WHY are we what we are is the question. We were not so before and have emerged so over the years. The most likely reasons for our moral decline is the state’s failure to protect its children. Pakistan is not child-centric.

The impact on our children of a policy measure in any walk of life is never weighed carefully. Hence children from all classes suffer. The message they receive is that they will have to fend for themselves. Thus they learn to treat others with indifference when they become adults.

They do not grow up to be caring and sharing in their public attitudes, because they have not experienced such treatment towards themselves when they were young. Remember, all the adults in the country — be they the rulers in Islamabad or the beggars in the streets of Karachi — were once children. To quote William Wordsworth, “The Child is father of the Man”.

The capacity of a person to hurt others varies, and depends on the mindset he develops in the company he keeps — be it family or friends — and the power he manages to acquire.

Education, the media and the pulpit also shape people’s thinking. An environment unfriendly to the child encourages the culture of lying. Without a gun and power, a person’s capacity to harm others is somewhat limited. If he is, however, in a position of power he does immense harm by having thousands killed, destroying institutions and robbing millions of the money that should have rightfully been spent on them. That is how the rot set in and has grown from generation to generation.

The result? Lust for money, a hunger for power, the tendency to cut corners and to get what one wants without working for it. The inherent sense of justice and fair play that every child is born with is eroded by the time she grows up. The exceptions are too few to change the wider picture. Violence and hardship have dominated our public life.

There would not be a single child in Pakistan who has not witnessed or experienced violence in her life, and that must have impacted her psyche. Sahil, an Islamabad-based NGO, recorded 4,253 child abuse cases in 2022, and the number is expected to be higher in 2023. It must be noted that mental health professionals believe that many of these abused children will emerge as the abusers of tomorrow.

Educating each and every child appropriately is the only way of rectifying this odious situation that threatens to destroy the future of our children. However, it must be emphasised that our present system of primary school education, has proved to be disastrous. It is actually hostile to the child.

Be they state-run schools, private institutions — both upscale and low-fee — or madressahs, they have harmed students immensely. While the first hardly function, the others overload the students with books, tests, homework and tuitions. Their approach is highly competitive and stressful. Educationists who know insist that in the primary years the child should be taught orally through specially designed play material and attractive storybooks and workbooks. Writing should focus only on the imparting of literacy skills.

The rot has grown from generation to generation.

The common practices of resorting to corporal punishment and teaching in English which the child doesn’t comprehend ensures that the adult who emerges from the school system is emotionally insecure and incapable of critical thinking. He has only learnt to memorise lessons without any understanding. What the children actually need is a lot of love and care that will give them confidence.

The saddest part of the story of the child in Pakistan is that parents — the affluent as well as the indigent — do not seem to understand the excesses committed against their offspring. At times, they themselves unwittingly become the oppressors. The poor send their girls to work as domestic labour in spite of being aware of the risks involved. The privileged demand better performance from their children even if it is beyond their natural capabilities.

What comes as a shock after one learns of the tragedy of the child in Pakistan is the galloping demographic growth rate. According to census authorities, our population has grown from 207.6 million in 2017 to 241.5m — an increase of around 33m in six years.

Billions have been allocated for the population welfare programme. It is not known where these billions have gone, certainly not for advocacy campaigns, nor for counselling couples on the choice of appropriate measures, nor for the purchase of contraceptives supplied free to population welfare centres.

The babies keep coming with unfailing regularity, though the majority of them are uncared for. Family planning is a subject that is never talked about. All suffer the consequences of this silence.

www.zubeida-mustafa.com

Published in Dawn, October 6th, 2023