From My Notebook: Hypocrisy in Our Upbringing

The little girl came back from school in the evening, and no sooner had she taken off her school apron and her satchel of books than her mother came to her with the afternoon snack. And she asked:
Did you eat the pastries you took this morning?

Yes, and I gave Siham some of them.
— Why didn't you eat them by yourself? What a simpleton you are!

— But Siham is my friend, and... and when she comes here with her mother... don't you feed her pastries and chocolate?
— She comes then as a visitor, with her mother. We offer food to visitors only... don't you understand?

The little girl began nibbling her snack in silence, when the mother said: Eat what I have given you here, and don't go out to distribute it among your little friends. And if you go out to play, don't dawdle... You must study your problems so as to be first in the class. Isn't it a disgrace for you that Hind and Salma and In'am should get ahead of you?

And when the girl had finished eating, the mother said: Don't go before you comb your hair and tidy your clothes. Do you want Samira to be prettier than you?

And I said to myself after this: Could this mother not cultivate in her daughter diligence and ambition without cultivating in her the spirit of rivalry and envy, and without killing in her the instinct of fellowship, love, and cooperation?

Here is one 'ruler' among the rulers of the upbringing common among us. Giving only for boasting, for show, on occasions of hospitality, in the circumstances laid down by the traditions — while spontaneous giving meets with no encouragement. Our activity, too, must rest upon rivalry and the desire for supremacy. We strive not out of love of striving, but out of a desire to vanquish this person and crush that one. As though we were incapable of feeling the pleasure of work in itself, pure, free of the taints of jealousy and selfishness.

I pass in review the armies of children who have grown up, and are growing up, on these traditional methods. Their world is a world of persons, almost empty of the pictures of nature and its pleasures, of the beauties of plant and animal, of mountains and rivers — which they might study, and which might divert them from vying with one another and watching one another.

If they acquire a cat, they busy themselves with beating it and tormenting it instead of studying it and befriending it. And if they want amusement in the woodlands, they carry a hunting rifle to kill the poor sparrows, or a limed stick with which to catch the singing goldfinches, to shut them up inside a cage.

Nor are their relations with human beings in any better state, despite their fondness for company and good fellowship.

When I recall the gatherings of young and old among whom I lived in my childhood, I see women and children, young men and old men, amusing themselves by retailing the stories of others and exposing their faults, and finding a great pleasure in mocking and jeering at everything they see or hear — until those very people whom they had taken as the object of their mockery appear; then they reverse the matter, turning their talk from censure to praise, and from mockery to graciousness and compliment.

We learned in our childhood to think ill of people, and consequently to shun them and despise them. We learned in our childhood to amuse ourselves by criticizing people in their absence and complimenting them in their presence. And we grew accustomed to building our works upon rivalry instead of cooperation.

When I remember all this, I understand the secret of these divisions which paralyze the movement of progress in our country, and there becomes clear to me the secret of the enmities that storm among the inhabitants of this land and the neighboring lands.

A gleam of hope shows itself to me in the scouting movements and the athletic games which are spreading and flourishing. I would wish them to spread and flourish still more, in every town and every district, that they might perhaps diffuse among us a new spirit from which a new generation will arise.