At a recent gathering, the issue of freethinking among our youth came up. Some parents were bemoaning the trend of robot-like behavior in speech and thought process of their young. And in that so much of this behavior was perceived negatively, that worried them.
This society has undergone so much transformation in the past three decades, some for the better and some for the worse, and now it looks to its youth with questions. Where had we gone wrong?
As parents, the bulk of responsibility for the behavior of our youth must rest squarely on our shoulders. No government laws or Shoura legislature can be designed to enforce the kind of upbringing that breeds positive results alone. Parents play a major role in this evolving struggle.
And parents are often at fault. One of the very elements that serve to teach our children is to foster the right to ask and question why. Aside from neglect or preoccupation in other matters, here too parents have failed their children. It may be expedient to blame the educational system for such faults. And God knows there are many faults there to be examined and questioned. But such trends are often borne at home.
It starts with not encouraging the freethinking spirit within your child. The total submission to authority that is drummed into them from their very childhood. A submission that may be right or wrong. While respect for the elders and the learned is a good thing, it should not be cast in concrete.
For elders, like our youth, can be misguided. They could have undefined agendas that may not translate into a positive source of inspiration. If the behavior today of our young is any indicator of our ills, quite a few of them may have fallen into such a trap.
Perhaps parents have allowed others to do the thinking for them and are victims in this dilemma themselves. But to deny their children the right to question, the right to ask, the right to challenge what they perceive is wrong will not yield changes for the better. And in the dynamism of present day earth, we must learn to swim on our own and quickly or we shall drown.
Let us not suppress these young minds with holier-than-thou lectures. Or sermons from when time began. Let us deal with them in real time and discuss with them real issues. Educate them to live as citizens of this planet, to go beyond our borders, to seek knowledge wherever it may be, and to accept that as earth’s citizens, we all are not the same, and that none is to be blindly judged as better than the other. And finally, that such differences between us as a people of this earth are not life-threatening.
It is when we shower them with such support, that they will learn to define their positive roles. A freethinking society does not start from nowhere. Authoritarian rules in the upbringing of children have no place at home.
Note: A happy anniversary to a loved one.
