Category Archives: Children and Youth

Who suffers more?

Children and Youth, Development and Poverty, Education, Law & Order, War and Peace

By Zubeida Mustafa

ANALYSING the anatomy of violence in Karachi, Kaiser Bengali, a former adviser to the Sindh chief minister, wrote in this paper (Sept 8) about the breakdown of the social contract in the city.

He defines this as the essential, implicit agreement between all interest groups on the broad contours of governance. On the basis of this, all societies function, he writes.

Kaiser Bengali is spot on. He lists demographic changes, joblessness of the Lyari youth and the rise of religious militancy as the major battlefronts of the war resulting from the end of the social contract. Continue reading Who suffers more? →

Forced to kill

Children and Youth, Education, Islamisation, Social Issues, Terrorism and Violence

By Zubeida Mustafa

THE State of Pakistan’s Children 2012 quotes from the UN Secretary General’s Report on Children in Armed Conflicts: “In 2011 there were 11 incidents of children being used in suicide bomb attacks by militant groups operating in the country (Pakistan). The attackers included 10 boys some as young as 13 years and a nine-year old girl.”

The use of children in armed conflicts to fight the heinous wars of unscrupulous men has emerged as quite a common phenomenon worldwide. Young children are trained to use the gun and they are desensitised to human suffering so that life has no value for them. That is why they kill with impunity. Moreover, children are themselves victims of the violence and militancy that now grip Pakistan.

This is something very disturbing. It means that the cycle of violence will be perpetuated ad infinitum. Children who grow up in a violent environment become violent adults who accept death and destruction as something normal. Thus the cycle goes on from one generation to the next. This is not an ideal scenario for any society. Continue reading Forced to kill →

Looking for careers

Children and Youth, Economy, Education, Social Issues

By Zubeida Mustafa

A FEW weeks ago I wrote about the death of the social sciences. I didn’t realise that the social sciences still had such a devoted following in a country which has virtually murdered this branch of knowledge.

There were many who responded to my article — from both sides of the sciences. There were the champions of history, sociology and other similar disciplines who argued strongly in favour of the subject they had studied. Others said that we needed the physical sciences if we wanted the country to progress.

The most sensible point of view expressed came from a gynaecologist who has spent a lifetime in the profession and like all good gynaecologists has been involved in one way or another with family planning, infant mortality and neo-natal care. That has brought Dr Sadiqa Jafarey in touch with issues that basically fall in the domain of the social sciences. Continue reading Looking for careers →

Death of social sciences

Children and Youth, Education, Social Issues

By Zubeida Mustafa

THE competition for space in academia between the social sciences and the ‘others’ — namely, the pure and physical sciences, technological disciplines, medicine-related knowledge, and business and management studies — has been a permanent feature of the intellectual history of mankind.

Our one and only Nobel laureate, Prof Abdus Salam, would always be lamenting that Pakistan lacks a science culture. That not only meant that we neglect science in our universities and do not allocate enough resources for research. It also implies we do not inculcate the spirit of inquiry in our children and as a nation we do not analyse natural and social phenomena rationally and on the basis of scientifically verified information.

The treatment meted out to Dr Salam in his lifetime and after his death by this country vindicates his lament about our alienation from science. Continue reading Death of social sciences →

Writing for children

Books, Children and Youth, Education

By Zubeida Mustafa

AN email circular drew my attention to The ABC of It, an exhibition of children’s books that opened in the New York Public Library last week. The NYPL website announced that literature for young readers is important as through them one learns what books are teaching children. It also added that such books reveal a lot about the societies that produced them.

This observation provides food for thought. If I were asked to devise a yardstick to measure how child-friendly a society is, I would base it on the volume, quality, diversity, content and, above all, authorship of the children’s literature it produces. All authors and poets who have made a name for themselves in the literary world by writing for adults have always found time to write for children.
Continue reading Writing for children →