Does morality come from school or from the home?

The home lays the foundation, and school can usefully strengthen morality. But moral lessons achieve little if society at the same time weakens the bond between children and their parents.

A child’s first school is the home. Long before the first day of school, a child learns there whether people tell the truth, whether they share and how they treat others. The Holy Qur’an places this responsibility clearly on the parents. The second verse above shows Luqman, a father who passes on what matters most to his son himself.

Even so, it is not too late for schools to teach morality as well. The wise approach is not to put the doctrines of the religions at the centre, but their shared morality. In matters of belief the religions differ and often quarrel. In morality, however, they agree. No religion teaches people to lie, to cheat or to take away the rights of others. Every school can pass on this common ground.

Lessons alone, however, are not enough. If children are told at school to live decently while society tells them at the same time that their parents no longer have any say over them, the messages contradict each other. In the name of personal freedom, young people are sometimes encouraged to cut themselves off from their families entirely. In the process, the mutual rights and duties within a family are lost from view.

Morality grows, then, where home, school and society pull in the same direction. The home remains the most important place, because, as the hadith above says, everyone is accountable for those in their care. School can build on what begins there. But if all the other messages point the opposite way, even the best moral education will do little against wrongdoing and crime.