the past on unanalyzed organic states. In our souls, we carry diminutive pieces of the precedents’ bodies. Our qualities and defects are the extension of our precedents’ qualities and defects.”

This view states openly that sons and grandsons inherit most of the forefathers’ mental and physical qualities unwillingly and involuntarily.

Heredity and Environment:

The roles of the environment in the mental composition are still ambiguous. There is also a prevalent belief that the environmental changes influence heredity. Through many thirty-year experimental studies on plants, animals and human beings, hereditists could subvert this thought when they proved that the environment is no more than a secondary factor of heredity. The environment can decide the emergence and extents of the qualities and their growth. Therefore, heredity selects the constant factors, while the environment selects the changeable.

The environment would never produce matters that are contrary to heredity because it is not subjected to the factors of changeability and variableness.[25]

Islam and Laws of Heredity

Islam preceded the psychologists and the geneticists in referring to many effects and phenomena of heredity, proving its positive role in the individuals’ sound composition.

The Prophet (s) said, “The knave have been knave since they have been in their mothers’ abdomens, and the auspicious have been auspicious since they have been in their mothers’ abdomens.”

This prophetic saying indicates that the genetic elements give the fetuses either fortune -when the fathers’ virtuous qualities and tendencies are available- or ill fate in case their qualities and natures are evil. The contingent qualities are also genetically received. Providing the story of Noah the prophet, the holy Quran refers to this matter. God says:

And Noah said: My Lord! Leave not upon this land any dweller from among the unbelievers. For surely if Thou leave them they will lead astray Thy servants, and will not beget any but immoral ungrateful children.

This Quranic text indicates that the disbelievers’ offspring, who genetically receive their fathers’ ill qualities, will also inherit their convictions. It is reported that a man from Ansar[26] complained before the Prophet (s) that his wife -who was his cousin- had given birth of a black baby while none of their forefathers was black. “You have ninety nine arteries,” answered the Prophet (s), “And she has ninety nine arteries. When these arteries combine, they will be in a state of disorder and each asks God the Exalted to associate with its like. This is surely your son. You may leave now. This baby must have come from one of her or your arteries.” The man took his wife’s hand and left.

This prophetic notice implies that sons can receive genetically even the most minute and the deepest qualities. Many Islamic rulings are legislated according to this fact.

First, Islam urges on looking upon the most accurate manners of women before they are taken in marriage. According to Islamic rulings, a great attention should be paid to women’s families and lineage so that any state of anticipated mental or physical handicap or deformity would be evaded. The Prophet (s) asserted the necessity of checking women before marriage. He said, “O people! Beware of the green-looking.” “What are the green-looking, God’s messenger?” some asked. “It is the beautiful women of evil source,” answered the Prophet (s).[27]

He also said, “Select for your sperms. The maternal uncle is one of the couple –in any sexual intercourse-.”[28] “Marry your women to the suitable, and select for your sperms.”[29]

The Imams emphasized on this point demandingly. Ibrahim al-Karkhi sought the advice of Imam as-Sadiq (a) in the question of his marriage. The Imam said, “You should check confidently the place you are going to choose for yourself and the one you are going to make a partner in your assets, and show your religion and open your secrets before him. If you insist, you then should choose a non-virgin lady that is known as moral and well-mannered.”[30]

In another occasion, the Imam (a) said, “A woman is a necklace. You should select what you will put. Neither the good nor do the evil women have likes. The good women are not like gold and silver since they are preferred to gold and silver. The evil women are not like dust. They are lowlier than dust.”[31]

Islam dislikes men who marry idiot women in order that families will be saved from decline. Imam as-Sadiq (a) relates Imam Ali’s saying, “Beware of marrying idiot women. The companionship of the she-idiot is an ordeal, and their sons are waste.”[32]

In the same way, Islam warns against marrying insane women so that the society will not come upon irregular and unsound individuals. Imam al-Baqir (a) was asked whether it was appropriate to marry women after they had been loved. “No,” answered the Imam, “It is not undesirable to copulate with the insane bondmaid on condition that she would not have children.”[33]

The Imams urged Muslims on testing and checking women before taking in marriage, for assuring whether such women or their families are empty of any mental or physical disability, lest such a disability will be common in the society.

Secondly, Islam stresses that women should identify precisely the men they choose as the life partners. This identification is the responsibility of the women’s guardians. Imam ar-Rida (a) told that his father related that the Prophet (s) said, “Matrimony is slavery. You will be slavering your daughters when you marry them; therefore, check the individuals you are going to give your daughters to in slavery.”[34]

Islam warns against marrying the drunkard. The Prophet (s) said, “For those who marry their daughters to the drunkards, they are cutting off the relations of kinship.”

In modern medicine, it has been proven that sons receive genetically the effects of the intoxicants. Dr. Brogans says, “Alcoholism causes barrenness. Duncan reports the story of the alcoholic lady that could not be pregnant for years while she had no physiological problem at all. As she was treated from dipsomania for one year, she could bear a baby. The same thing is applied to men. The reason is that the alcoholic materials enfeeble the backbone and paralyzes the brain. The offspring of those who are poisoned by such drugs receive genetically these poisons. Hence, they are dangerous not only for the drunkards, but also for their descendants, nation, and mankind. It is also emphasized that the successors of the drunkards bear signs of structural frailty and may suffer serious disorders that lead to insanity, general paralysis, or barrenness. Genetic effects can kill the fetus or the newborn. Thus, families may entirely extinct in two or three generations. Moreover, the offspring of the drunkards may suffer painful deformities, such as skull defects, shortness, and amentia. They may also suffer from retardation of the mental powers, such as cenotaph defects, childishness shortcoming, idiocy, hysteria, and others. Master physicians deemed unlawful to marry the drunkards for the previous serious dangers that may occur after marriage.[35]

The alcoholic materials that are consumed by the she-drunkards move to the blood of the fetuses through the placentas inside the uteri. It has been proven that the suckling babies receive the alcoholic materials.[36]

Psychologists say that amentia and states of hesitation may affect the drunkards. They also advice women to test such men before combining with them in matrimony, otherwise they will suffer many disasters and calamities. Women are inaccurate, to great extent, if they believe they will be able enough to change such habits after marriage. They have also proven that maladjustment is one of the reasons of dipsomania. The male drunkards easily push themselves to wrongdoing, and the female drunkards are easily led to prostitution. Dipsomania incites the spouses to break the barriers and challenge their consciences; thus, it becomes easy for them to breach the matrimonial pledges and lead such social bonds to failure by the corrosion of the family rules.

Islam –many years before modern science- explored and referred to this point. It has warned against giving women in marriage to the drunkards so that the coming generations will be saved against such disabilities and defects.

In like fashion, Islam bans women from marrying the ill-natured ones so that their ill manners will not move to the coming generations. Bashar al-Wasiti sought Imam ar-Rida’s advice when an ill-natured man asked for his daughter’s hand. The Imam told him not to give her to the ill-natured individuals.[37] Books of the Islamic heritage are full of reports that urge women on identifying the men that are expected to be their husbands before agreeing to marriage, so as not to give birth of evil offspring.

Third, as an Islamic rule, both spouses have the choice of revoking the matrimonial contracts if any of them is proven to have a mental irregularity, a physical disability, or other defects that the jurists identify. Imam as-Sadiq (a) said, “Matrimony is revocable in cases of leucoderma, leprosy, insanity, and cystocele.”[38]

This ruling saves the Islamic society from such diseases that cause retardation and social weakness. The jurisprudential bases of Islam sustain the modern articles that the international health organizations have declared. The spouses’ blood, for example, should be analyzed before marriage for recognizing whether any of them is affected by sexual diseases such as rrhoea, syphilis, or others that are the main cause of the babies’ blindness or venereal diseases. The calamities of such diseases are inherited genetically causing mental and physical disabilities beside the other party’s misery, suffering, and other mental problems that deprive of a content life.

FAMILY

Family[39] is one of the principal elements of constructing educational entities, creating processes of the social naturalization, forming the personalities, and providing the children with the habits that persist forever. In other words, family is the preliminary seed of composing the individual maturity and the structure of personalities. In most cases, children pursue their parents in habits and behaviors. Family then is the most evident, accurate, and abundant of the other educational elements.

The Significance of Families

Undoubtedly, family has the great effect in the construction of the individual behaviors and the arousing of vitality and tranquillity in children’s minds. Through families, children acquire their language, values and trends. Families contributed directly in the construction of mankind civilization and the associative relations of people. It led man to learn the principals of sociology and the rules of ethics and moralities. It is also the reason beyond the maintenance of many professions and career that fathers transfer to sons. It is strange to notice that Plato’s Republic that glorified the roles of the governments denied the roles of families. This denial led to the belief that families stood as obstacles in the face of the allegiance and loyalty to the government. For Plato, home, which enjoys a great value, is no more than a curse and an evil. Plato shouted out “Destroy those walls that contain nothing but a limited feeling of the domestic life.” On the other side, one of our proverbs is that “A man’s house is his secure fortress.”[40]

Duties of Families:

Family is responsible for educating the children correctly in standard criteria that are away from aberrance. There is a number of duties and obligations of families.

First, Families are responsible for saving the factors of settlement, amiability, and tranquillity in home, and removing any sort of violence, malice, and antagonism. The aberrance of majority of the aggressive children, which would lead to criminality, was the result of the home unsettlement. An educationist says, “If we visit jails, brothels, and insane asylums-- then visit schools for counting the unsuccessful, the quarrel makers, the politically extremists, and the abnormal, we will definitely notice that most of such individuals were deprived of the family settlement. They must have been lacking tranquil houses in which there should be compassionate fathers and kind mothers that do not exceed in dalliance or severity. The corruption of such houses has created such pictures of social disorder and purposeless and unsettled generations.”[41]

Amiability and compassion to sons have the greatest bearing on the sound composition of individuals. Mental complexes are the inevitable result in case fathers pay no attention to this fact. Sons are not ready to accept any advice or guidance unless there is a sort of sincere amiability among the members of families. Psychologists have proven that the complexes that emerge in the period of early childhood, especially those complexes that are originated from the parents’ bad relations with their sons, are the most serious and the preliminary to personal disorders.[42] Mutual concordance and amiability help in creating the intellectual maturity and the personal boons. Dr. Gilas Thomas says, “Despite the parents’ big responsibility of guiding and training their children, it is quite important to realize that such practices should never replace another essential task that parents must do. This task is the creation of an amiable mood that is shaded by care, and surrounded by compassion and justice. If parents show dearth in reviving such a mood in which the norms of composition are illuminated, they will deprive the children of an uncompensated constituent. Religion, society, and school play a remarkable role in educating the youth. However, none of these factors can save the impressive emotions the center of which is home, and the perfumes of which are smelt among families only.”[43]

The family pleasure prompts tranquillity in the children’s minds and helps in facing the life difficulties. Salama Musa says, “The family pleasure of children prompts tranquillity to the degree that it does not fade away even if fathers depart the life. When the children of London were evacuated during the raids of the Second World War, it was found that the children who enjoyed that family pleasure could stand the estrangement more than the others could. This proves that the family satisfactory mood prompts tranquillity in the children’s minds. Hence, those children could encounter the estrangement satisfactorily. Estrangement increased for the children who were brought up in troublesome mood. Finally, we expect the children to provide pleasure if they are brought up in pleasant mood.”[44]

Second, families should supervise the processes of education. Sociologists confirm this necessity. They emphasize that families must be in charge of the processes of the social education through which the children acquire the cultural experts and the rulings that make them eligible for receiving more and more, and fit enough for dealing with the society. Correspondingly, educationists confirm that parents should afford enough compassion, sympathy, and kindness to their children for securing them against depression and melancholy. UNESCO provided a noteworthy report about the defects that may be suffered by the children due to the deficiency of fathers’ compassion. “Children’s deprivation of their fathers, whether temporarily or permanently, results in depression and melancholy accompanied by feelings of sinfulness and malice. It also causes uncontrollable rebellious tempers, self-faintness, and loss of the feeling of family compassion. Children that are affected by the deprivation of fathers always swim in illusive worlds, because they are the substitutes of the actual world that they have lost. In most cases, they dream of heroic fathers and angelic mothers. In a survey on kindergartens, it has been noticed that defects, such as difficulty of articulation, ill naturedness and deficiency of emotional sentiment, occur to the children who depart their parents, despite their good health, maturity, and accurate intentional motives.[45]

Association and supervision are the best ways of protecting the children. Modern educationists affirm that the best heritage that should be left to the children is no more than a few minutes a day.[46] Sociologists who survey the juvenile delinquency have proven that the best way of eradicating the juvenile aberrance is picking the fathers who wander at night from the streets.[47]

Indisputably, fathers who fulfill their duties to their sons, such as supervision and association, will find those sons copying their qualities and natures. Fathers are also asked to give away the luxurious amusement and confine on supervising their sons so that they will be saved against degradation and negligence.

Ahmed Shawqi –An Egyptian poet- says that orphans are not those individuals whose parents depart away and leave them alone. Real orphans are those who have to encounter negligent mothers and busy fathers.

Third, some educationists believe that fathers and mothers should apply the following steps as duties:

1. Parents should unanimously agree upon the criteria of behavior. One should support the other in the decisions that are related to their sons.

2. Fathers should put in their daily programs that they must associate with their sons, including the babies, for a considerable time. Such practices contribute in seeding the feelings of association in the family.

3. Children ought to make out that their fathers should have enough time for personal activities and practices, such as privacy, reading or practicing their hobbies.

4. Fathers should make their daughters feel their femininity and responsibility of being virtuous, chaste, and righteous.

5. Sons are in need of masculine, powerful, and kind fathers. Any excessive hardness and strictness may cause the sons to take shelter of their mothers and pursue womanish behaviors.[48]

Naturally, children enjoy spontaneous qualities, such as purity, inexperience, sound emotions and simple mentality. Thus, parents should direct their eyes to virtues and seed moral tendencies so that they will yield well in the future.

Functions of Families

1. Families are in charge of producing and satisfying the children with upright moods for fulfilling their biological and social requisites. Families that only produce children have no difference with animals.

2. Families are responsible for training the children to associate and identify the values and customs of societies.

3. Families are responsible for providing the children with means of personal composition in societies.

4. Families are responsible for securing settlement, security, protection, and sympathy to the children until they attain adulthood. Families are the most proficient body that can afford so because they receive the early children[49] , while any other social association cannot replace them –the families- in this regard.

5. Families should take on the great portion of the children’s ethical, emotional, and religious education all over the various stages of childhood. They are fully responsible for the children’s religious education, whether the political regimes, such as the communists, directly or indirectly oppose religion, or neutral in the ethical and religious affairs, such as France. Thanks to the family life, the individuals receive the religious spirits as well as the other family emotions that prepare for associating in societies and homes.[50]

Childhood requires a good deal of care and means of mental and physical maturity. It is quite unacceptable to hypothesize that families’ one and only role is affording the fiscal supports. Such a hypothesis neglects the various mental factors, such as emotion, affection, security, and tranquillity that are essential for composing the individuals. These factors are important for the children’s mental maturity.[51]

Psychologists and educationists confirm that families play the greatest role in the process of education and the formation of personalities. This significant role becomes more manifest when we take in consideration the biological principal which affirms that the younger the human being, the more increasing formation and obedience. It is also possible to apply this principal to the mental powers in the variant levels of maturity. Families are responsible for all of the effects that early children encounter, since they are the basic factor of the children’s lives and the head source of their experts. Further, families are the genuine appearance of the children’s settlement. From this cause, the children’s personal settlement and maturity are totally dependent upon the variant quantitative and qualitative relations of families. Analysts find out that the children’s religious and moral values develop in the surroundings of families.[52]

Family in Islam

Islam has instituted the system of family on sound bases agreeing with the life necessities and the individuals’ exigencies and behavior. It has regarded the family talents that are afforded by God, as spontaneous. God says:

And one of his signs is that He created mates for you from yourselves that you may find rest in them, and He put between you love and compassion.

This phenomenon on which mankind have been natured is one of God’s grand portents and graces. Islam also works for arranging the Muslim families to be good exemplars and have the elements of orthodox leadership. As God exposes the manners of the virtuous servants, He says:

O Our Lord! Grant us in our wives and our offspring the joy of our eyes, and make us guides to those who guard against evil.

The availability of good exemplars and virtuous patterns is the most important rule in the educational processes.

In the previous surveys of genetics, we have referred to the Islamic rule that any matrimonial bond should be first founded on test so that the defects of any spouse would not move to the coming generations and societies. Islam has also given fathers the guardianship on their daughters for selecting the most appropriate husband and dismissing the disabled who may cause misfortunes and problems. Since women generally realize only the shells of life, they naturally show blemish in selecting for themselves. In most cases, women are deceived by their fiancés’ false promises and appearances. Most women lack enough acquaintance with the deceitful licentious individuals that may speak of the fascinating words of love and fondness and imaginary promises and pledges. They ignore that a satisfactory marriage occurs only when the other party enjoys noble ethics and high traits that encourage on caring for their affairs and rights, and producing virtuous offspring that bring pleasure and contentment in the final age. Islam stresses on this result.

The system of families that is instituted by Islam relies upon the deep cognizance of the elements of family contentment and bond in physiological, mental, and social fields. It calls for satisfying each individual with kindness, affection, moderation, and settlement.

Islam cares a lot for achieving amiability, understanding, and harmony between spouses since their bond represents the chief core of families. These qualities are available in the ideal spouses about whom Hammerlock Alice said, “Ideal marriage does not rest on accordant desires. It rests upon a chaste union that is based upon deep warmth that increases day by day to scope all of the fields. This is the union of flavors, feelings, and tendencies. It is the union of common life as it binds to paternity burdens.”[53]

Islam wants the sexual bonds to be ideal and based firmly upon love and understanding so that the educational processes will fruit effectively and create sound societies.

Islam has legislated for attaining all of the objective courses aiming at conciliating, developing, and leading the families to prosperity. On that account, it paid a special attention to the role of home, and ordered the common ethics among families and delimited the private duties that bring about family association and have a positive influence on the educational composition.

Significance of Home

Home, through which the social environment achieves the children’s educational results, plays a considerable role in the educational processes. Children receive traditions, practices, beliefs, arts, traits, history, and triumphs of their nations through their homes. The social environment can attain its strong effects in education only when home accomplishes its missions successfully. Corruption of children is the natural and the inescapable consequence of home corruption. There is more than one role played by home in the educational processes since it is the natural source of affection and kindness. The way to tranquillity passes through home.[54] Islam has devoted a specific attention to home. It has ordered that love and cordiality should prevail on homes. It also has regulated that any sorts of primness, forsaking, and reproach may retard the children’s adaptation. Serious deviations, such as the loss of security, self-confidence, and others, will affect the children whose homes are too short to fulfill their missions.

THE COMMON COURSES

Islam has constituted courses that are common among family members and called for applying them to their lives so that contentment will shade the all.

Love and Affiliation:

Islam has called for the predominance of love, affiliation, and cordiality among the family members who are required to avoid any concern that may confuse the purity of the living. Women should meet this liability in the first place since they can turn a home into a paradise -by fulfilling the duties, considering the morals, and being a unique believer- or into a hell. A man told the Prophet (s) of his wife’s customs, “She receives me as I enter the house, and sees me off as I leave, and alleviates my cares if she notices any. She used to say, ‘You should care about nothing. If you care for the livings, this is the mission of other than you. If you are caring for a paradisiacal matter, Allah, then, may increase your care.’” The Prophet declared his great admiration of that lady, “Tell your lady that she will be abiding in the Paradise. She is truly one of God’s veritable servants.”[55]

When wives take care of their husbands by fulfilling their duties, affiliation will be prevalent. Furthermore, a tie of deep adoration will be established among the family members, and this will lead to the successful education.

Cooperation:

Islam has called for the spouses’ collaboration in the living affairs and the management of the home affairs. It has called for living associatively in mutual affiliation and relationship. This is the task of the paterfamilias. Islam has bound the householders with attending to their wives and taking part in the home affairs. The Prophet (s) used to participate with his wives in the house affairs and say, “Partaking wives in the house affairs is a sort of alms.” Imam Ali (a) was wont to help Fatima az-Zahra (a), the veracious and the mistress of women of the worlds, in the housekeeping and the home management. These acts will surely establish a spirit of noble empathy -which is the most significant element of the sound education- in the sons’ essences.

Mutual Respect:

Islam has urged on mutual respect and abidance by morals among the family members. The older must feel for the younger, and the younger should reverence the older. The Prophet (s) said, “The old should be sympathetic to the young, and the young should reverence the old.” Abidance by morals erects a sense of good virtues and values. It correspondingly enjoins the maturity of perfect behavior in the children’s minds, and incites to fling in the field of collaboration with the family and the society. Psychoanalysts have proven that the children’s religious and moral values mature only in the family surroundings.[56]

FAMILY DISORDER

The family members -chiefly the children- will suffer mental defects, nervous disorders, loss of sound behavior, and aberrance if the family is characterized by inharmony and disorder. Modern educational surveys show that family disorder and unsettlement is the biggest elements of aberrance.[57] Crises that lead to deviation are the results of family clutter. Consequently, it is essentially incumbent, for protecting the juveniles from irregularity and deviation, to conserve the family settlement by removing all of the factors of distress and confusion.

FATHERS’ RESPONSIBILITIES

Not only are fathers responsible for saving their dependants’ alimonies and fiscal necessities, but also they are required to provide education, discipline, morals, and guidance. They must ensure the high traits and warn against evil. Imam Zeinul-abidin (a) says, “Your sons’ right is that you should realize their being parts of you and attached to you in good and evil. You are responsible for providing the noble traits, conducting them to their Lord, and backing them in worshipping Him as a compliance with you. They entirely be rewarded or punished. You should act to your sons as seekers of the good remuneration in this world, and justified to the Lord through the acceptable supervision and training.”[58]

Imam Zeinul-abidin (a) was used to supplicating to the Lord for his son by saying, “O Lord! Make them filial pious, godly, aware, listeners, and obedient for Thee, and adherents and advisers for Thy saints, and mutinous and antipathetic of Thy foes.”[59]

Fathers are subject to bring forth the chaste education for the sons to guarantee their sincerity. The Imams of the Prophet’s progeny regarded this topic highly. Imam Ali (a), the first Islamic educationist, says to his son, Imam al-Hassan, “I consider you being a part of me, being me all in all. Anything that strikes you is actually striking me. Death when draws near to you is drawing to me. Your affairs are as same as mine.”

Yes indeed, sons are not only parts of their fathers. They are truly their fathers’ all in all. They expose their fathers’ existence and entity. From this cause, fathers should care for their sons’ education, edification, and perfection in order that they will take pride in them magnificently. On the other hand, sons may be evil and mischievous to their fathers if their education and affairs are neglected. The following are some of the fathers’ tasks:

1. Custody of Sons:

Fathers should take care of their sons by granting them with affection and tenderness, and conferring honor upon them. These matters form the most influential effects in structuring their educational entity and advancing their personalities and mental maturity.

The Prophet (s) had al-Hassan and al-Hussein -his grandsons- in the greatest custody. As he was having them on his shoulders, the Prophet (s) used to say, “These two are my single basil in this world. He whoever loves me should love them.”[60] On another occasion, he said to Fatima az-Zahra (a), “Summon my two sons.” As she presented them, the Prophet (s) smelt and embraced them.[61] It is also related that al-Aqra bin Habis, seeing the Prophet’s fondness and custody of his two grandchildren, said, “I do not remember I have ever kissed any of my ten sons.” This saying made the Prophet irate. “What can we do to a man that God has uprooted mercy from him!”[62]

The Prophet (s) poured his ideal and guidance in the minds of his two grandsons. He also dwelled his merciful tendencies on them. Therefore, they became the excellent exemplars of perfection. Their liberal lifetime accumulated the total aspects of magnitude and divinity as well as whatsoever mankind boasts all over history. They achieved the elevation in ethics and essence, and delved into the fields of grandeur and right.

Fathers’ custody, affection, and charity to sons are the most consequential constituents of the educational entity that consummates the children’s personal affluence and spares the mental complexities that are the most serious diseases. Modern educational surveys have proved that good citizens and virtuous scientists are mostly the outcome of the careful families.[63] Psychologists have asserted this fact, too. Conversely, the sons that are unwelcomed and disregarded by their families take aggressive paths and seem to be negative, quarreling, and rebellious, and invent skillful trickeries for disturbing the adults. Besides, they tend to criminal behavior.

- The aspects of the family negligence are as follows:

- Cruelty and excessive vulgarity in treating the children.

- The use of the fierce physical disciplining.

- The continuous criticizing, reproaching, and exposition of the children’s defects before others.

- Intemperance in neglecting and accusing the children.

- The negligence of praising the children.

- Disgracing the children before the other brothers and sisters.

- Showing astonishment when others praise the children.[64]

Fathers should avoid the previous matters when they deal with their sons. This will save the children’s behaviors and guard them against irregularity and aberrance.

2. Equality:

Fathers should cover their sons with equal amounts of love, affection, and custody. Many psychological complexities, jealousy, fury, and the arising of mental passive revolts may occur to the children who notice any distinction in the fathers’ conservation. These effects may lead to serious psychological ailments.

The holy Quran exposes the story of Joseph the prophet when his father favored him to the other brothers. Consequently, they plotted for an artifice by which they threw him in a well and came to their fathers weeping. The father –Jacob the prophet- was so regretful that his eyes turned into white. A calamitous crisis that he had to suffer was owing to favoring a definite son to the others. The Prophet (s) is reported to say, “Treat your sons equally as you like to be treated fairly in benevolence and kindness.” As he noticed a father of two sons kiss one and neglect the other, the Prophet (s) reproached, “You should have treated them equitably.”[65]

Equality among sons is one of the components of the Islamic education. Fathers should never distinguish between brothers. Fathers who address charity and benevolence at certain sons exclusively, or give the heritage exclusively to the sons and neglect the daughters, are definitely out of the circle of Islam. Such procedures arouse hostility and hatred among the brothers and cause retardation in their educational entity, and mental disorder and slowdown in the social relations. It is proven that the sons that are deprived of paternal affection and benevolence are stroke by psychological complexities, social antagonism, and severe conduct. Fabrication, larceny, cruelty, evildoing, and assaulting deeds are the effects of the children that lack paternal affection.

“Children’s paternal hatred stops against the social conditioning. It cancels the feelings of security and self-confidence. Modern psychological surveys have confirmed that the most critical causes of disquietude are the nullity of the family emotional warmth, feelings of others’ negligence, deprivation of love, kindness, and affection, and feelings of weakness in the aggressive world. Secondly, inequality among brothers arises the feelings of disquietude in the children’s minds, and kills the spirits of keenness that help in pushing the way easily and tranquilly. Disordered men feel of depression and mental torment everywhere.”[66]

Fathers should treat their sons equally, lest the sons will be affected by such serious ailments that smash the mental entities.

3. Cordiality:

Fathers must cover their family members, especially spouses, with cordiality, affection, and benevolence, and meet their needs entirely. God has instituted this as one of the wives’ rights. It also contributes in the children’s prudent education and personal contentment that live in aspects that are filled with love, affection, peace, and settlement. Islam has urged on caring for wives. The Prophet (s) said, “The best of you are the best to their wife. I am the best to my wives.” He also said, “Wives are the husbands’ delight. Almighty God favors those who deal with their delight in the best way.” Imam al-Baqir (a) says, “May God’s mercy be upon those who enjoy good relations with their wives. Allah the Exalted gave men the wives in possession and made them their custodians.” Imam as-Sadiq (a) says, “Fear God while you deal with the two weak; women and slaves.”

Fathers ought not to displease or wrong their wives. The Prophet (s) says, “The best men of my nation are those who do not encroach or wrong their wives and those who treat them kindly.” He then recited God’s saying:

Men are the maintainers of women because Allah has made some of them to excel others.

Fathers’ natures and manners to their family members leave the greatest influence on the children’s consonance in the society. The children’s personalities achieve prosperity only when their fathers’ treatments are well. Contrariwise, children’s behaviors and intellectual maturity are badly affected and ceased if fathers use rudeness.

4. Avoidance of Obscene Language:

Fathers, as paterfamiliases, are in charge of constituting the educational entity of their families. They should avoid obscene language, vulgarity, and any matter that injures the general manners. Chastity and homogeneity should find a considerable place in every house. It is obligatory upon fathers, whose words and deeds penetrate the hearts of their sons who are influenced by their manners and morals, to shield the family members from evil and obscene language. Children who notice their parents’ ill deeds can never have sound education and growth up. Similarly, children who notice their fathers say false things will never comply with their instructions of truth and sincerity. They pursue their fathers’ deeds and actions. On that account, fathers must apply the noble traits and manners to their lives to be good exemplars for their family members.

5. Supervising the Sons’ Behaviors:

In most cases of the ethical crimes that are committed by juveniles, the source is heeded to be the fathers’ negligence of superintending their sons and discounting the signals of aberrance they show. Naturally, children whose conscience and mind are imperfect cannot distinguish between good and evil. As children notice that no problem or reproach occurred owing to their doing a bad deed, they will certainly keep up doing it habitually.

Islam has urged fathers on associating and supervising the behaviors of their early children for saving them against the pollution of crimes that are arisen from aberrance. Nowadays, it is unfortunately noticeable that fathers disdain this condition on which the future of their children relies. This terrible negligence led to the young’s deviation and moral degradation. Violence and irregularity have become the nature of most young men’s behaviors and morals.

One of the ugliest sorts of negligence and deviation from the sound educational courses is the unsupervised mixing of the two sexes of the same age in schools and universities. In most cases, such mixing may induce young women to lose chastity and avert the behavioral criteria of probity.

Fathers are liable -before God- for supervising their sons’ behavior and turning them aside from all of the evil tendencies. Al-Ghezali says, “Opting for certain methods of educating is one of the most significant and considerable tasks. A child is his father’s trust. His stainless heart is a precious gem that is clear from any image or picture. It is becoming to receive any image and follow any way. If a child is inured to good, this will stick to his mind, and the pleasure of this world and the Hereafter will be amassed for him. Parents, tutors, and trainers of children have a share in his rewards. Inversely, if a child is inured to evil, and neglected like animals, nonsuccess and loss will be the result. The guardian will undergo the sin of misguidance. God the Exalted says:

O you who believe! Save yourselves and your families from a fire whose fuel is men and stones; over it are angels stern and strong, they do not disobey Allah in what He commands them, and do as they are commanded.

Fathers should save their children against the hell-fire and that of this world. Fathers’ salvation is educating, disciplining, and leading their children to the noble traits and keeping them against associating with the evil. Fathers should avoid inuring their children to luxurious living, otherwise the sons will spend their lives looking for such things, and this will definitely cause damage. Fathers’ supervision should be initiated with the children’s early years. It is also essential for fathers to choose chaste and religious wet nurses and nursemaids. Women’s milk is unblessed unless it is produced from legal earnings. Children who are brought up on such illegitimate food will tend to evil and illegal matters.”[67]

The previous opinion of Al-Ghezali is, to great extent, exact. Modern educational surveys have accepted this opinion. Early supervision, encouragement on the noble traits, and the avoidance of the evil tendencies; all these are the matters that incite prosperity of this world and the Hereafter. In like fashion, negligence and non-supervision lead to nonsuccess and damage.

6. Disciplining:

Fathers should take initiative in disciplining their children as soon as they notice a behavioral irregularity or any offense that contradicts the religious and social traditions as well as the general manners. Precipitation in disciplining the wrong children is a sufficient means for removing evil and rebellious spirits. Islam has confirmed this matter. The Prophet (s) said, “Discipline your children. This is better for you than a daily giving of a big sum of alms.” He also said, “If you honor and discipline your children aptly, God will forgive you.”

In most cases, irregularity that accompanies the children is the consequence of the fathers’ negligence and failure to discipline the children who deviate. Sheik Naraqi says, “Children that are neglected in the earliest stages of growth up will mostly opt for ill manners. They chiefly prefer fabrication, envy, and obstinacy, and become thieves, traitors, and impolite. In other cases, such children may be weakling, licentious, and profligate.”[68]

7. Taking the children away from the sexual activities:

Islam has warned spouses against copulation near their children, since this may incite their lust and give them a motive to seek fields of harlotry and depravity. Imam al-Baqir (a) advised Jabir saying, “Avoid copulating in a place where a boy that is able to distinguish your doing, can see you.”[69] Imam as-Sadiq says, “Men should never copulate with their ladies where there is a boy. This brings about fornication.”[70] The Prophet (s) said, “I swear by the Prevailing of my soul, success will never approach boys who see or hear even the breath of the copulating spouses. Fornication is the result.”[71]

Specialists in sexual education have affirmed the necessity of taking the children away from the sexual relations. Sir Pepsi says, “The sexual sense is existent to every human being including babies to whom this state begins to gush after maturity. So, it is very much important to avoid any activity arousing this state before its proper time. Some fathers undervalue the necessity of preventing the children from noticing them when they strip their clothes. Such fathers go to extremes in this regard, as they think of being intellectuals or progressists who should give us the opportunity to see them naked. As children frequently notice such manners, they will soon be paying great interest to the sexual characteristics in their minds.”[72]

Children’s minds are quickly affected by what they notice. On that account, it is essential to take them away from whatever stirs up the lusts and corrupts the moralities, for guarding them against aberrance and irregularity. As the western education paid no attention to this regard, their sons had to encounter mental damage, many sorts of sexual troubles, and moral downfall as well as the absence of social bonds.

8. Taking the children away from the ill-gotten food:

Fathers should provide legal-gotten foods to their children, and protect them against any food that the Lord has forbidden. The forbidden foods are the usurped, the real filthy things -such as pork-, the external filthy things -such as foods affected by external impurities-, and the like things that are detailed in the theses of the jurists. Fathers should exert all efforts for habituating their children to have legal food only since, as it has been proven through modern clinical surveys, the sources of nutrition leave a great influence on the behavior and maturity.

Islam is terribly sensitive to any matter that may delay the children’s growth and personal prosperity. Ill-gotten foods have internal aftereffects on the mental constituents. They may cause the hindrance of the behavioral activities in a way permitting the composition of evil tendencies, such as severity and extreme assaults. As Islam has cared for these aspects, it issued the obligation of keeping the children clear of the ill-gotten foods. It is related that as the Prophet (s) noticed that Imam al-Hassan -when was a child- put a fruit of date palms in the mouth, he disciplined, “Throw it out! Have you not known that we –the Prophet and his household- do not have from foods given as alms?”

After the calamitous incident of Kerbala, Imam al-Hussein’s harems were taken to Kufa as captives. As some people noticed that the accompanying children were starving, they gave them some fruits of date palm as alms. Ummu-Kulthoum, the Prophet’s granddaughter, reproached the children and informed that it was forbidden for the Prophet’s household to receive alms. Immediately, the children took the fruits out of their mouths. As the Prophet’s household kept up this illuminative behavior in the educational fields, they produced those unprecedented and unparalleled young men and women who formed the greatest exemplars in veracity, chastity, and decency.

Mothers’ Responsibilities

Mothers are the headmost schools of structuring the children’s personalities, and supplying them with the noble traits. Polite and courteous mothers produce virtuous generation. Decadence and lewdness are the outcome of the generations that are brought up by impolite mothers.

On mothers’ shoulders lie great social liabilities. They are responsible for the nations’ future, honesty, and progress. They are the origin brick in the building of the educational entity. They also bear the most momentous aspects of the education of children since they are the builders of the bases of the children’s tendencies and moralities through guiding to virtues, ambitions, progression, action, and self-reliance. It is very much difficult to change totally the matters that the children acquire before their eighth year of age. So, those matters influence greatly the society and peoples’ lives and maturity. It is so natural that a child --when brought up on ambition, progression, activity, and diligence- will positively add strong pillars to the nation for achieving the required deeds and structuring propitious civilization.[73]

Mothers enjoy some motives for helping in the children’s custody and education:

1. Mothers are more tolerant than others are in the field of educating and keeping their children. This is because they enjoy natural instinctive motives. God has given deep love and affection to mothers exclusively so that they consider their children as their hearts and souls. Without this, children would not exist and live.

2. Mothers are more aware and conscious of their children’s morals and moods. They are also more enlightened with the soundest means of enjoining good and forbidding evil.

3. Naturally, children respond to their mothers according to the law of exigency. They exert all efforts for carrying out their mothers’ desires and obtaining their satisfactions.

Mothers’ duties:

Mothers, who desire to see their sons be their future pleasure and relic, should work hard for educating the sons and overseeing their behaviors by sticking in their minds the good biases and the noble idealities.

1. Mothers should endear and encourage on every good conduct by referring to the successful outcomes.

2. Mothers should warn their children against any criminal and evil way and custom, and should warn them against the behaviors of any party that is incongruent to the religious and social habits. They should refer to the consequences of such things that are injurious for families, societies, and the children themselves.

3. Mothers should choose chastity and morality as the courses of educating their daughters whom should be guided to the qualities of the female exemplars. They should be warned against recklessness and being affected by the fashions of those women who are unaware of their chastity and dignity. Careful tutelage should be focused on daughters and their affairs so that they will not be polluted by the libertine conventions that, unfortunately, found their way to our Islamic societies, and invaded our people’s intellective and doctrinal lives. Daughters are usually more obedient -to their mothers- than sons. They are always in need of their mothers. Hence, mothers should maintain, manage, and train them on housekeeping. They should also make them perceive the life’s liabilities so that they will fulfill their duties in the future and become the good mothers of other generations.

4. Mothers should not exceed in pampering their children in order to avoid the disadvantages that contribute in the retardation of education and the future unbecomingness.

5. Mothers should attract their sons’ attentions to the high standards of their fathers. They should insist on reverencing and respecting them. This will improve the fathers’ roles in disciplining the deviate and leading to the good behavior.

6. Mothers should never contend their husbands since this creates an aspect of mutual malice and hatred. Consequently, such matters may lead to the children’s disorder and anxiety as well as other mental complexes. Islam has urged women on pleasing the husbands and neglecting any matter that may enrage them. The Prophet (s) is reported to say, “Allah will not accept any dissuasion, remuneration or good deed of the wives unless they satisfy their husbands.” “Wives, who mistreat and burden their husbands with arduous and unbearable things, will not be rewarded for their good deeds, and God will come upon in ire.” “Wives will not fulfill God’s rights before they fulfill their husbands’.” Imam Abu Jafar says, “The deeds of wives, who address at their husbands that they did not see any good from them, will be come to nothing.”[74]

Muslim wives are asked to satisfy, appease, and comply with their husbands in addition to avoid whatsoever may disturb them. This is the only way of saving good education for their children.

7. Mothers should inform the paterfamiliases of every aberrant deed they may notice on their sons’ behaviors. Fathers’ turn then is disciplining and guiding the sons to the correct path. Mothers should never cover up such deeds lest sons will have motives to keep up the incorrect manners. Mothers are also asked not to make objections to fathers’ disciplinary punishments lest sons’ rebel and corruption may increase.

8. Mothers should protect their sons from the streets that are full of seductive matters and motives of antisocial behaviors. Nowadays, streets are including, to excess, the aberrant ones and those who are morally affected and the source of children’s being polluted and dragged to junkyards of immoralities and serious offenses.

9. Mothers should deprive their sons of any cause or method that may injure chastity and purity, or collapse the morals and ethics, such as sexy books, novels and cinemas, nightclubs and the like. Such sources of seductive media draggle to the lowest levels of whoredom and insolence.

10. Mothers should conserve chastity and good behaviors. They should never display their charms and cast their screens. They should keep up the Islamic conducts so that they would be the good exemplars of their sons in fields of chastity and noble descent. Finally, they should elude any matter that may arouse the cravings and corrupt the moralities.

Honest matrimonial relation creates the precious emotions of the husband and incites him to believe perfectly that he should prefer his sons and wife to his own interests. Dishonest relations, on the other hand, eradicate the husbands’ jealousy to their wives and smash any cerebral motive to bring up their sons honestly or care for saving good life for them. This grand disaster affects mankind. Moral corruption of the young is one of the consequences of that disaster. Sons who lack familiarity with affectionate fathers who care for them will most surely opt for immorality. Indeed, death of emotions leads to death of humanity.

Sons’ duties:

Islam has given a great attention to sons whom are required to respect and obey their fathers absolutely. Thus, impiety to parents is one of the grand sins for which God has threatened the hell-fire. God’s Book refers to the obligation of benefaction and obedience to parents in more than one position. God has attached the obedience of parents to worship and compliance with Him. He says:

And your Lord has commanded that you shall serve any but Him, and goodness to your parents. If either or both of them reach old age with you, say not to them so much as ‘Ugh’ nor chide them, and speak to them a generous word. And make yourself submissively gentle to them with compassion and say: O my Lord! Have compassion on them, as they brought me up when I was little.

Muslims should treat their parents according to this straight course that represents Islam’s genuineness and constancy in education and teachings. Muslims should also meet their parents with thorough travails of service and charity, and dedicate all of the deeds to the parents’ use until they are emotionally satisfied. Besides, the spirits of contentment and acceptance should be dispersed in the parents’ mentalities. Any single word of boredom or annoyance should not be said to the old parents who lack the ability of managing their affairs. In such cases, it is insistently imperative to serve and superintend them. It is quite obligatory to use leniency with them and supplicate to God for their good and meet them with the best forms of dignifying and honoring since these acts leads to God’s forgiveness. Reports of confirmations of the Prophet and the Imams on the commitment to benevolence and piety in treating parents are uninterruptedly existence in the reference books of hadith and history.

Imam As-Sadiq (a) narrated: “O God’s messenger!” a man addressed at the Prophet, “I have the desire to participate in jihad.” “Yes,” said the Prophet, “You should strive for God’s sake. If you are killed, you will be divinely alive and rewarded with earnings. If you die, God will be rewarding you. If you come back safe, your sins will be totally condoned as same as the day on which your mother had given birth of you.” “O God’s messenger!” said the man, “I have aged parents who claim they feel at ease with me and disagree to my departure.” “Then,” said the Prophet; “You are to settle with your parents. By the Prevailing of my soul I swear, one day’s ease you provide to your parents is more preferable to a year participation in jihad.”

Hence, we notice that sons’ piety to their parents is more rewardful than jihad, which is one of the portals of the Paradise.

Zakaria Bin Ibrahim said: I had been Christian before I converted to Islam, performed the ritual pilgrimage and came to Abu Abdillah (Imam as-Sadiq) and told of my conversion to Islam. “What have you noticed in Islam distinctively?” asked the Imam. I referred to God’s saying:

You had not known what is the Book or the believing. But, We made it a light by which We raise whom We desire.

The Imam raised his hands upwardly supplicating to God for my good and guidance. “My father and mother, who is sightless, are Christians,” said I, “I usually accompany them and eat from the same saucer.” “Do they have the pork?” asked the Imam. “Never,” I answered, “They do not even touch it.” The Imam instructed, “Never mind. You should be pious to your mother. If she dies, none other than you should make her funeral ceremonies. You should manage her affairs.”

As I was back hometown, I began to implement the Imam’s instructions of piety of my mother that she wondered the reason beyond my extraordinary supervision. “O son!” she pondered, “When you were on my religion, you did not do this to me. As you converted to Islam after your immigration, I noticed this fantastic piety to me, what is this?” “A man, who is one of our Prophet’s descendants, instructed me,” I answered. “Is he a prophet?” asked she. “No,” I answered, “He is a prophet’s descendant.” “These are certainly the prophets’ instructions,” she expressed, “Your religion is really the best.” She then Islamized.

Islam is grounded on rewarding the well doers and piety to parents as much as possible.

Islam asserts on mothers’ piety specifically more than fathers’. This is because mothers’ rights upon sons are more abundant than fathers’ are. On the authority of Imam as-Sadiq, a man asked the Prophet which of his parents he should treat more benevolently. “Your mother is,” said the Prophet. “Who’s next?” asked the man. “Your mother is,” confirmed the Prophet. “Who’s next?” reasked the man. “Your mother is,” said the Prophet. “Who’s next?” reasked the man. “Then comes your father,” worded the Prophet.[75]

Sons are responsible -before Allah- for supervising and honoring their mothers by saving whatever they need. It may be a part of rewarding the burdens and difficulties that they stood and exerted in educating their sons. As a man was shouldering his mother to perform the ritual circumambulating of the precept of pilgrimage, he asked the Prophet whether he had fulfilled her duty. “No at all,” asserted the Prophet, “You have not met even a single sigh.”

The filial piety and obeying the parents -by serving them- are fundamental constituents of the Islamic education that aims at establishing social ties that should be based upon true amiability and association.

MODERN FAMILY

Today’s problems of families are seriously impending. Owing to the social variances, modern families have left many functions they had met before. This caused the dissociation and collapse of family bonds. An educationist says, “As a matter of fact, one of the serious and main threats of modern society is the dwindling of the natural roles of families. This occurred because many other associations seized most of the roles of families. This is unfortunately anticipated to make families lose that effective role which is the most important power of social settlement.”[76]

It is inadmissible to regard the feckless opinion of calling to the negligence of the family affairs and the laxity of any discussion or thesis in this regard, since this plays no single role in the social development. Moreover, Marxism, in its first stage, declared that family affairs are one of the sources of exploitation that should be destroyed. They claim paterfamiliases’ capitalizing on their wives and sons to use as productive means.[77] It is to add that Engels confirms, “The individual families do not work in transferring the means of production into a public ownership which is the society’s economical unit. Private home management is similarly changed into a craft, and children’s supervision and education are changed into a public issue. The society should charge the mission of educating the children including those who are not due for marriage. All those will surely eliminate the feeling of abashment that girls feel because of some reasons related, in this time, to the most important economical and ethical factors that impede girls from subjecting freely to the one they love.”[78]

Communism has conceded many of its decisions because it collided with the factuality of people all over history; family is an indispensable, constant, and unchanging system. Thus, the Russian project has directed to elevate the family affairs and work for protecting the state for the good of children and mothers. It has also legislated the law of granting the pregnant working women vacations before and after giving birth with full stipends.[79]

At any rate, it is significant to have a short prospect on the terrible damages that families encountered under the shades of the modern materialist civilization.

Women’s Conceding Education

In the past, women settled in their houses for supervising their sons and looking after their husbands’ requirements. In association with men, women used to play the role of the instructors to their sons. In the present day, women went out for practicing men’s jobs. Home affairs became secondary tasks for women most of whom, in many countries, conceive that giving birth of children contradicts their jobs; therefore, birth control and negligence of giving birth floated on the surfaces.

It is quite understandable that women are singly responsible for contriving the social and mental spheres for achieving perfect and sound growth up of children. Numerous disadvantages were the outcome of women’s secluding their basic functions. Family collapse has been the main pitfall of this misdeed. Women began to meet their husbands and children in concise periods. For many of them, family has been something similar to a locanda that is vacant of any social or mental tie, which constantly calls for putting the family interests in the top.[80]

Women’s being outdoors has deprived the children of enjoying the motherly affection since mothers practiced their outer jobs and left their children most of time. Artificial nutrition and wet nurses can never supplant mothers’ affection and kindness. Experiments have proved that mothers’ milk is not the sole source of children’s maturity. Mothers’ affection and tenderness, which is the natural and mental nutrition that is received through their breasts, share the same significance of natural nutrition in the fields of sound maturity and growth up. This is the main reason beyond favoring mothers’ nutrition to the artificial. In other words, mothers’ milk gives physical and affectionate maturity, while the artificial may contribute in the physical only since it is empty of the natural love and tenderness. Mothers whose babies are nurtured artificially are recommended, by pediatrists, to embrace their babies frequently.[81] As a rule, sound maturity is attainable only through the reception of acceptable amount of mothers’ love and affection. Mothers who leave their houses and babies will lose love and affection. Many educationists, economists and psychologists reproach women’s secluding their houses. Let us refer to some of these wordings and leave any comment. A grand philosopher says, “As women began to practice general jobs, families began to dispel. Tests have proved that women began to revolt against the traditions of familiar ethics.”[82] John Simon the economist says, “Nowadays, women have been weavers and typists. The governments employed women in factories. They earned some money, but razed the pillars of their families thoroughly. It is yes that husbands benefit by their wives’ earnings, but their own earnings have been reduced because women began to compete with them.”[83] August Cant, the sociologist, said, “If women’s manners in the social structure are kept up in the way they desire, expiry is their fate. They will be captive bondwomen.”[84] Annie Rod says, “It is quite preferable and less disastrous for our girls to work as maids in houses to joining the factories where they are polluted with profanities that rub out their glamour for good. I wish our countries were like those of Muslims in reserve, chastity and purity. Maids and servants there lead a life of ease and comfort and are treated as same as family members without any sort of abuse. It is dishonorable for the country of the English that our girls became models of vice due to association with men. I wonder why we decline to make our girls practice the jobs that accord their natural characters, such as the home affairs. For protecting our girls’ honor, we should lead them to avoid men’s jobs.”[85]

Shafiq Jibri says, “Women in America are leaving their nature when they began to compete with men in their jobs. This participation will soon demolish the rules of their social lives. How can a woman work and supervise her children and manage her home affairs at the same time? The American women drifted in this course so excessively that a sort of vying with men will be the result.”[86]

Samuel Smiles says, “Systems that decide women’s working in factories for saving the national fortune are arising lethal results that destroy the structure of the house lives. Such systems are raiding at the frameworks of houses, demolishing the family pillars, and unknotting the social ties.”[87] Ms. Amina Saeed says, “Ignorance is still widespread among women. The present family decrees should be discussed in the parliaments more than other issues. As much as I conceive, a house is an unparalleled paradise. Women’s settlement in their houses equates thousands of political rights.”[88]

When women left their houses to enter to the factories and compete with men in jobs and economy, they became too short to fulfill their house missions completely. They also show shortage in the task of educating the early young. When the working women return home, they are encumbered with an exhausting state. How can such women then provide a sound education for their children? Naturally, this forms a menacing danger on the generations that could be affected by several mental defects and behavioral unsettlement, as educationists and psychologists affirm.

DIMINUTION OF MATRIMONIAL PROPORTIONS

The diminution and extreme reduction of the matrimonial proportions is the most threatening exposure that forebodes the family entities. Modern materialist civilizations has offered women as a low-priced and trite stock that most of the youth abstain from marriage since they could easily have the sexual carnality. They also lost any motive to be involved in marriage and its accompanying liabilities. Sheik Behi al-Khuli says, “The young men refrain from marriage since it prevents them from getting the accessible renewed desires. The motives of modern developments have brought about the expansive freedoms regarding ideas, wording, beliefs, and private behaviors, in most of the western societies. It has also established material goals in assets, utilities, and sensual desires that contradicted the spiritual goals and the criteria of honor and chastity. Thus, everyone had the private extensive freedom through which he could do whatever he liked without any legal or traditional barrier. Traditions and social attitudes urged the individuals daringly on doing whatever they want. The result was the triumph of sex worship. The mania of lusts became too prevalent to exclude any. Hence, matrimony became a manacle that restrains the freedom of obtaining the desires. Each individual would leave his friend to find another at whom he can renew the flaming desires.

This would indisputably lead to the reduction of the population and the weakness of the nations in their mental and material components. Ten years ago, some European societies showed the disadvantages of such moral disintegration. Unfortunately, it is got bigger and bigger to include many other countries.

Sociologists are ringing the tocsins and warning again the coming misfortunes of the negligence of family. They are also alarming against the ethical collapse, the destruction of social ties, and the extinction of generations. It was thoroughly true when the French Marshal Petan called his people to virtue on that day when the German forces occupied France in the Second World War. He said, “Weigh your steps. They are surely hefty in the balance. You have disdained the virtues as well as the total spiritual principals. You have rejected the children, relinquished the family affairs, and pursued the libidos.”

The Islamic states are required to attend to the establishment, conduct, and the guaranty of the security of families. They should also improve the economic, cultural, and political circumstances that may influence family systems. Like alimentation, teaching, and defense, the Islamic states are fully responsible of managing families in the most appropriate manner. As a matter of fact, there are many alike purposes that should never be left in the individuals’ hands because they are the governments’ missions.”[89]

Sexual deviation

The reduction and diminution of the matrimonial proportions exuded the disadvantages that threatened the destruction and disintegration of family entities and individuals’ behavioral disorder. One of the most critical disadvantages was the predominance of abuse. It is clearly notable that nothing should be more menacing and fatal than the commonness of abuse, which is behind the confusion of lineage and the collapse of the moral rules. God has counted fornication with polytheism, and compared it with those who commit homicide. They are threatened of immortality in the hell-fire. God says:

And they who do not call upon another god with Allah and do not slay the soul, which Allah has forbidden except in requirements of justice, and who do not commit fornication and he who does this shall find a requital of sin. The punishment shall be doubled to him on the day of resurrection, and he shall abide therein in abasement.

Islam has instituted many dams and obstacles against fornication. It has ordered women of concealing their charms. God says:

And do not display their ornaments except what appears thereof.

It is also forbidden for women to attract the attentions and leading to their beauties and decorations. God says:

And let them not strike their feet so that what they hide of their ornaments may be known.

Men are forbidden from associating with women except the family members. The Prophet says, “You are not permitted to meet women separately except those enjoying a degree of prohibition.”[90] It is also illegal to touch women other than the family members. The Prophet (s) said, “Stabbing with an iron pin is quite preferable to touching a non-consanguineous lady.”[91] The rewards of the women’s prayers that are performed in their houses are as same as those performed in mosques. This Islamic ruling intends to guard women against mixing with men and being pushed in depravities and losing dignity, nobility, and honor.

Islam has used all devices and potentials for contesting the sexual deviation and the libidinous anarchy, and struggling all of the means that cause women to fall in depravities. Islam has also called for elevating women to the maximal levels that make them good housewives, educators, and gentle. It has intended to cause them to be encompassed by dignity and honor. The modern materialist civilization has cheated women and driven them to sins and licentiousness. Hence, women left the bright field into a mean life of humility, meekness, and qualms.

Horrible waves of perversion have crept into the western world due to which women lost the meanings of chastity, dignity, coyness, and honesty, and lacked any knowledge of the genuine meaning of existence except saturating their sexual libidos. Prostitution has been common in clubs, institutes, and public locations in such a horrible way that it embarrasses humanity. People have no longer counted the prostitution with the ugly socially deniable matters. They have to agree upon encouraging and admitting it. Paula Bierro says, “Nowadays, prostitution has turned into a well-structured system comprising officials, hirelings, writers, publishers, speakers, instructors, physicians, midwives, and commercial tourists. The most up-to-date means of publications, shows, and advertisements substituted for this regard.” George Askan says, “Adultery, inchastity, and opting for vulgar manners have became one of the red-hot livings for the present girls.”

The daily and political mass media of the West have been suffocated with topics that drive women to strip the dresses of chastity and purity. This caused women’s unconcern, pollution, and running behind lustful and libidinous falsities, changing the boyfriend whenever they feel bored. This led to the corruption of the family affairs and the disorder and aberrance of the family members.

Prostitution is a grand epidemic that affects the societies. It is also one of the most significant motives that smash the social entities and eradicate its genuineness and cohesion. Diseases, such as chancroid, syphilis, and leukorrhea prevail on societies that are affected by the epidemic of prostitution. Likewise, these diseases eliminate the public health, cause serious ailments, eradicate the personal integration, and dismiss all of the moral and ethical sources.

These epidemics have affected many territories around this world. Hospitalities and clinics have received great waves of the diseased everyday. Despite the modern medications, these epidemics prevailed hugely on people and led to other mental diseases such as hysteria. Lunatic asylums were suffocated with the diseased of hysteria, which is the outcome of the sexual diseases. Thus, the numbers of the victims of such diseases increased horribly. Meanwhile, such diseases thwart economical developments and progression on which the prosperity of health depends. Finally, they have been wasting a great international wealth as disbursements of the medications of the diseased by such epidemics.

The outbreak of the contraceptive tablets among the prostitutes who fear pregnancy is one of the humiliating aspects of the sexual deviation. These tablets have been greatly widespread among the students of the Western colleges and institutes where the states of abortion and miscarriage have been intensely common. Such states should naturally leave an extreme influence on women’s health and lethargy, and play a great role in the processes of birth control. The prodigality of foundlings has also been one of the results. In the capitals of the Western countries, this phenomenon has occupied a great area. This has caused the governments there to establish refuges and orphanages for receiving the great numbers of those afflicted individuals who have originally lost the paternal affection and undergone a great deal of mental complexities, as psychologists assure. Ill manners, natures, and social impression are the most menacing dangers affecting such individuals. These were only a part of the dangers of the sexual anarchy, which threatens waves of dominating sins over the family structure and leads to decline.

Sons’ impiety

Another aspect of the modern family disintegration has been the sons’ isolating their parents distinctively in opinions, beliefs, and tendencies. The modern education has used all of its material potencies for doubting and reducing the parents’ customs and ideas. Thus, the new generations cursed their fathers’ idealities and values. This created an ideological and mutinous struggle against the (antiquated) social traditions. A violent and intense combat between sons and their fathers, who continually complained the sufferings of their sons’ impiety, disobedience, and ill manners, was has been come up. They reported various stories of the sons’ crudeness, inchastity, severity, and depravity. John Dewey the educationist says, “It is inutile to mourn for those old days that carried the sons’ good manners, chastity, respect, and obedience. Mourning will never regain the past, however. Modern changes are the outcome of the natural edicts that should be solved only by a sufficient amount of disciplining.”

Dewey’s opinion is very true. Modern changes on family, educational, and social systems have been the main cause of the sons’ mutiny and extreme disobedience. It is impossible to regain the former nature without reeducating the natures and desires, and seeding virtuous tendencies in spirits.

DISINTEGRATION AND LOOSENESS

Terrible sorts of disintegration and looseness have affected most of the modern families. Exaggeration in using the various sorts of pleasures and plural of prohibitive matters led to moral downfalls and behaviors. Running behind amusement causes incoherent generations that lack the meanings of human and social values and idealities. Children, when notice their parents addicted to the intoxicants and other vices, will surely have ill behaviors and misguidance. An educationist says, “Family has generally become a humble sphere of education. Modern parents have exceeded the borders in their naivete, agitation, weakness, or awkwardness. Most of such parents may convey those defects to their children. Most children receive the ill manners, corruption, quarreling, and addiction to intoxicants through their houses and families. Others may receive such manners through their friends. So, it is not exaggerative to decide that most of the modern parents ignore the proper ways of education disregarding their social class. Schools have fallen behind in fulfilling their duties. Teachers’ behaviors are not much different from those of parents.”[92]

In most cases, the aberrance of the early young is based upon the family disintegration and looseness. It is correct to affirm that the family reformation is preceded to the other educational factors. Family is the first school that has a direct influence on behaviors and guidance.

School:

School is one of the educational elements that help in composing the children and amending their education. Schools, when enjoy good intendments and sound courses that are managed by a sincere teaching body, will produce conscious generations that believe in their national goals. On the other side, when schools neglect their duties and liabilities, the national values will collapse and the generations will be affected in their behaviors and intendments. It seems important to have a brief look on schools.

Prominence of schools:

Schools have an eminent access to man’s progress and development. They are the sources of the ideological illumination and the scientific maturity. In addition, they are the most significant principle of saving people from ignorance and vice. An educationist says that the establishment of a school is the demolishing of a prison.

Shakespeare says that science is the wing by which we fly in skies. A French author records, “This world is keeping successfully on approaching to thinking in humanity. It is impracticable for any nation to elevate by any means other than the generalization of teaching. Science is the only manner of protecting people against ignorance.”

The spread of schools and science is an essential provision of any national renaissance, attainment, and elevation. It is also a basic element in the structure of the educational entity and the children’s acquiring a sound personality and behavior. Some educationists decide that schools are more influential than families are in the field of education. They say, “For their positions, schools are the national means of the educational management. I oppose those who threw the burdens of the ethical education on the shoulders of families. I decide schools’ roles in the children’s ethical composition must be on great importance since the most significant part of the moral culture cannot be received through any aspect other than schools. Family may have the ability of arising and developing the house clemencies that are essential for moral lives and based upon simple individual relations. Yet, families are still unable to be the most virtuous means of preparing the children for performing their duties in the social life soundly.”[93]

Mental life in early childhood is usually weak. Sentimental life in the same period is too naïve to allow the psychological state to compose the life elements without the existence of schools. From that cause, educationists care much for schools and reckon with the most significant educational portions.

Teaching:

For educationists, teaching is not merely how to write and read. It is a comprehensive meaning for all means of preparing the individuals to participate in their environments. It also gives an adequate amount of study to make them conscious citizens that are competent for serving themselves and their societies.

Goals of teaching:

Educationists are disposed to the goals and purposes resulted from teaching. They are as follows:

Development of the Cognizance:

The chief function of teaching is the development and guidance of the conscience and the tendencies in such a prudent way that agrees with the good of the individuals and societies. The teaching staffs are in charge of managing this guidance and developing the feelings of serving people. It also functions for plunging into the positive undertaking for others’ good. This is the very point to which Islam has referred. “You should long to others the same things you long to yourselves, and hate to others the same things you hate to yourselves.” This is a prophetic saying indicating the topic involved. On the composition of this noble tendency, Islam has built its creative education that aims at serving the societies and developing the means of elevation on the bases of mutual association and advice.

Psychologists affirm that the leading mission of schools is the orderly influence in the individual behavior that is directed by the society. The main function of schools must be directed to the children’s behavior. The scope of changing is the actual measurement of schools’ success in conducting the generations’ comportment. Schools should seek the help of all of the humanitarian sciences for achieving this success. This fact provoked on the establishment of a department in psychology devoted to solving the educational problems. It is named educational –or teaching- psychology.[94]

Publicity of the Educational Conscience:

The general criterion of peoples’ progress all over the stages of humanity depends upon the amount of teaching opportunities that are provided for the individuals. This is the greatest fortune that nations may possess.

Teaching must purpose for publicizing the cultural conscience that relies upon the individuals’ realizing the encompassing circumstances and the ability of improving them. The educational and teaching institutes should work for stretching the scientific spirits and using the modern scientific means in the private or the general life. This achieves the life prosperity and the prevalence of scientific conscience all over the country.

Identification of the Social Problems:

It is imperative for the teaching processes to identify exclusively the social questions and problems. As much as we conceive, the imperialism is the most menacing danger that the Islamic nation had to face. It executed Muslims’ dignity and rent asunder their nation into weak small countries. It also rooted Israel in the heart of the Arab nation, supported with armament, protected, and favored its aggression and assaults against the Arabs. Israel has been playing the role of humiliating the Arabs and Muslims, seizing their territories and banishing them. The imperialists’ purpose has been replacing the Arab homeland with the Israeli so that the sources of the Arabs’ great wealth would be in their hands. Thus, it is quite urgent for the teaching staffs to attract the early generations’ attention to the dangers of Zionism and imperialism, and create a revolutionary spirits that are based upon antagonizing the imperialism. This is surely the greatest service that the teaching staff may provide for their countries.

DUTIES OF TEACHERS

The teaching message is not limited to enlightening the pupils with information. In fact, the teachers’ tasks are more comprehensive. Besides teaching and stuffing the pupils with knowledge, teachers should prepare them soundly to associate and establish their own lives in the various fields. Teachers should also provide for empowering the pupils’ talents, disciplining their morals, undertaking their desires and tendencies, planting virtues in their hiddens, and educating them according to the systems that confirm their societies’ traditions for making them good citizens. Moreover, the teaching staffs are responsible for founding the bonds of cooperation with the pupils so that they can identify their problems and behaviors. They should never misuse their positions. They should show their students a fraternal spirit to lead them to the right and establish in their minds the immunity against falling in crooked paths.

“Teachers are playing the role of the pupils’ pioneers and their guardians’ guides and masters. This is the base of composing sound societies.” Teachers can prepare virtuous and orthodox generations in the society only when they fulfill their educational missions so aptly and seed the ties of confidence and love with the pupils. Teachers should evade alignments and defects since these restrain the pupils’ individual and social activities. They are also required to describe the most significant gaps that hinder the pupils’ scientific development. Islamic educationists refer to other duties that the teachers ought to care and undertake.

-Teachers should provide a detailed study of the Islamic civilization and its values and developments. The influences of the Islamic civilization on the other civilizations should be focused, too.

-Teachers should provide a study of the current Islamic society for familiarizing the elements of the ceaseless modification and identifying the aspects of its power and weakness. Pupils should have full acquaintance with all of the parts of the participation in establishing a perceptive, powerful, and united Islamic society aiming for achieving justice, raising the levels of livelihood, and securing the individuals and the society.

-Teachers should present the geographical and cultural connections of the parts of the Islamic homeland, which is completely perfected and reciprocally coupling.

-Teachers should provide a comparative study of the teaching and the educational systems all over the Islamic countries.

-Teachers and pupils should visit the Islamic countries, and contact the educational and teaching institutes there.

-Teachers should arouse the Islamic sense in the pupils’ spirits by providing them with the spirits of taking pride in their religion so that this may reflect on the whole sorts of the aspects of individual and social behaviors.

-Teachers should provide a detailed study of the Islamic history and geography for identifying the Muslims’ past glories and present interests.

-Teachers should unveil the grand Islamic personalities in the various fields of the human civilization.

-Teachers should guide the pupils to their national duties in the social and political fields.

-Teachers should immunize the citizens against the foreign ideological invasion that intend to pervert the Islamic spirit.

-Teachers should enlighten Muslims of the threatening dangers of the imperialism and Zionism.

-Teachers should encourage Muslims on the positive activities that aim at liberating the territories that are seized by the Zionist gang.

-Teachers should provide the Islamic behavior that comprises the bases of common cooperation, responsibility, feelings, and sacrificing for the publics.

-Teachers should study the courses that lead the pupils to their duties to their parents and families.

Qualifications of teachers

A teacher is the nation’s pioneer and the generations’ instructor who is bound with the greatest social responsibilities. The following are some qualities that teachers should carry:

- Teachers should be acquainted with a suitable amount of knowledge and science as supports in identifying the nature of the human behavior, reasons, and results lying behind this behavior.

- Teachers should acquire a set of skills helping in practising definite sorts of activities.

- Teachers should acquire a set of virtuous tendencies that help in a successful interaction with the pupils.

- Teachers should be punctual and capable of conducting and taking in consideration the various circumstances and situations.

- Teachers should supervise accurately their functions and use the best fruiting acts in the fields of performance.

Teachers are successful only when they contribute in rendering good citizens who serve their nations consciously and faithfully. Nations would collapse and the social progression would be hindered if teachers neglect these goals and stop at filling in the pupils’ minds with information only. Unfit teachers publicize psychological disorders among the pupils as if an infectious disease has affected them.[95] At any rate, the real education requires the teaching staff’s powers of working, intelligence, and endowing with the righteous customs, virtuous moralities, self-reliance, and consciousness. They are also asked to fulfill the principals that are required by the genuine education. These principals are as follows:

- The attainment to perfection.

- Benefiting by and guiding the children’s natural talents.

- Educating the desires and encouraging them on doing well.

- Caring for the pupils’ senses, bodies, and mentalities.

- The utility of the children’s personal activities for enabling them to benefit by the talents God has gifted and the virtuous tendencies they have inherited.

- Granting the children the opportunities of training on acquiring the best of customs and ethics.[96]

Teachers should master the materials they teach. They also must have full acquaintance with the principals of psychology, education, sociology, and physiology. These principals qualify them to acquaint the children’s physical and mental potentials along with their natures, functions, and growth. Likewise, teachers should have familiarity of the most current surveys and norms of educationists. Teachers should apply and exploit these studies in the processes of educating the children. Finally, teachers should be good exemplars in personality and behavior.[97]

Teachers’ Responsibilities:

Teachers carry serious responsibilities and excellent duties. They are responsible -before God- for educating the young generations correctly and guaranteeing their future so that they will be their fathers’ relief and their nations’ representatives. Abul-Hassan an-Nadawi says, “I do not know a trust more responsible, serious, and influential in the nations’ future and present than education and teaching are. Any flaw in these fields may lead the nation to the deepest hallow, and may lead to evanescence, degeneracy, and anarchy in morals, sociology, policy, teaching, non-religiousness, and atheism. Education is the one and only means through which the guidance of the intellectualities and mentalities, the new national establishment, and the excellent future are achieved.”[98]

Teachers are in charge of any ideological or doctrinal aberrance that may affect the nation. They are also responsible for any mental maturity and cerebral disciplining of people. Gilbert Hyte compares between the professions of teaching and medicine. He makes the process of teaching more important than that of medicine. People may leave the insufficient physicians, but the little pupils do not realize their teachers’ negligence, and fathers do not accompany their children for exploring the real states of the teachers. Even if they do, they would not be able to realize the very reality of the teachers’ doing their jobs properly. It is easy for people to leave the insufficient physicians, while the little pupils cannot choose another teacher. Therefore, the responsibility of teachers is more serious than that of the physicians.[99] It is said, “If you want to seek the reason beyond a people’s development, you should search for their teachers.” An educationist says, “If we believe that the development and expansion of the children’s intellects, tendencies, and faculties is the school’s responsibility, the teaching they should receive before joining schools must be more exalted.”[100] John Luke believes that the human intellect is purely white when a child carries it to school. The school fills in its sides with human heritage and experiments. This means that the teachers’ processes of teaching have the greatest part in the composition of personal behaviors and supporting with potentials that are essential for achieving good success, noble living, and social true association.

Psychologists confirm that teachers are responsible for prompting the educational development. Societies have given the teachers the trust of contriving the children’s experts and inducing their talents and inclinations. They are also responsible for managing and guiding such development in such a good way that becomes the interests of the society and the individuals.[101]

Concernment of the Teaching Staff

The teaching body is the inception of the country’s mental illumination. On that account, the ministries of education should pay more attention to the teachers by identifying their problems and providing the binding succor. They are gainful. It is also obligatory upon those ministries to encourage teachers on exerting all efforts in their jobs. Ministries are also asked to alleviate the teachers’ fatigue, show them engrossment, cooperate with them in the management of teaching, raise their levels, disperse the spirits of sincerity among them, and eradicate the elements of retardation, abrasion, and defect. All these would participate in saving the teachers’ dignity. Paying attention to teachers is one of the general life affairs in the developed countries, regarding them as the centers of guidance and the sources of the scientific progression and advancement. Thus, it is important to care for and cooperate with teachers in the total fields of life.

Concernment of the Students

The teaching process cannot accomplish its goals unless the students’ economic lives reach an acceptable level. Students will not be able to keep on and devote to learning if they lack such circumstances in which the institutes of teaching and education should interfere and contribute in aiding the poor students. Actually, poverty eliminates the talents and aptitudes as well as the other human potentials. The governments should assist the free physical checkup and the essential nutrition. This does not mean that the administrations of schools are in charge of doing this alone, but they may promote in it as much as possible. Providing aids for the poor students, whose poverty impedes them from continuing in receiving teaching, is a principal upon which the equality of the teaching opportunities is reliable.

FAILURE OF TEACHING

A tremendous failure has affected the teaching process in most provinces of this world. Hence, the teaching process fell behind to achieve its educational mission that aims for disciplining the ethics, reforming the spirits and devoting to virtuous customs and noble traits.

Negligence of the Moralities

Modern education has not been based upon the principals of teachings and ethics. Most of the teaching media has paid no attention to this matter. An educationist says, “Teachers do not engage themselves in treating the pollution that affect the children. They think only of scholastic tests and success. Moralities are totally neglected, none thinks of rectifying the ethical faults.”[102] The outcome of this neglect has been the moral anarchy that is situated in the youth’s spirits. Owing to miseducation and ignorance, some began to regard such looseness as a good behavior. Harris Man the educationist says, “The real education is neglected since schools, unfortunately, care only for stuffing the memories. Teachers are interested in the abundance of news and chat. Speaking a lot has never been a sort of education or teaching. The teachers’ tasks are not addressing information only. The actual tasks of teachers are the real multi-sided education. Teachers ought to be educators; they should join education to teaching.”[103]

The teaching has failed to establish generations that are conscious, developing, believing in the national goals, and working positively for the good of mankind and homeland. An educationist says, “It is not a sort of exaggeration to say that the teaching has failed in composing mature personalities that are marked by an intellectual and mental equanimity and capable of enjoying a free life of kind humanitarian bonds. The reason is very evident. It is that the teaching has not taken in consideration the relations between schools and societies. The managers of teaching pretend to forget the fact that the responsibility of schools is preparing the youth through the experts, learning of the social life, and associating in the societies that are ruled by independence and cooperation. These two matters are surely the qualities that are most essential for modern being. Scholastic authorities tend to pour information in the pupils’ minds rather than composing their moralities. This gives triumph to the non-educational innovation.”[104]

Mr. Lehman criticizes the American education. He stresses that it does not create a culture, a common set of principals, or an ethical and mental disciplining.[105]

Failure is the inevitable fate of any teaching process that disdains the moral structure and the mental disciplining. Successful teaching is exclusively that which proposes the mental reformation and the sensible amendment. Aristotle says, “There is no instructed lesson or acquired habit more meaningful than true judgment and jubilating over noble traits and estimable deeds.”[106]

The negligence of morals and the unconcern of behaviors lead to many disadvantages such as the prevalence of arrogance, rashness, looseness, and concern[107] among students.

Negligence of the Good Manners

It is unfortunately noticeable that the current schools are uninterested in the students’ good manners outer schools. Fathers are also detached in their sons’ aberrance and irregularity. They care only for the scholastic success that their sons achieve in the final exams. This has resulted in the youth’s mutiny and loss of most of their ethics and social traditions. An educationist says, “Fathers who are careless to their sons are interested only in the scholastic success they achieve in the final exams. For the officials, the successful schools are only those providing the maximal number of successful students. Education and care for behaviors are matters uninterested for the majority. This negligence of the educational aspects in home and schools is the main cause of the big disparity between sons and fathers and the immensity of struggle. It also has established that independent, purposeless, and aimless generation that walks randomly and ignores the past bonds.”[108]

Serious social dangers, the most important of which is the demolishing of the family entities and the social structure, are the results of such negligence.

Absolute Teaching:

Modern schools have been interested in the absolute teaching, which supplies the pupils with no experts or social interaction. Filling up the pupils’ minds with sciences and knowledge is powerless on the individuals’ lives unless it accords their factualities. Unfortunately, the majority of schools is uninterested in this course since they have been caring for finishing the teaching courses in any form, and the students’ most interesting matter is passing the scholastic tests successfully. Surveys on the graduated students have proven that passing the tests successfully has not been an adequate proof of a student’s success in the practical life. Plenty of academically successful students failed in their practical life because of the educational defects. Thus, the conscious education underrates the absolute knowledge that is obtained via inanimate or negative processes of teaching. It also devaluates the knowledge that is disconnected to the environment or the general life.

The processes of teaching should be totally streamed in the children’s powers that ought to be discovered for training, developing, and guiding suitably so that a pupil would earn beneficial mental, physical, and social habits and skills that condition his behavior according to the varying circumstances. As well, education ought to pour on the pupils’ response, tastes, and emotions to compose lively spirits of right and justice. The actual education and teaching are the means of organizing man’s capabilities of acquiring behaviors that are congruous to the social systems in a way warranting the individuals’ good manners and aptitude of conditioning with the social world.

The knowledge that the teachers provide for their students demarcates the process of teaching. Those students gain such knowledge in the scope of acquisition. Knowledge is not a triumph unless its meanings and purports are perceived and utilized, individually and collectively, in the life and behaviors. This is inapplicable unless the teaching processes care for the learners’ intellectualities, tendencies, activities, powers, and behavior in an aspect that is positively materialized in the current and future actions.[109]

Coeducation

Many educationists have agreed that the coeducation is the hindrance of the development and prosperity of teaching. They have also confirmed the necessity of sexual separation in the teaching processes. They provided the following proofs:

-Girls cannot compete with boys in the mental processes because the two sexes do not have equal health, power, and intelligence.

-The atmosphere of combining girls and boys in the same classes is unfit for benefiting by the sources of intelligence and the opportunities of teaching completely. Sexual separation in the stages of pre-teenage, and teenage in specific, is the only method of creating the educational aspect that fits the sound teaching.

-The dangerous moral and emotional results of the coeducation are quite harmful especially in early childhood and teenage. Before the little individuals catch enough time for gaining a mental understanding and a wakening sensitivity, they lose the vitality and frankness due to the coeducation. For the little girls, they lose delicacy, viscosity, and modesty due to being mixed with the other sex. Sexual agitations that injure love and matrimony in the age of adulthood may be, in most cases, the consequence of the meeting of male and female teenagers.

-There is a big difference between the two sexes in the fields of the professional and social guidance. Hence, it is impossible to constitute a special program fitting the exigencies of the two sexes in the same time in any scientific institute. Both sexes will lose the educational, as well as the other, aspects.

-Girls’ maturity is speedier than boys’ is. This fact creates an unsolvable trouble in the classes of the teenage and pre-teenage pupils. The coeducation obliges both to be in the same class for several hours a day, and practice common operations in a stage of unlike physical, exciting, and social points.

The problems of the coeducation result in mental retardation of the pupils and maturity of the sexual mutual tendencies in addition to many other troubles and difficulties.[110] It indisputably leads to a moral deadlock and the collapse of ethical rules. Some conceive that there is no harm in the coeducation. They describe the matter as naïve and far away from profanity and aberrance. As a matter of fact, The bearers of such ideas do not regard man’s nature, components, and impulses. From early creation, man is molded on gushing to sexual desires, smashing every obstacle. God relates the story of Joseph the prophet and with the chief’s wife. He says:

And Thou turn not away their device from me, I will yearn towards them and become one of the ignorant.

Joseph the prophet was one of God’s apostles. How should ordinary people practice then? God has exposed that man’s soul is cast on gashing to impulses. He says:

Most surely man’s self is wont to command him to do evil.

It is now clear that the strong young can hardly be screened against the lusts and against perpetrating fornication. Sheik Mohammed Zeinuddin says, “Before a glutton hungry, fetch an appetizing banquet that is filled with the various colors of mouth-watering food. Let him enjoy by gazing at it for an hour or more so that you will be assured of the accuracy of this proof. Let that hungry gratify his eyes with each dish singly, inhale the smells, gaze at each, count the fruits, and repeat the same process. After a couple of hours, you may ask him whether he is still hungry or not. His hunger will never keep its same state after filling the eyes with those various colors of food. Neither the joy of the eye with appetizing food, the joy of the hearing with speech, nor can any other sense supplant the gourmands of sex and stomach. Anyone who may repudiate this fact is belying himself and the intellectual postulation.”[111]

This opinion discloses the life factuality and the sound nature on which God has created the human beings. People’s rushing voraciously towards their sexual desires is the sound nature that never changes. The press media have reported tens of the sins and dishonors of this mixing of the male and female students in universities and faculties. Alittihad al-Qawmi –a magazine- reported, “Mixed schools in America resulted in ugly consequences. Boys and girls have been wholly engaged in philandering, chasing, and practicing the sexual relations instead of studying. Thus, students of the two sexes left their study courses totally. Educationists there decided sexual isolation in primary and secondary schools.” As-Sha’b, the Egyptian newspaper, wrote, “The waves of sexual disintegration have been terribly increasing in the United States.

Schools and universities have become the most fertile grounds of the sexual irregularity. Male and female pupils have become addict drunkards and assassins. Pistols, blades, and knives are noticed in the male pupils’ pockets, while cigar boxes and tablets of contraceptive are in the females’. As these phenomena attained an unbearable level, a judiciary body began to survey the pupils’ crimes in New York. It recommended that a policeman should stop on the gates of each school for hindering the activities of the pupils’ gangs. Some judges have anticipated that policemen may drift in the pupils’ limitless clamor!” Lindsey, the American judge, guesses that about 45% of the girls of schools profane their honors before graduation. This proportion is greatly higher in the advanced stages of teaching.[112]

Educationists have understood completely the necessity of the sexual isolation in all of the stages of teaching after they had noticed the frightful injuries of the coeducational system, which led to the cessation of the teaching development and the informality of the students’ disintegration and corruption.

Contrast of Teaching:

The mixture of contrasting opinions and principals that the teachers pose has affected the teaching processes. A teacher may introduce special ideas in the class, and incite the students to accept them. Another teacher may come to the same class with another contrary idea that he favors and encourages. This would create the students’ ordeal. An educationist says, “For imagining the scope of the hazardous hardship and hesitation, you may picture the students’ nerves and ideas when they receive a contrary mixture of opinions and principals everyday. Yet, they are obliged to accept and embrace them all. The teacher of religion exposes this universe from a religious viewpoint, but the teacher of sociology denies this opinion totally. Both teachers want the students to believe in their opinions. A third teacher may demolish the hypotheses of the two and keeps on building a new idea in the mentalities of those poor students. Like the opinion of the universe, the theses of ethics, history, economy, and metaphysics can be contrarily opposite and different.”

This sort of discord has fixed an ideological disorder and contrastive tendencies in the students’ minds. It is sorrowful that the teaching faculties have been the mart of foreign ideas that antagonize our nationality and religion.

Some schools in the Islamic world have failed acutely in conveying their missions. From that cause, an undiscerning generation that ignores the religious and national goals and submits to the imperialistic rumors, has come forth. The imperialists have depended upon such individuals in publicizing their ideas and goals. If the officials intend to treat this failure, they should concern with identifying and devoting the lessons to the religious education in all of the stages of teaching. The youth then will recognize the creative systems that Islam has brought for developing the social behavior and installing the spirits of virtues and noble tendencies in the minds.

ENVIRONMENT

Environment is one the most eminent effects of education. Children pursue their environments unfeelingly. The environment plants instincts and habits in the children’s minds easily and readily. The youth follow the environmental effects in good and bad circumstances. However, internal and external factors, that interact and receive medial influences to bring about the moralities and habits, affect the human beings directly.

Signification of Environment:

Educationists have unanimously agreed that the social surroundings are within the most significant elements on which education depends in the formation of human personalities and the achievement of the individuals’ desires within the general frame of civilization. They also contribute in consummating a high degree of social perfection. At the same time, the surroundings reduce the tensions and aspects of aberrant behaviors, and this creates the individuals’ collective combination and loyalty to the goals and values of the society.[113]

The Environmental Responsibilities:

The social surroundings are responsible for any degradation or retardation that affects the educational values since their role is elevating the levels of the national scientific and ethical ambitions. They are also asked for establishing the competent means of promoting the culture and illuminating the intellectualities with science. A deep look into the social surroundings all over the various historical eras will expose that the surroundings of a considerable progression and civilizing had performed their duties of urging the officials on developing the conscience and broadcasting the scientific waves among the various social classes. This is one of the immense goals that are intended in the Prophet’s saying, “You all are supervisors and you all are responsible for your subjects.” Hence, all Muslims are in charge of demanding their governments with founding the means of development and outgrowth for contributing in the constructing of the human civilization.

The Environmental Settlement:

The settlement of the social surroundings and the family order has a substantial pertinence in the rectitude of the behaviors and the mansuetude of the youth. UNESCO has discussed the unnatural effects on the children’s mentalities. After a comprehensive inspection, the following report was submitted:

“The surroundings’ psychological settlement and the families’ mutual amiability are the bases on which the children’s emotional conditioning and the satisfactory social relations are grounded. In case these surroundings deform the children’s piety to parents, it will be so arduous for them to associate socially.”[114]

The environmental settlement is really one of the causes that contribute in the coherence and prosperity of the children’s personalities, and in avoiding the elements of concern. Psychologists decide that the environmental disorder and the accompanying perplexities and depravities; all these cause the children to feel weak in the face of a world of cheating, trickery, treason, and envy.[115]

Categories of Environment

Educationists determine that there are two sorts of environments in which the human beings live.

One: The Natural Environment:

The natural environment comprises all of the natural surroundings. The earth along with all of what is above or beneath in addition to the powers and energies; all these are the components of the natural environment. The natural sciences beginning with simple information given to the pupils up to biology, chemistry, and physics are related to the natural environment that the students must understand, totally or partially, so that they can condition themselves.

Two: The Social Environment:

The social environment is the society of mankind and the relations between the individuals and groups. Economical, political, professional, cultural and psychological relations are the components of the social environment. Besides, the social sciences, such as history, geography, education, economics and politics, relate to the social environment. On that account, it is preferable for the students to have enough acquaintance with these sciences in order to be able of conditioning socially. The spiritual and mental values play a considerable effective role in the social environment through educating and raising the levels of the early youth.

The Environment in Islam:

Islam has been intensely concerned with the environment since it is an effective element in the educational and social composition. Good environments support the nation with the best and the most proficient individuals who progress in great steps in the fields of virtue and reformation. In like fashion, evil environments bring about the vile licentious individuals who distribute their mental defects among people.

Islam has identified the whole devices and powers of reforming and evolving the environment for achieving justice, right, and equality, and eradicating the elements of lag, retardation, injustice, wronging, and stinginess. It has been also purposed for achieving security and settlement, and eliminating the seditious and disorderly affairs. The Islamic environment has produced those great, excellent, intelligent, and virtuous reformers who were the best of mankind, all over history, in believing in God, inciting to the right, and exerting efforts for the sake of justice.

It is noticeably important to discern that Islam has actually been concerned with the private environments. It has recognized the most significant aspect of raising the individuals’ reactions in acquiring customs and moralities. This aspect is friendship, which is the most powerful educational element that transfers the individuals’ traits and tendencies. Sociologists have affirmed the point by saying, “The social life is the life of influence and perception. Every individual influences and perceives from the surroundings.” This meaning is also asserted through proverbs and literary sayings that prove the individuals’ being influenced by their friends.

Islam has emphasized on associating the virtuous, godly, noble, honorable, and straight individuals, through whom good manners and noble traits are acquired. Imam al-Hassan (a) says in his everlasting words of advice:

“When you need to associate with men, you should choose those whose friendship graces you and guards in troubles. You should choose those who assist you in exigencies, and believe your discourse, and back you in charges, and participate in virtues. It is they who cover up your flaws, and regard your favors, and give when you need, and chatter in silence, and console in misfortunes, and save from troubles, and do not misguide or disappoint in calamities, and prefer in litigation”[116]

By those golden words, the Imam has assigned the Islamic duties of friendship that obligate mutual supervision, amiability, and cooperation among friends.

Friendship lead to the acquisition of customs and the interaction with the friends’ ethics, tendencies, and trends. Therefore, Islam has warned against befriending the morally and mentally defected individuals.

Imam Ali (a), the great educator, instructs his son Imam Al-Hassan:

“O son! Beware of associating with the idiot. They harm when they intend to benefit. Beware of associating with the misers. They deprive you of the very things that you need. Beware of associating with the licentious. They vend you with valueless. Beware of associating with the liars. They look like a mirage that shows the remote as close and the close as remote.”

Many damages that cause the loss of the behavioral balance result in associating with such individuals. The reference books of hadith are full of many prophetic and imamic sayings regarding the qualities and influences of friends. The Prophet (s) says, “Man pursues his friend’s religion.”[117]

The youth that accept their religion and doctrine are advised to be careful of the individuals that are defected morally and behaviorally, since such ones lead to sinning and depravity. The youth should also avoid those who bear weak principals, such as existentialism and the like, that call for disintegration and the prevalence of the jungle law.

Unfortunately, the Islamic society has been affected by many of those deviants who do not possess any Islamic or national conscience, and ignore any upright social purport. Hence, they worked poisonously for dishonoring this nation’s social and spiritual divines and values. The faithful youth should be careful of such individuals and should never associate with them so that they would not be misguided.

The Environment in the Present Ages

Modern social surroundings have attained a great scale of merging and similarity because of the new means of communication that approximated the nations and peoples by mutual transference of habits and traditions. This has naturally created the unprecedented extensive reciprocity of ideas. Most people then participated in the same tendencies, traditions, and habits.

The social environments all over this world have painfully had to encounter fears, horrors, and insecurity because of the greed of the politicians who rule the great powers. They have competed with each other on invading, occupying, and subjecting the weak peoples. They have also struggled for distributing their principals. This brought the destroying wars that broke out in some countries and caused the disorder of the social environments and the individuals’ fear and horror.

Modern man is living nervously after the loss of the future expectations. Man anticipates ambiguous future and evils of the great powers that tend misguidedly to wars and destroying by using their entire economic, military, and diplomatic devices for aggressions and massacre. Nothing but the news of termination and massacre are reported every news agency all over this world. The great powers have exploited their people’s wealth in the fields of developing their armament. They have coerced the scientists on inventing in this field exclusively. Hence, the development of such weapons has been highly formidable and fascinating. Satellites and electronic devices have been put in the service of exploring the others’ strategic situations and means of defense and power. The most horrible invention in this regard has been the nuclear weapons that had the ability of destroying any country in few hours. Thus, fear and horror have predominated on the inhabitants of this planet.

These are definitely exhausting and arduous crises and difficulties that people have had to face. Everybody ignores the time in which those gods of evil click on the buttons of these terminating weapons to demolish this life thoroughly and handle the keys of this planet to the Creator. All these dangers have indisputably been the outcome of the lack of conscious education in the interiors of the politicians and leaders of this world. Had they enjoyed a single particle of human conscious, they would have saved this world from such a gigantic hazard and exerted their efforts in the fields of man’s luxury, indulgence, and settlement.