Discipline is increasingly becoming an expensive venture vis-à-vis child upbringing. No two children are the same and styles of upbringing largely differ due to different factors – location, level of exposure, experience etc.
Social media on the other hand is giving us less and less reason to reason. I personally think we are losing depth in reasoning when it comes to social media especially with some videos that people share.
It is almost as if any 2 minutes video can give us enough basis to analyse a situation and to draw conclusive conclusions. It is interesting people post these short videos and ask for opinions on social media platforms.
The video at the center of my headache happens to be much shorter, it’s 28 seconds and has two sides. The ‘prim and proper’ beginning shows a teacher in some choreographic welcome of her kids. Part two shows a ‘brutal’ display of whippings on replay (pun intended).
The ‘prim and proper’ part was of a western setting where the teacher literally is playing with each child as they enter the class. The ‘brutal’ instalment is of a turbaned teacher lashing white long-robed boys, most likely from an Arab country.
I initially joked when I first saw it likening the first part to a playground and the second to a bloody battle field. Then in another group, an audio was attached to it where the speaker is condemning how Islamic school teachers beat kids and the need to learn from others.
Beating as a means of correcting a child is an age-long practice known for its benefits. Excessive application is as condemnable as is beating a child without first explaining their wrong to them.
Now, what was the context within which the first video was recorded? What precipitated the boys being whipped in the second? These are questions the video cannot answer, why? Whoever authored must have set out to drum forcibly into our heads convenient contrasts.
I have endured lashes over my time in chasing both secular and Islamic education. I have also paid my dues in the area of whipping kids, in the case of one child till I felt pity for him. I have disciplined children because their parents so requested and I have begged parents to spare their kids a certain degree of physical and verbal ‘assault.’
There are a few Islamic schools that still hold fast to the ‘cane to scare’ era. The tide is more towards other modes of punishment and correction. Many quit Islamic school because they saw others being caned. Others received the lashes and soldiered on and are the better today.
The resource called social media should not expose us so much that we play along with what I call convenient facts. Of course, if it is for the jocular value of it, why not? But let’s resist rather insist on more cogent lines of thought and experience sharing where need be.
One day when I am blessed with kids, beating will not be the first resort. It won’t! But it surely will be an option on the ‘discipline’ ladder. There is no bigger task as child upbringing. It is so because it blends a present childhood with a budding adolescence and adulthood.
My mom, Hajia Fati and her late husband Abdur Rahim Shaban, sunk effort into who we are today of course with our teachers – school and makaranta, even neighbours and extended family. Some actions I can apply to my kids, others belong to those days – they are history!
Every parents’ prayer is for their child (ren) to become the ‘coolness of their eyes,’ but they could easily become the spiciness that would badly itch those same eyes. I don’t know about me and Hajia Fati but for sure her eyes aren’t damn spicy with all six of us – the Shabans.
Social media on the other hand is giving us less and less reason to reason. I personally think we are losing depth in reasoning when it comes to social media especially with some videos that people share.
It is almost as if any 2 minutes video can give us enough basis to analyse a situation and to draw conclusive conclusions. It is interesting people post these short videos and ask for opinions on social media platforms.
The video at the center of my headache happens to be much shorter, it’s 28 seconds and has two sides. The ‘prim and proper’ beginning shows a teacher in some choreographic welcome of her kids. Part two shows a ‘brutal’ display of whippings on replay (pun intended).
The ‘prim and proper’ part was of a western setting where the teacher literally is playing with each child as they enter the class. The ‘brutal’ instalment is of a turbaned teacher lashing white long-robed boys, most likely from an Arab country.
I initially joked when I first saw it likening the first part to a playground and the second to a bloody battle field. Then in another group, an audio was attached to it where the speaker is condemning how Islamic school teachers beat kids and the need to learn from others.
Beating as a means of correcting a child is an age-long practice known for its benefits. Excessive application is as condemnable as is beating a child without first explaining their wrong to them.
Now, what was the context within which the first video was recorded? What precipitated the boys being whipped in the second? These are questions the video cannot answer, why? Whoever authored must have set out to drum forcibly into our heads convenient contrasts.
I have endured lashes over my time in chasing both secular and Islamic education. I have also paid my dues in the area of whipping kids, in the case of one child till I felt pity for him. I have disciplined children because their parents so requested and I have begged parents to spare their kids a certain degree of physical and verbal ‘assault.’
There are a few Islamic schools that still hold fast to the ‘cane to scare’ era. The tide is more towards other modes of punishment and correction. Many quit Islamic school because they saw others being caned. Others received the lashes and soldiered on and are the better today.
The resource called social media should not expose us so much that we play along with what I call convenient facts. Of course, if it is for the jocular value of it, why not? But let’s resist rather insist on more cogent lines of thought and experience sharing where need be.
One day when I am blessed with kids, beating will not be the first resort. It won’t! But it surely will be an option on the ‘discipline’ ladder. There is no bigger task as child upbringing. It is so because it blends a present childhood with a budding adolescence and adulthood.
My mom, Hajia Fati and her late husband Abdur Rahim Shaban, sunk effort into who we are today of course with our teachers – school and makaranta, even neighbours and extended family. Some actions I can apply to my kids, others belong to those days – they are history!
Every parents’ prayer is for their child (ren) to become the ‘coolness of their eyes,’ but they could easily become the spiciness that would badly itch those same eyes. I don’t know about me and Hajia Fati but for sure her eyes aren’t damn spicy with all six of us – the Shabans.
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