A Social Series (3) — Who Is Responsible for the Moral Decline in Our Society? Two Opinions, from Zaheya Ayoub and Rashad Darghouth

The educator Zaheya Ayoub answers:

— I do not believe that the responsibility for the educational chaos in which our young people are floundering can be confined to a single cause. The causes are many; yet I can reduce them to one — this sweeping current of the tumultuous life the grown-ups live, whose results are reflected upon the young. There are no boundaries between the two lives, and no sacrifice by the former for the sake of the latter. They lead them along in their disordered life, in search of pleasure, without knowing it.

This state of things — the neglect of setting a good example in the raising of the young — reminds me of the jest of a certain young man who, in his earliest youth, and without preparation or merit, as is the way with us, was entrusted with the task of teaching the rising generation. Among the things he taught his pupils were curses, for he would curse in front of them without reserve; and when the remark was made to him, he answered: And where is the harm? Since they are bound to learn these curses when they grow up, why should they not learn them today?

Such is the language of the parents' conduct; and if some of them, of the conservative sort, hold to a different principle, they are few — and the rare few does not influence the many, nor can the many be measured by it. Nor does its conservatism bear fruit, for the current of the majority sweeps it and its like clean away.

In answer to the second question, on the serious ways of remedy, I say:

We as a people are still in the cradle of our renaissance, and the child in his cradle needs someone to care for him and direct him with a firm care resting upon knowledge, order, and devotion; otherwise he will grow up — if he survives and grows — upon things that give no satisfaction. In the circumstances through which we are passing, we must look to a higher educator who will educate grown-ups and children alike; and this higher educator, in my view, is a body of reform laws by which parents are bound — even, at times, in spite of themselves — in the guidance of their children.

Among the main lines of these great laws, for example:

1 — Public gardens for the young shall be established in the residential quarters, and clubs of their own in which the ways of hobbies, amusements, and games for the rising generation are taught; and those who enter them shall be effectively supervised by a body appointed properly — not on the basis of material or moral influence, but of educational competence — from among those who have specialized in the upbringing of the young; preferably mothers known for their good child-rearing and their culture.

2 — Publications and bookshops shall be placed under firm supervision, so that the sale of whatever poisons morals shall not be allowed — those newspapers and magazines, and the cheap stories that corrupt literature and art in the minds of the rising generation.

3 — A budget must be set aside for the writing of cultivating and entertaining books for the young. No sum should be thought too great in this cause, for the rising generation is the foundation of the nation; and everyone knows what sacrifice the foundation of a building demands — it goes down into the depths of the earth, yet upon it rests the solidity of the whole structure.

4 — Children and adolescents shall be absolutely forbidden to frequent the public cinema houses, and cinema houses shall be established for them alone, whose films shall be scrutinized closely so that they contain nothing to corrupt the morals or the patriotism of the rising generation. Those in charge shall likewise strive always to show scenes or films drawn from the very heart of our life, to endear this life to our young.

5 — Morals patrols shall be formed in the street, to arrest in the name of the law everyone they hear uttering foul language, young or old — it being understood that the application of this law begins with the employees of the state and the enforcers of the law before anyone else, for these must be a model of good manners, above all in a country such as ours, known as the Switzerland of the East.

Thus the state will have played its natural part, the part of the higher educator: it will have guided the parents who do not know the ways of true upbringing, and eased the task of those who do know them, so that their upbringing may bear its fruit and not be carried off by the sweeping current. And thereafter this sound upbringing which we shall have followed will be reflected upon our future life and our society.

* * *

Mr. Rashad Darghouth, for his part, answers:

My esteemed Madam,

1 — You ask me "who is responsible for the decline of morals in our society?" In my belief those responsible are more than one. They are many — many.

The home, the school, the newspaper and the magazine, the cinema, the university... then the church and the mosque, and the government, of course.

All of these are responsible. Yes! And the greatest in responsibility is the keenest in perception and awareness. But I prefer not to parcel out that responsibility; I make them all share in it, each and every one: from the father who does not watch over the upbringing of his children, or is ignorant of the simplest rules of upbringing... to the mother who abandons the most sacred duties of motherhood, or does not know them... to the school in which the rules of order have come loose, and which turns into a "shop" where minds are trafficked in... to the newspaper or magazine that publishes depravity and folly, in print and in picture, as though it were art or literature...

To the cinema, whose houses have become a temple for the worship of the appetites...

To the university that has sunk below its own level; to the mosque and the church, which shut their eyes to the mote.

To the government, which reflects the condition of all those institutions and cannot but be a picture of them. Did they not say: As you are, so shall you be governed?

And what next? The causes of that decline? Can they, one wonders, be confined to particular causes, as we tried to confine those responsible for the decline within the bounds of the principal "stations" through which man passes — or through which the whirlpool of life carries him — on his way from one world to another?

What I have mentioned may contain a summary of those causes, which begin with the lack of basic upbringing in the home and end with the impotence of the governing apparatus to stop the tumbling wheel.

But those causes, for all their variety, are no more than the manifestations of a single reality — symptoms which the thinking man finds no difficulty in tracing back to their root.

For the badness of home upbringing — or, in most families, its very absence — cannot be attributed to ignorance... in its general sense.

The same is true of the schools' and universities' neglect of their first duty, the forming of the good citizen, and their contenting themselves with turning out "the educated," bearers of ornamented diplomas, and "the cultured," bearers of... empty titles!

And by this measure may be judged the work of all the other institutions that are supposed to form that citizen — that human being!

Morals, since Aristotle, have been the pillar of knowledge — in its general sense, too. No man may lay claim to it who possesses nothing of character — of great character!

And so, Madam, you see clearly that painful reality — I mean the root of the causes by which morals among us go tumbling down their perilous slopes.

It is illiteracy in its two hideous forms: the illiteracy of the letter, which ravages tens of thousands, nay millions, of our peoples; and the illiteracy of the mind, which paralyzes the activity of the aware elite of our generations.

The second is the graver danger for peoples who have emerged suddenly into the lights of the twentieth century after living for long-drawn centuries in the shell of history.

For wiping out the illiteracy of the letter is an easy task: a few years suffice for people — all the people — to become readers and writers... as happened in Mexico some years ago.

But the illiteracy of the mind, with which our educated, and the cultured generally, are stricken, is graver in its effect and harder to fight, because it is the illiteracy of the elite — that small number on whom we count for guidance and leadership.

This illiteracy cripples man's human powers, annuls his vital energies, and corrupts his humane inclinations. Indeed, thanks to the conceit with which half-knowledge puffs him up, it turns the man — and the woman — into two palsied limbs in a society that stands in need of the effort of every working man and working woman, such as our Arab societies!

Except, of course, for depravity and refinement in its pursuit, to which the man gives himself even should he become a "summit" among the summits of society; and except for allurement and the fashion shows, to which the woman gives herself even should she attain the rank of "university graduate" or be blessed with the sanctity of motherhood!

3 — As for the serious ways of averting this danger, they are the very ways which the causes, or the occasioning factors, themselves suggest. Long ago the logicians said: the answer is contained in the question.

Perhaps a joining of efforts, exerted by all the responsible parties indicated above, would suffice to avert the collapse to which our rising generations are exposed.

And there remain the school — and the university — in my view the two chief responsible parties, for it is in them that the forming of the good citizen, man and woman, is finally completed. Nay, it is in them that the fathers and mothers are perfected, and all the responsible educators — writers, journalists, deputies, and rulers alike!

Let us say frankly that our hope of reform does not turn toward the home, now that we have learned that our homes are empty of fathers and mothers, though they be peopled with begetters, male and female.

Nor does our hope turn toward the masters of the other "stations" through which we pass after the school and the university, or before them — the press, the theater, the cinema... — because of the absence of any sense of responsibility among those masters, who have preferred the life of "trade" to the life of "mission."

Nor, in the nature of things, may we set our hopes on the governing apparatus... for it is a picture reflecting the reality of the people and the level of the community's morals.

And so all our hopes are fixed, as you see, Madam, and our hearts, trembling for our rising generations, turn toward the middle link of that long chain — I mean the school and the university; for in them we form the fathers and the mothers, and in them likewise we form the educators, men and women, and the guides, men and women. And with these and those we shall avert this danger that threatens our youth as it threatens our very being and the future of our nation.