We often get to know of incidents where women are suppressed, harassed, raped and even murdered by their close friends, family members and relatives. Recently, a man allegedly murdered his wife, a Canadian national, in Islamabad.
The incident has been roundly condemned on social media, with some demanding that the culprit should be hanged till death. There is no dearth of people who believe that the person is responsible for the crime and deserves the ultimate punishment as per the law. Within the context of the incident, the argument seems to carry much weight, and, hopefully, the court concerned will decide the matter in due course of time.
The malaise, however, is not limited to one or two incidents. As the saying goes, the devil is in the detail.
One such cause behind such ghastly crimes is the fact that educational institutions pay more attention towards developing students’ intelligent quotient (IQ) while neglecting the equally critical emotional quotient (EQ).
Thomas More once said that one of the “greatest problems of our time is that many are schooled but few are educated”. This was perhaps for our educational institutions where one is schooled how to solve the quadratic equation but never educated how to solve the ‘anger equation’.
The institutions, right from the early childhood, focus on developing students’ knowledge related to a particular subject or set of subjects, and reward them in the form of grades.
Unfortunately, they have failed to develop students’ social and emotional skills that may help in managing their and others’ emotions in times of conflict and chaos.
The individuals become good students, but not good human beings. They attain academic skills, but have no idea what to do when one is angry.
This is not to absolve the culprits of their ghastly crimes, but the system has to take some portion of the blame as well.
IMRAN ALI GADEHI
QAMBAR-SHAHDADKOT
