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 ques
tion, 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
• Mrs. Zaheya Ayoub finds the remedy in reform laws by which parents are bound in the guidance of their children.
• Mr. Rashad Darghouth has little confidence in the home's capacity for reform; he turns his hopes toward the school and the university.