Is It Sufficient for Educational Institutions like Schools to Guide in the Upbringing of Children?

Answered by Shaykh Khaled al-Kharsa

Question

Is it sufficient for educational institutions like schools to guide in the upbringing of children?

Answer

In the name of Allah Most High, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate.

It is insufficient for educational institutions alone; the home and family environment are also essential for a child’s upbringing.

Before school and society play their part in a child’s upbringing, the home and family primarily nurture the child. The primary responsibility of upbringing lies with the parents.

The Companion Abu Hurayra (Allah be pleased with him) highlights that the Messenger of Allah (Blessings and peace be upon him) said, “Every child is born with a true faith (on fitra), but their parents convert them into a Jew, Christian, or Zoroastrian, just as an animal produces a perfect young animal; do you see any part of its body amputated?” Then Abu Hurayra adds, “The nature made by Allah in which He has created mankind.” [Bukhari]

This hadith explicitly states that the parents’ environment and upbringing methods influence the child’s intellectual, moral, and social orientation.

The poet Abu al-‘Ala al-Ma‘rri said:

“And the youth among us grows up

On what his father was accustomed to.

And as long as the boy is young, but

Teach him religion, draw him close.”

[Al-Qasimi, Jawami‘ al-Adab fi Akhlaq al-Anjab (Egypt al-Arabia Press 1926), p38]