Our Children — When Will They Live? Like Other People's Children!

Everyone in this country, whether among the governed or among those who hold power in their hands, knows that our children have nothing to read in their own language — that is, Arabic — and believes it very necessary indeed that they should have something to read. And yet no one lifts a finger: not a national institution, not a charitable association, not a great man of wealth, not a ministry of education...

And so our infants and our children grow up with no nourishment but the nourishment of the body, no pleasure but the pleasure of the body, and no solace but that which is bound to the body by ties!

How long, then, is this state of things to last?

We take some interest in creating gardens and schools for children. But what do we teach these children? And what is the use of planting the spirit of learning and the love of knowledge in their minds and hearts, when they have no library where they may go to choose the books that please them and profit them?

Thank God that our children learn, beside their Arabic tongue, a foreign language by means of which they can obtain the basic nourishment of their minds (and I fear to say, of their souls!). How long shall we remain dependents upon others, and how long shall we neglect what matters more, say, than electing a chamber, or than choosing this Zayd or that Ubayd to steer the country to the safe harbor!!

Well? When will our children live as live the children of others — of the civilized folk whom you behold, reader, beside these words.