The new generation of youth has become lazy in the quest for knowledge, egocentric, and closed-minded. They are self-centered, extremely autonomous, and very independent. Professor Bloom’s perception of modern trends and their impact on college kids is further proof of the family’s degradation. Bloom spends a great deal of time and effort to explain today’s youth. He says, “People sup together, play together, travel together, but they do not think together. Hardly any homes have any intellectual life whatsoever, let alone one that informs the vital interest of life. Educational TV marks the high tide for family intellectual life.”[1]
Bloom aptly describes all the invading media messages and other influences of modern life which makes it a battle for conscientious parents. “Along with the constant newness of everything and the ceaseless moving from place to place, first radio, then television, have assaulted and overturned the privacy of the home, the real American privacy, which permitted the development of a higher and more independent life within democratic society. Parents can no longer control the atmosphere of the home, and have even lost the will to do so.”[2] No truer words could be spoken. One hundred years ago parenting was much less stressful, simplified and was not so governmentally controlled. There was no television, little mass communication, fewer mixed messages, and more family solidarity. Today, the scenario is much different. Homes are bombarded daily by television where violent and sexually explicit programs equal entertainment. The educational system has invaded the privacy of the home by taking liberties to teach morality. Instead of teaching abstinence in sex education courses or during discussions on AIDS or sexually transmitted diseases, the public education system hands out condoms to children.
The media’s “war against drugs” has been replaced or followed by the “war against the tobacco industry.” Drastic measures have been taken to reduce and prohibit smoking. Most American workplaces, public buildings, restaurants and commercial airlines now prohibit smoking. Through all of these “wars against such and such,” where is the “war against alcohol?” If there is a sincere concern for youth, then why has this one isolated area also been (profitably) neglected? Are people not at all concerned with the excessive abuse of alcohol?
Today, college campuses across the United States are experiencing a new generation of alcoholism. Alcohol abuse breaks up marriages, causes infidelity, helps fuel young teens into premarital sex, and deadens the morality of all who partake in it. It is much more offensive in public than smoking is. A smoker does not get into a public brawl or kill or maim someone if he gets into an automobile. A smoker does not become abusive, disoriented, and mentally or emotionally impaired, and smoking does not kill brain cells. And finally, although smoking is a health hazard, it does not lead a person into becoming a destitute, a mental case or a street bum. Mixed messages like this from the education system, media and political domain should make one feel only sympathy for the young people growing up under such misguided thinking.
In another way governmental laws in the U.S. have become intrusive. With the rise of social services and professionals, parents are told that if they spank their child that it is child abuse. This is a touchy subject because although there is a need to protect children from real physical or sexual abuse, these laws have done more harm than good from the perspective of most parents. Parents have lost control of their own children. Young children are learning toll-free numbers that will give them their local child protection agencies. What is a parent to do if “time out” does not work? To some this may sound as though one is asking for the license to beat their child, but this is not at all true. Parents who love their children do not hurt them. Real child abuse is when a child is physically harmed, maimed, neglected or treated inhumanely. This is not the same as a parent punishing a child.
The enemy is not progress. Progress, if done sensitively, intelligently, and humanely, does not mean families have to be forfeited. The real enemy is the manmade system, which arrogantly steams ahead disregarding the woman and closing man’s mind to truth and religion.
[Women’s Ideal Liberation: Islamic Versus Western Understanding by Rukaiyah Hill Abdulsalam, p. 120-122]
Notes:
[1] The Closing of the American Mind, p. 58.
[2] Ibid., pp. 58-59.
