From where do children receive their culture?

Question: From where do children receive their culture? Is it from their parents, TV programs, or school programs? This was the subject of a discussion that recently took place in a family meeting. Most of us said that TV programs were the first source from which a child obtains his culture and conducts. Do you have anything else with which to advise us? Thanks.

The answer: The child begins receiving his culture from the first moment when he begins to feel whatever is happening around him inside the house. Thus, the parents are the first source of the culture by which the child is influenced and with which he grows up. His first step begins with the blind imitation of every movement, gesture, and word of his parents, especially the mother and then the father, and then the others in the family and the children of the same age whether in the house, street, school, TV, or illustrated magazines.

Allama Sayyid Hadi al-Mudarrisi says, ‘Man is not only the son of his class – as Marx says – but he is the son of his culture, education, and environment before all.’

The experiments of educationists have proven that the child receives from the one around him all his gestures and words and even his gait, way of eating, etc. They say that man is a creature who acts according to nature and is sociable by influence. The kind of culture around him enables him to change continuously, whether positively or negatively, until the last moment of his life.

TV programs are one of the most important sources of injecting cultures into a child, but it is not more important than the culture of the parents, except if their culture is to throw the child towards those programs to feed on them all the time.

FOR A BETTER FUTURE