By: Haroon Rashid Bhat
Let me begin this write-up with the saying of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “Education without morals is a ship without a compass”. The declining trend of moral values among growing youth became a big challenge for our society. Our youth is infested with vices such as indecent dressing, use of abusive language, violence, and drug abuse. These disturbing phenomena are just the tip of the iceberg because we have been still living the heritage of a time when education is not amoral. But just imagine what will happen when that heritage gets fully exhausted.
When that legacy comes to an end….! Traditionally moral formation and transformation of moral values was a social activity spearheaded by the parents and the elders. They were conducting informal sessions through folktales, stories, legends, myths, and informal counseling sessions with the children to impart good morals. However, with the shift brought about by modernity, formal education dictated that children have to spend less time with their parents and more with the teachers in school. This widened the scope of formal educational institutions to inculcate moral values among the students.
The moral role of teachers become even more crucial in this contemporary period where family and community education are becoming looser due to time pressure and economic pursuits. Now, there has been an interesting debate within intellectual circles on whether to have prescribed school textbooks included in our syllabi or to impart the lessons of morality to students through verbal mode by adopting the philosophy of idealism or by the pragmatic approach where our actions play a vital part in molding the character of an individual. As a teacher, I am in favor of an integrated educational system whereby we must include prescribe textbooks on moral education in our schools, and at the same time, we should not underestimate the role of a teacher in imparting lessons of morality through his/her actions as they are the prime players in the process of modeling his/her behavior.
The teacher’s influence can affect the way that a teen behaves and make choices. In particular, a teacher’s behavior plays an important role in how teenagers make a decision, if a teenager sees his teacher acting impulsively or making poor choices such as wearing an indecent dress, use of indecent language, neglecting duties and responsibilities, or skipping work, a teen might behave that he is entitled to make similar choices in his/her life.
During our school days, the Deeniyat – the moral book was taught. That particular book consisted of moral lessons mostly based on the life story of our beloved Prophet and his companions and saints. The beauty of reading this particular book was that it was taught both by Muslim teachers and by other teachers who were adhering to the different religious faith mostly by Kashmiri Pundits. The second very important thing that I considered worth mentioning here is that our teachers accompanied us to the Masjid to offer Zuhar Prayer and the pundit teacher was maintaining the attendance register to check whether the students were following the prayer schedule or not. I also remember those occasions when the pundit teacher Makhan Lal Ji requested Mohi-Ud-Din Sahab to narrate a few life episodes from the life story of Prophets and saints to students during the assemble hour so that the students besides acquiring knowledge of other subjects must be acquainted with moral values like truthfulness, honesty, loyalty, decency, etc.
When Mohi-Ud-Din Shab raised his hands for Duwa, all including the Pundit and the Sikh teachers responded to that particular Duwa with “Ameen”. Can we revive that rich legacy? It is up to the teachers how far they are ready to bring back those positive changes in their attitude. Our modern education system is mostly dominated by science and technology and undoubtedly it is the professional duties of the teachers to produce a better human resource for our society – professionals like scientists, doctors, engineers, etc. but at the same time, it is the prime responsibility of the teacher to prepare them morally fit so that they will abide by the moral values while performing their role in the society. May Almighty Allah grants us strength!
The author is a teacher and columnist. He can be mailed at minamharoon123@gmail.com
