Growing Up with Myths and Superstitions
These myths and pastoral tales are still told in our countryside which ultimately means that most of our youths grow up listening to such kind of credulous accounts of the natural phenomenon.
I am, by any means, not against the cultural and traditional training of fresh minds but I do feel distressed and gloomy when it comes to training the next generation that has to hold the reins of nation in future.
These countrified lessons are often seen to be indoctrinated in the minds of immature children without comprehending the harm they do with young minds. My mother also didn't know if she were indoctrinating me but now I realize that she did; although unintentionally it was. It took me some serious amount of time and effort to get out of what I was told during my childhood.
Imagine if the children aren't told about the natural phenomenon in a long-held superstitious way but at least with a minimum amount of facts if not in a "scientific" way as whole. The training of a child to be a healthy contributor to the society begins at the birth. The young and immature minds can accept the facts very quickly and those facts often remain with them for the whole of their life in one form or another.
The children, after learning these made-up explanations, also tend to share it outside with their friends which starts a never-ending chain of intellectually negative impacts on their minds. Moreover, practices like these also leave an extremely damaging impression on a child's curiosity to learn and discover.
For ages, I kept thinking of Milky Way White Streak as the route of Noah's Ark as told by my mother. She told me that when the great flood hit the Earth, the water was inconceivably deep that Noah's ark had to sail as high as the white streak in night sky. The explanation sounded pretty substantial and compelling to my infantile mind at that time.
Another myth that I was indoctrinated with was darker spots on the Moon as the Hawwa (Eve) sitting under a tree. I would glare at the Moon with concentration and I exactly saw what I was told because I wanted to see that. It was only the matter of time that I got to get my head around the actual reason for the spots on Moon.
Another of these irrational beliefs also states that if a pregnant woman exposes herself to the Solar or Lunar Eclipse, she might bear a disable child with physical deformities. Not only that, but to remedy the effects they also have a way which involves keeping flour and coins under the open sky. They believe this would help the ominous effect go away. In the rural areas, it is still widely believed among women.
I wonder how many children grew up listening to these tales like me and I really doubt that many reached the satisfactory answers to the natural phenomenon.
All these legends might be important to the people but we must not forget that they also have a price when it comes to the intellectual growth of a society. The training of a child should be carried out in a way that it should encourage and inspire them to question with reason and logic. It also enhances the evaluation skills of children in a critical way where they can decide better for themselves in the later part of their lives.
On the other hand, if we keep telling our children these myths in a superstitious way, we might not help them at all to be active members of society instead develop a sluggish behaviour of accepting things without judging rationally at first hand. It is about high time that we must admit the highly adverse bearings of these folklores related to natural phenomenon on the brains of younger generation.
We must also take this responsibility individually to train our children with the best possible knowledge we have instead of carrying on with centuries old tales that have no basis and are devoid of logic. lunar eclipse www.pakpositive.com