admits no leniency, for the country's sake; and it is its duty not to allow a single student to graduate unless he presents his certificate before it, and it may refuse to employ or appoint him, whatever the kind of his certificate.
Then it is the government's duty, after this, to give special care to the learned academies, providing them with capable men who leave no new word without Arabizing it and no newly coined term without translating it, so that when we want to translate or to compose we find the material needed for building, and it becomes easy for us to offer it to the rising generation without standing helpless before them — lest they hold their language cheap and turn away from it as a lover turns away who finds a flaw in his beloved: he can neither forgive her the flaw nor forget his love for her.
The government must also open a wide field for broadcasts about the great men of the Arabs — the heroes among them and the philosophers, the physicians and the astronomers, the mathematicians and the men of letters, the philologists and the poets, the scholars and the sages — and about the civilization of the Arabs, leaving no side of it untreated with precision, lifting the veil from it, so that souls may be stirred by the ancient heritage. All this in a pure, luminous classical Arabic which the people will grow used to understanding by degrees, just as they grew used, for example, to understanding the Egyptians' colloquial dialect by means of the cinema, whereas some ten years ago they did not understand a single word of it.
Thus, with the help of the teaching body, the government, the Ministry of Education, the radio, the learned academies, and the rich libraries, we can endear this language to the rising generation, to the young, and to the common people.
And with a little steadfastness and confidence, a little enthusiasm and fidelity, and a little honest pride, we can repeat with Hafez Ibrahim his words:
"How many peoples have risen by the rising of their tongues!"
No mother has ever complained of the problems of upbringing without the problem of fear standing at their head... And if fear is the child of ignorance, then it withers away as the child's horizon and understanding widen.
If you tried, Madam, to take in all the causes that lead to fear in your child, the effort would wear you out, for they are many. The chief of them are surprises, whatever is unfamiliar to the child, and his bodily weakness. Nor should it slip the mind that imitation holds a prominent place in teaching a child fear — as when he borrows frightening tales in which the savagery of beasts of prey takes bodily shape, and the like of what fills the imaginations of most of the maidservants in our households.
The critical period in a child's life is that between his third and fifth years, when he imagines frightening things that have never once crossed his path — they are a fabric of his own making, the embroidery of his imagination. A pause over this truth, Madam, will show you the secret of your child's dread of going to his bed alone. To spread reassurance through his soul, you would do well to stay beside him a little in his bed until he recovers his courage and gives up his desolate imaginings.
What stirs terror in the child's heart, too, is strange visitors. Why must they pull him toward them the moment they enter his house, professing thereby their overflowing love for him? Better that they talk with his parents and not approach the child except when he takes to them and draws near of his own accord.
These, Madam, are some of the counsels that wisdom repeats in your ears for lightening fear in your child, or uprooting it:
1 - Beware of mocking his fear.
2 - Widen his understanding and help him toward more experiences.
3 - Be the object of his trust, and give him room to lift the veil from whatever feeling of fear besets him; how greatly it delights him to discuss this subject with you.
4 - Strike frightening from the means by which you discipline him.
5 - Beware of threatening him continually.
Would that we realized that fear is an emotion that besets every human creature, though in varying degrees. Some conquer it before it takes possession of them; others, alas, are accompanied by it all their lives — and, upon my life, who is more deserving of pity than these!!