For the next generation [Archives:2008/1175/Community]
By: Nashwan Al-Khawlani
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It's shameful, mysterious and completely not understandable how we can accept promoting ourselves at the expense of self-humiliation and accept becoming teachers teaching numerous generations how to read, write, be honest, faithful, frank, saying even more than the truth, and treat others kindly. Unfortunately, we're not efficient, well-informed or conscious of what we're doing unintentionally.
How we can educate an excellent generation is the mysterious question filling our heads with doubts, our eyes with tears and our ears with curses because there is still some rust showing behind. Since we're in school, even now this backside rust still causes us not to be able to use our insight and makes us deviate toward achieving our dreams via any bad means.
We actually don't deserve to be called university students, which reflects ethical and moral values distinguishing us among our society. Although they're brilliant, some university students are unwillingly infected by such a disease that eats at them until they rust through, causing them to use bad means to achieve their goals through cheating.
This is a word that educated students feel is disgusting to articulate because it's so awful, reminding them of the backwardness that just leads to darkness where one no longer can determine what's right or wrong. For this reason, not only should we consider the consequences of cheating, but also consider who will be harmed by it.
Hence, it's vital to compare cheating in the realm of education to that of goods, which merchants substitute with each other on the markets. If we think deeply and look at the cost of cheating in these two areas, we'll realize that not only will one become disfigured or spoiled by such goods cheating, but in education, it will grow like a fire that burns everything around it with no recognition that we're only burning our brothers, friends and our community.
Consequently, one should think of himself as a Muslim, asking what are those principles we should consider in order to enlighten our society by teaching its generation well and making them aware of these days of corruption and deviations that allow many students to achieve their goals illegally.
The only thing they must think about is faith in Allah, who gives self-confidence to those who are willing to reach their destination rather than cheating to achieve their goals or make good grades.
It's so easy to attempt to reach our goals, which we haven't achieved yet, however, we're trying to get back our principles as Muslims, but this is difficult because no one around us will trust us anymore. Thus, we must take a life as a challenge, basing it on self-confidence rather than on cheating in order to get what we want.
Likewise, how can we educate an excellent generation when we're envious of our friends and classmates whom we love? Instead, why don't we join hands one-by-one – teacher with student, employer with employee and manager with worker – to fight this self-love and create a nicer portrait of our nation and so that we can help each other achieve our goals and surmount every difficulty we face, no matter what it is.
As a result, we would be like stars in the gloomy night sky, shining brightly to cause the world to see our nation. Therefore, we'll one day take pride in ourselves at seeing that we are like someone from our society, nation or country.
If we look at real life, we'll see that because no object is immortal, we are not immortal. We should remove those thoughts that rust our minds in order to see the reality of life and give chances to those who are beginning to bloom like buds to become scientists or great writers, as their attitudes guide them to be.
We must consider envy a matter of awareness to be rid of because it is a mental disease. As the Prophet Mohammed (pbuh) said in one hadith, envy eats up alms just as the fire does to wood. Therefore, we must get rid of things like self-love, jealousy and envy because they're like weeds in the garden – if you leave them, they'll spread. So, we want to keep our garden evergreen and free of weeds.
It's important to expose another fault that students commend as a particular feature of theirs. Because a good generation requires honesty, faithfulness and frankness, we shouldn't use flattery, which has become an example of mere appearance displaying fake love nowadays, using nice words to get what they want, which actually is not in their hearts, simply to get the satisfaction of others like teachers, managers, etc. Unfortunately, we do so for the sake of “something.”
Some will do the impossible to achieve good grades, just as beggars do for the sake of money, running after rich people only to get money. We must wake up to the gloomy illiteracy that eventually will cover our nation.
We must think deeply about these matters because we are like a cloud that goes everywhere gathering water vapor so that almighty Allah will guide it to where He loves. He'll also guide us to where He loves after we graduate, but then the matter involves what are the drops of that cloud that we carry in our minds. Are they beneficial or harmful to the next generation we'll teach or deal with?
With proud sight, we can overcome every difficulty to study, gaining characteristics that lead us to promote our personalities in order to behave, deal with others and develop the best features that raise our personalities to the highest estimation, like a star, so that everyone will want to imitate our actions. As a result, even just one teacher can help create an ideal generation because he'll teach many generations in one community.
Because we as Muslims have good intentions toward others, whether they're Muslims or not, we can get rid of bad traits so that they won't infect our future generations.
Thus, the question still is how we can educate a perfect, self-confident, well-informed and altruistic generation that will create a constant stream of doctors, teacher and writers without self-love or any type of backwardness.
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