Unfortunately, our schooling system serves mainly country’s needs which does not necessarily match with what is best for the child.

First, let me start with the appropriate age to start going to school. When I was kid, our parents sent us to school when we were 7 years. Now, we send our kids to school when they are only 3. I can understand the huge sums of money the private schools reap from the pocket of parents for these extra 4 years of schooling, but this is not a stress on parents’ wallets only, more importantly, it has implications to child’s brain and emotions.

The current schooling system - like most systems under corporate capitalism -works on “templates mentality”. Through this mentality the maximum number of populations are sorted and placed into similar buckets and exploit them to harvest the maxim economic output that would eventually deposit to the coffers of the elites and the super rich. This “template thinking” brings all boys and girls of different social, ethnic, and religious backgrounds into one bucket and exposes them to one curriculum, so they would work like robots executing dictated scripts taught at educational institutes.

I was reading the 1st Oct 2022 issue of the Atlantic which had an article titled “Red Shirt the Boys: Why boys should start school a year later than girls”. The article discusses how boys mature later than girls and this claim is being proved by recent neuroscience findings. Affluent parents can afford to adjust these gaps through their private expensive school system, but as always the poor kids in public schools get this structural problem lingering throughout their life when they could not graduate with high grades, and that carries on to failing to get enrolment into good colleges which then translates to not getting a good job and a better life. Had the schooling system catered to such age difference issues and allowed boys to start schooling later with the cohort of younger girls we could have better graduates. Alas, like industry assembly lines, our schools just produce robots!

It is not difficult to observe the mental and cognitive differences between boys and girls as we do not fail to see the biological differences between them. If that is the case, why do girls get the same education as boys, and why do they start school at the same age? Here is an excerpt from the Atlantic article,

“It’s an international pattern: Across economically advanced nations, boys are 50 percent more likely than girls to fail at all three key school subjects: math, reading, and science.”

These advantage points for girls have caused bias in employment opportunities which in turn brought in complex social problems in the long term. Allah has created men and given them physiological and mental means to endeavor for feeding his wife and kids. Similarly, Allah has given women the biological and emotional capabilities to rare kids and take care of household matters. There is no inferior and superior conspiracy here. Everyone is doing their job to the best of their ability in the ways that suits best their god-given powers. It is a great injustice to women when we expect them to bear a child for 9 months and wake up at night feeding the baby for another 2 years, and at the same time earn money by working 8 hours a day! Meanwhile, a suitable young man was denied that job because his CV was not as impressive as the young beautiful girl’s. The result is that the young man becomes unemployed but in reality, he immediately gets employed in a devil’s workshop and the crime rate goes high. We could have avoided all these from school days and reached to a win-win situation. Here is another excerpt from the Atlantic article:

Rates of “deaths of despair” from suicide, alcohol, or an overdose, are almost three times higher among men than women

Girls mature early. They start their menstruation and with it the maturity trajectory as early as grade 3 or 4, but they reach menopause in the early 40s when her husband has just started to reach the apex of his mental perfection. Our contemporary world led by Western capitalism is out-of-context with these god-given characters of men and women.

It would feel very natural that boys in a classroom are older than girls, as it feels very natural that husbands usually are older than their wives. Again, this upper hand or seniority in age does not equate with gender inequality as the liberal Western civilization would like to promote. It is always rewarding to read the following verse from the Quran and draw wisdom from it (Surah an-Nisa, verse no 34)

Men are the caretakers of women, as men have been provisioned by Allah over women and tasked with supporting them financially. And righteous women are devoutly obedient and, when alone, protective of what Allah has entrusted them with. And if you sense ill-conduct from your women, advise them ˹first˺, ˹if they persist,˺ do not share their beds, ˹but if they persist,˺ then discipline them ˹gently˺. But if they change their ways, do not be unjust to them. Surely Allah is Most High, All-Great

Men are caretakers, guardians, and protectors of women. That means the wife takes a comfortable back sofa and lets the chauffeur husband drive her and take care of feeding her, dressing her, and comforting her. She is not burdened by Allah’s system to earn her own money, in contrary to the liberal secular system. Money matters rest with men, whereas household and raring children matters rest with women. And when both husband and wife do their jobs perfectly, only then we would expect a balanced society, with full employment and full productivity. The problem is that the West does not consider the wife’s doing her household job as employment. The West considers her a slave under her husband and whispers to her to emancipate herself and go out to work as a secretary to a rich boss. To the West, this is productivity and full employment. In reality, this arrangement kills many birds: the child who is suffering at home without mom being beside her, the husband who finds his wife not interested in him, the boss who thinks of opportunities to sexually harass his secretary, and above all this poor lady who thought she got emancipated from her husband’s slavery but in reality got in the trap of the real slavery powered by fashion houses, and rich corporate capitalism.

Ideal schooling should have a well-designed separate curriculum that suits the function and roles of boys and girls when they grow up. A holistic solution must be designed by the society where schooling fits well into the bigger solution where men and women are placed into their respective functions in the most optimized manner to yield the best productivity yet maintain the unique role of each. Our society must realize that monetary productivity is not everything, more important is the well-being and happiness of human beings. And human beings mean everyone and not the elite class of society.

Unquestionably, society is powered by men when it comes to blue-collar occupations, industrialization, the army, and the management of companies. It is equally unquestionable that these men who power a society did not come from outer space, rather they were born from the wombs of their mothers. So, if a mother takes on her full-time job to make these children well-prepared for their future jobs, can we say this mother is not productive? If our school system prioritizes teaching future moms the art of taking care of children and making them suitable as future leaders, will our schools be unsuccessful?

Hello World! Can we have some more attention to boys as you have been giving extra attention to girls’ schooling? I have seen World Bank programs giving grants to educate girls in poor countries where it should have been empowering the boys to be good husbands who earn money and feed their most needed wives and kids. Thousands of scholarships are aimed at young women, but almost none for young men.

I know I am aiming a longshot asking for these drastic changes, but as parents - and for the time being - we can nudge a small effect by delaying sending our boys to school by one year. During this one year at home, the mother gives her boy the love and attention to become the future leaders.