• Children’s Books and Writing the Future

Children’s Books… and Writing the Future

In a rapidly-changing world in which great old dreams are disappearing, we are failing to devote the present to establishing new dreams which can be achieved in future. Arabic children s books are one of the possibilities which seem feeble and marginal to some people, but unquestionably they will have great returns in future.

A few months ago, I received an invitation from Cairo, which I was happy to accept for more than one reason. Egypt, whose heart is Cairo, has a special status for me as a fertile human and cultural field, in which my years of youth and study unfolded. Egypt in winter is a climatic and creative garden of warmth, as everyone knows who has strong links with it. And the invitation was related to an aspect of culture, learning and the renaissance which I consider is one of the most salient, serious aspects of culture and the most important for looking ahead and preparing for the future.

The invitation was to attend the second meeting to establish the Arab Council for Books for Children and Youth, which was convened and chaired by Mrs. Suzanne Mubarak, the wife of the President of the Arab Republic of Egypt. It is a council of which I am honored to be one of those who participated in its foundation, with a number of effective Arab personalities concerned with Arab children s culture and building their future.

Without going too deeply into the details of this newly born and great project for Arab civilization, which I regard as an imperative investment in the future, it occurs to me that I should answer a hypothetical question that may entice some of us. This is, Are children s books so important at a time when our children are deluged with floods of extremely attractive and exciting films shown on the small and large screens, in addition to the electronic games to which millions of children on our planet Earth are addicted? This is apart from the adventures of navigating across the Internet.

A question that it seems logical to pose, but it is even more logical for us to take things back to their roots. We find that all these audio-visual and digital methods in most cases, regardless for the time being of whether we agree or disagree with them, are basically implementation of ideas written on paper. Many of them are the embodiment of subjects dealt with by books. The question is originally and in its roots writing, and nothing but writing.

From this starting-point, I find myself impelled to discuss Arab children s culture, beginning from the core theme of writing. I approach this core by reviewing some of what has happened and is happening in the field of our Arab children s culture in our wide world, which is now subject to changes of lightning speed which we scarcely give their due by merely covering them and following them.

In the face of all that, the printed word is now in a race with fleeting visual time, and books have become under a test whose questions can scarcely be read because they are so fast. The task of writers has become harder than before, if they want to describe reality in its change or record life in its transformation.

Even science fiction writers are no longer able to present new fantasy, after the fantasy of science went too far in its error, and its magicians cast the wands of the fever of cloning and genetic engineering in front of the television screens and at the gateways of the Internet.

If all that represents the endeavor of science for the future, we find that the only corresponding human factor for tomorrow is our children whom we are placing, in the critical test of receiving knowledge, between school books, television programs, the pages of the Internet and peer groups. We leave our children to confront that without being aware of the size, importance and seriousness of the role which we can play if we give them distinctive books that teach them and give them culture, outstanding programs and television materials, and electronic web sites and gateways which prepare the way for them to accept this accelerating reality, and make it easier for them to interact with it.

The fact is that we have neglected school books so that they have become a burden on children s minds, not a means to develop these minds. After the end of the age of teaching by orders, beating, memorization and learning by rote, our school books are still witnesses to these outdated values which arouse in children a faculty of memorization at the expense of the faculties of understanding, and treat them with quantities of information instead of qualities of skill. This is despite the fact that theories of science and education affirm that these early years have exceptional abilities to learn subjects and languages, apply manual and intellectual skills and play with the senses of imagination and inventiveness.

School books most of them in general preserve their bad form and obsolete content. Changing times or new techniques do not alter them, with their letters that lack vocalization, and lines that lack aesthetic form which would correct the qualities of taste are absent from the realm of school books. The fact is that we present children with pages lacking in a critical sense regarding information which is open to other worlds to reveal how true or false this information is.

This might be the right thing if we wanted children to hate school books, or hate the world of the school, but we certainly do not want that. We want children s books at school to become real friends which attract their attention, illuminate their world and fulfill their dreams. If we in the Arab World have children s artists whom we regard as distinguished in modern art, where are their works on the covers and the pages of these books? And if we have experts on education and the reform of curricula, where are their theories among the pages of books, which are printed by the hundreds of millions each year throughout our Arab homeland? Seldom does any child keep them after the end of the school year.

It is the greatest tragedy in the history of education that we neglect the most serious means with which we address children, and which remains with them for about a year without influencing them for a single day.

The issue is not confined to the artists of the age alone. History books in our schools for example do not make use of the beautiful manuscripts in our heritage for their information, nor are their texts accompanied by pictures of outstanding Islamic battles. Indeed, the glorious history of the nation is confined to dry paragraphs armed to the teeth with numbers and years which children have to learn by heart. They pour these out of their memories on the day of the examination, just as they throw the books into the waste-paper basket. We ask, how can our children hold fast to their nation’s history without being aware of its greatness? And how can they defend this history without seeing other counterpart histories?

Anyone who reads history books taught in school classes in Britain is aware that the history of Egyptian civilization is an important part of the curricula, during its era, because it represents the summit of enlightenment in the ancient world. They do not content themselves with narrating the history of its dynasties and kings, but instead give the young pupils some of the stories which the ancient Egyptians recorded. They want their children to get to know the world around them, because they are part of this world, and knowledge is the strength that will build their future.

Arab children s books should represent their identity and the achievements of their civilization, without fanaticism, be open to the world without plagiarism, and believe in the noble human values of peace and security without subjection and surrender. They should present what is distinctive and new in form and content. All that will not come about without encouragement from those involved in the book industry, from artists to writers and poets to publishers, so that a system of proficiency may be perfected in an industry which is in most urgent need of it.

To cite an example of the development which is being achieved, but which is lacking in perception of the future, we find it is the teaching of the English language. Although eagerness to learn another language, or even more than one language, besides our Arabic language, is regarded as an important step towards understanding other people in future and facilitating relations with them. However, the English curricula adopted for our schools content themselves with taking a ready-made syllabus prepared for a society other than ours, and an environment other than ours.

There is no doubt that this places young learners in a dilemma of being split between what they study in books and what they see in society. This is a split which leads them either to hostility to the new language, or to hostility to society, or to morbid tension between acceptance and rejection, fluctuating between what they read and what they live.

What I say about books applies to what is presented on television. Television material in all its variety is seldom planned for this future. Children s programs compete in encouraging local dialects and making slang firmly rooted. Being immersed in local characteristics must not negate the link of the Arabic language between the children of this homeland. Hence young learners are scattered among dialects which they often do not understand, and instead of looking for what brings our children together in front of the television screens, we make them confused and wondering what Arabic programs have in common.

The whole world is living in a phase of conflict of cultural forces which are trying to steal the future of nations. These are attempts about which it is not expected to keep silent, or that it can be concealed by the barriers of the secret services. It is a declared cultural war, which envelops vision through viewing channels, and blinds discernment by means of information channels. The sky is an open sea, and when we cast our nets, we only catch what is thrown into this sea. If we do not have our strong cultural parachute, we will be drowned by the clamorous cataracts of materials which fall down on us from all directions. It is a war of cultures which crosses space and lives in the satellite channels.

So if we talk about the importance of books, what about television which has marginalized the role of parents in the home, teachers in school and peers in the street? Our children s heroes now on the screen are foreign heroes only: tyrannical forces that keep alive the culture of violence, and racist values that lay the foundation for the superiority of the others. Thus our children live most of the time taking from these Western cultures without us rectifying this situation or even trying to. How will our children try to do what we ourselves do not do, and how can we develop their critical sense if we do not lay the foundations within them for a skeptical intellect which searches through open questions about the world.

I wonder, what parents have given their children books on festive occasions instead of the toys which have flooded the markets with their aggressive cultures? And what parents have encouraged them to go to public libraries? And how many of them have accompanied their children to the open books throughout the Arab world, by which I mean the museums which record the history of the homeland, the antiquities which relate the story of its peoples, and the gardens and forests which sing the praises of its beauty? How many schools have taken their pupils to factories, fields and sports clubs? The answer might be a cause for sorrow and pity, indeed anger too.

I remember a live German experiment in which contact was created between children and a writer who came to read them his stories and poems for an hour or two twice a week. Roles from the story were allocated to the children, so that the book would live on in their memory. Children s books are one of the contributions to writing for our future.

Great nations with strong cultures plan in order to spread their cultures, and earmark everything they have in order to achieve their dreams of propagation, expansion and domination. The propagation of the culture means that they will expand the borders of their trade and their economic interests, which will threaten the existence of competing nations, their existence in terms of civilization, which rests today on means which ensure it certainty and existence, not to say resistance and competition.

A state which used to be an empire, like the United Kingdom, may not find itself today on the map of superpowers, but it is trying through language to regain its status through the global culture. There is hardly a single academic institution which teaches drama that does not have a dominant Shakespearean presence. There is hardly any institution concerned with language which does not have English in its curricula. Does that not mean support for the industry, trade and economy in general?

On one of the BBC television channels a major campaign has begun, accompanied by support from specialist English literary supplements and general cultural magazines. This is a campaign to revive poetry as a national art. The British felt that poetry was in danger, poetry with all that it symbolizes in terms of language, culture, history and daily life. So they recruited publishers, producers and actors in a series which began and will not end, in order to revive this art. So what will we do, since poetry is the register of the Arabs?

We may recall how American cinema helped to spread the American dialect of the English language all over the world. Those who controlled the cinema industry were aware that the English language belongs to Britain, and that they should find their own English language. The aim was not only purely cultural, there was also a commercial and economic aim. Decades passed, and the English of the American cinema became universal thanks to endless support, which made the whole world a market for this cinema.

Thus the conversation has drifted from books to the cinema, but as a matter of fact it is a single system. There may be first indications of hope in positive moves which the Arab world is witnessing. I returned from Egypt after taking part in the task of forming the first Arab Council for Books for Children and Youth. The purpose of this is to achieve the hoped-for renaissance in books, periodicals and programs for Arab children and young people and establish an up-to-date mechanism for Arab action to bring new life to them, reduce the cost of producing them, and encourage scholarly, logical, creative and critical thinking in all children s books, so that Arab children may rapidly enter the society of knowledge and the Internet. It is intended to establish and revive other entities to develop education, spread culture and reinvigorate the heritage.

We may add to that the importance of seminars, conferences and workshops on children s books. We had the honor to participate in this effort when Al-Arabi magazine organized its seminar on children s culture a year ago. All that is an echo of a single idea, namely if it is the past which makes us, it is we who make the future.

Sulaiman Al-Askary

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