Schooling versus training

Children are the greatest concern of parents. Parents want their children to be bright, enjoy great success in life and emerge as super achievers. To this end, parents do their utmost to ensure that their child is admitted to some school of a very high standing. For this they are willing to pay any price.
But, it is important to judge the matter in terms of result. If we apply this criterion, it is difficult to find a child educated in a top school who became a great achiever, in terms of receiving the Nobel Prize or making any important scientific discovery.
Judging by the result, training for a child is actually of greater importance than schooling. What is training? Training here does not mean equipping children to enter a profession. It means rather parents becoming home trainers for their children. Parents should attach the greatest importance to imparting wisdom to their children rather than pampering them. They should plan wisely for their children’s education, laying great emphasis on how essential hard work is. They should foster the spirit of positive thinking in children, so that they may lead their lives along healthy lines. Parents must strive to develop in their child high qualities of character such as the willingness to adjust, tolerance, peace-lovingness, simple living, high thinking, and so on. They must teach their children values that will prove to be beneficial for them in every situation, such as the art of introspection and the habit – in moments of adversity – of blaming oneself rather than others for unfortunate occurrences.
We learn that training is more important than schooling when we apply our reason and pay heed to the experiences of human history. For instance, men such as Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam and many others received their education in ordinary schools but nevertheless reached great heights of success. Parents’ laying too much emphasis on schooling is, in actual fact, handing over own responsibility to others. But, the law of nature tells us that, in reality, in the sphere of children’s upbringing, there is no other person who can satisfactorily take over the parents’ responsibility.
Authored by: Maulana Wahiduddin Khan