By: Hussein Mohieddin Spahi *

The al is not to make them quiet and gentle so as to be less annoying to parents and educators *Justice between children is one of the most important means of education called for by Islamic teachings and proven by experience and contemporary science. The basic character that distinguishes the family from other human groups (religious, professional.. etc.) is the competence and authority it enjoys. There are no laws or constitutions within it, but the father's authority and will are the law in the family, and public authorities as protectors of the law do not interfere in family affairs except in the case of a crime.

As for neglect, it is most dangerous in the first days of childhood. Irregular breastfeeding, deficient or bad nutrition, or untimely weaning causes the greatest harm to the infant's digestive system. All the impressions that the child feels during this period of his life (being vague and close to a state of unconsciousness) leave a deep impact on his flexible psyche that may last for a lifetime, even if the pain is fortten and the error corrected. This impression remains in the form of a general feeling of anxiety, fear, distress and psychological deprivation with a painful reaction, which may be apparent or buried in all those who suffered in the first months of their lives (a disease may cause the same feeling caused by lack of care or educational error). Contrary to fair standard judgments, it has been proven by tests and experiments that the leniency of parents towards their children and their tendency to give them wide freedoms – if that does not relate to the infant and his digestive development – does not in itself have unfortunate results affecting psychological integration in future young life. Rather, the impact of these results returns to the parents themselves. As for children, as soon as their childish desires are secured, their souls calm down and they naturally move to more useful als when they grow up, as the difficulty of achieving demands teaches them the need to exert efforts to obtain them. It is worth noting on this occasion that the leniency of educators towards children often accompanies a certain emotional behavior and harmful tenderness that we will return to later, and this is the harmful element in education.

Often families err in their excessive strictness, whether generally or regarding certain points that concern them particularly. With time, many concerns inflate and crowd until they control the conscience and become crystalized points of various types of harassment and annoyance. Many adults in the age of fatherhood or motherhood show some of these distorted forms that they try to impose on their children as ordinary familiar rules. If one of them, for example, is used to being annoyed by laughter, he cannot tolerate this matter in any of his children. If another is enchanted by the love of (truth), every deviation in childish imaginations fascinates him as if it were a crime or an assault on his idealism. Beside moral cruelty, there is emotional and physical cruelty. Some parents believe it is their duty not to show any word of affection towards their children, so they do not naturally lean towards playing with them, and some refrain from kissing them for fear of germs, for example.

As for physical cruelty, it is more common. In some families, some types of torture or discipline tools are used such as whips, sticks, and leather straps, etc.

Most parents find no way to raise their children except scolding, scaring, or shaming, if they do not resort to hitting or threatening with scary ghosts and ghouls in dark places, and demons, because children naturally fear darkness, empty places and isolation.

It has been noted by experience that children are very afraid of distortion whose roots are deeply embedded in the collective unconscious. How many heads of households repeat stupidly and ignorantly that children must anyway be scared of something as if fear were a basic factor in reform, progress and success. Yet shaming may be the worst of these hateful methods because it uproots the child's self-confidence from its origins, and because it destroys his desire for approval and commendation which is his greatest factor in harmony with society. Some educators consider the boy's ambition as a manifestation of pride, which they see as the ugliest type of defect, so they work hard to destroy this ambition, suggesting to him a sense of baseness, insignificance and deficiency for the sake of humility and self-denial, by assuring boys they are not strong nor smart, and girls that they are not charming nor beautiful, then they ask them, after shackling them with these wrong chains, to face the beginning of life with its difficulties and horrors. How many nervous diseases have these abnormal treatments caused, eventually leading their owners to enter the paths of crime, because the child, if he loses hope of appreciating his qualities and traits, has nothing left before him but to disregard moral and enter the gates of vices and defects. One should not forget what time leaves, like daily mockery and repeated sarcasm, of bad results on children. On this occasion, it is necessary to mention the case of the young man who suffered from a mental disorder whose early symptoms back to his uncle's constant mockery of him, this uncle who occupied a prominent social position and was also very kind and polite.

Families often impose wrong, unjust suggestions on children. To reduce competition between two sisters, for example, the family judges that one is beautiful but stupid, and the other is ugly but smart, then the family continues to feed this idea in an attempt to establish pseudo-equality between them, not knowing that this destroys both of them together.

There are some mothers, in their keenness to keep the only child in their arms, who repeat to him that he is weak and unable to live on his own like other boys, and teach him from his early childhood to behave like sick old men, and the unfortunate results that follow are not hidden.

Similarly, parents may cause serious harm to children in suggesting to them a sense of greatness for which children do not find readiness in themselves, by saying to them, for example: (You must be a brilliant artist, or a prominent minister, or a great man, etc..). These suggestions imposed on the child discourage him before the gravity of the task set before his eyes instead of encouraging him to proceed on the path of success and excellence, so despair may push him to stop halfway. I mention as an example a girl who achieved a brilliant success in her class and came to tell her father, who received her saying: (This is not surprising, for our family is known for its talents). These words were enough to destroy all activity and hope in this child.

In the circumstance where the child's social instincts unfold and his readiness for harmony with the human environment, he feels an urgent need for justice, especially a justice that suits his feeling and sense. Everything that appears to him inconsistent with reality, whether in appreciating his qualities or criticizing his errors, discourages him, and might even push him to deviate from the social system so that he becomes lost and confused. To know this legitimate need of the child (justice in judging his actions) and to secure it, wide experience in knowing the human soul and its secrets is necessary, which families rarely enjoy. Almost all people agree on the qualities he must follow: obedience, order, kindness, politeness, diligence and so on, but almost no one has previously defined the qualities of an ideal educator.

Therefore, the real als of education should not be ignored. We must know above all whether the al of education is preparing children for future manhood so they can be better producers, or if it aims to make them quiet and gentle so as to be less annoying to parents and educators. It is common knowledge that the recognized standard among family traditions for the ideal child aims only at the child as a child only, as care is rarely given to follow up the capabilities of quiet children in their future lives for the sake of judging the bad results that this quietness leads to. If the al of education is preparing working men with vitality and activity, it should not be fortten that cruelty, scaring and shaming are only weak means, not only useless in the field of education, but also full of disadvantages and harms.

There is another point worth researching: does education aim to prepare children for life as it is? Or to push them towards an idealism that no one has reached yet?

In the end, everything that touches the child's emotions may place him before an issue that requires a solution from him. There are issues he cannot solve, causing deep disturbances in his psychological being. As for those he succeeds in solving appropriately with his possible means, they only increase his strength for life, because life is a continuous training. Yet it may happen that the solutions the child sees are not completely appropriate, but deficient or bad. In this case, his starting principle is corrupt and it is difficult for him to fix it later, because retreating from a solution he has walked wide steps in is one of the things that costs him a great effort he may not be able to. Idealism is not in avoiding solving issues, because the whole of life is nothing but a series of issues, and the child must practice solving them. If he is deprived of this moral sport, he is at the same time deprived of the ability to bear the inescapable hardships of life. Rather, only matters consistent with his energy should be presented to the child after teaching and guiding him on how to solve them in the easiest and most successful ways. Here the skill of educators appears as they must understand their duty clearly and strive with all the activity and od intention they have to apply it.