3. Suggestions and Solutions

- The parents play an important role in the education of a child, because "the personality and development of a child will improve in proportion to the improvement of this role and will be perturbed in proportion to the perturbation of the latter." (Hassan 1970, p.141).

- To make the educational role of the parents yield good results and fulfil what is expected of it, we should plan for it on sound scientific bases and provide it with the human and material resources, the programs and the means necessary for its success (Torki 1980, Abdelfattah 1990, Al Korchi 1986).

- These are two models of the kind of conclusions, recommendations and suggestions with which the majority of studies reports and papers on parental education in Muslim countries end. While remaining far from these models, which are mostly prisoners of the visions and conceptions which inspire them to the extent that they are hardly in circulation or put to practice because of their immersion in sea of principles, public conjectures and imaginary exhortations and advices; I think that it is necessary to close this paper with a series of suggestions and solutions which I sum up in the following points :

3.1 Equality in Terms of Means and Opportunities

All parents aspire to the success of their children in every domain of school and family life. This is a socio-cultural value which I have tried to highlight in this study through putting emphasis on the importance of the intellectual and educational training resulting from the educational practices of the parents. Imparting knowledge and upbringing are two interlocked elements, for education is some kind of engineering composed of "methods adopted to help the maturation of a child his psychological opening and his acquisition of knowledge, of the different types of behaviours and of the values characteristic to his social environment" (Holyat et Delphine 1973, p.110).

I have dwelt in an earlier section of this study on the nature of the relationship between parental education and school education, because  I want to stress the effective impact of the educational intervention of the parents, even on school results themselves. That intervention which is still timid, so as not to say inexistent, as far as the majority of parents in Muslim societies are concerned. This is the reason why I think that the adoption of a training program for these parents in the domain of their educational duties constitutes at present one of the most urgent matters which should be dealt with through the taking of exceptional measures, for the problem is of paramount importance as the future of the whole Arab-Islamic culture depends on it.

3.2 Educational Responsibilities

There is a noticeable difference between a person-parent and the person who behaves as a parent. Parental competence mainly means a series of educational obligations and requirements necessary for the development and education of a child. Therefore, its sense  should not be restricted, as it is the case in our societies, to the role assigned to the natural or biological parents. Parenthood, or the responsibility of the parents to educate their children, is not a minor or simple operation; on the contrary, it is the most decisive operation and responsibility, one can think of, for any  society. Accordingly, any neglect in giving it the attention it deserves will result in huge problems. This is a question that necessitates putting emphasis on two essential ideas : the first is that parental competence should be considered in Muslim countries as the responsibility of society as a whole; the second idea lies in the urgency of the reformation of the state of this parental competence and its conditions through studies and surveys whose objective is to collect the necessary information and data for the implementation of any potential strategy in this domain.

3.3 Educational Trainings

To say that today's child-education is different from the one adopted a generation or two ago has become commonplace; for everyone knows how quick is the pace of the development of ideas and the shakiness of practices. To illustrate this, it may suffice to mention how it is common in Muslim countries to lay the blame on the family for all the bad effects and negative consequences of education. It is considered as the source of all kinds of problems and crises and all sorts of deviations and disturbances. However, what is shameful about saying that the family is not the cause; for there are various causes among which are : poor conditions and material neediness, ignorance and cultural paucity, and psychological and pedagogical shortages, all of which the majority of families and through them the majority of parents in Muslim societies suffer from. It is true that many facts, as has been mentioned earlier, assert that the educational practices of the parents play a central role in the development and education of a child, which means that the parents' living and professional conditions determine the type of these practices. It is also true that any compensatory, educational interventions, without a real change in the living conditions of the huge number of poor families in Muslim countries, will be doomed to failure. Therefore, the urgent intervention that should be made for the benefit of such families does not lie in rendering them aware of the need for the flexibility of their educational practices and submitting their children to compensatory educational measures; on the contrary, what is needed first of all is providing them with the financial means necessary for a decent life where social inequalities and all aspects of poverty, ignorance, misery and vagrancy are non-existent. After such an intervention, the governments can guide the parents and render them aware of their roles as follows :

3.3.1 The Profession of Parenthood

Actually, the "profession" of parenthood is not taught anywhere in Muslim societies. It is just a responsibility assumed by every father and every mother; worse than this, the lessons and programs related to family life and the child's development and education are most of the time ridiculous in Muslim countries, either because they are non-existent, or because of their low level and meagre financial rewards - if they ever exist. This is so in spite of  the fact that, in our opinion, good parental competence is the primary mission that these societies will have to deal with. While American secondary schools provide lessons on child's psychology attended by small children who learn how to become parents in the future, Muslim countries don't have such experiments which are part of a purposeful, educational strategy whose aim is to render future parents aware of their educational roles and pedagogical responsibilities.

3.3.2 The Strategy of Making Parents Aware of their Roles

I am sure that at present the percentage of parents who are aware of the importance of their educational role in Muslim countries is very small, indeed. This is what lays emphasis on the fact that educating them through rendering them fully aware of the situation has become urgent to such an extent that it is necessary to shun the discourse of exhortations and advices and stick to the discourse founded on how to come up with new strategies, consisting in providing an appropriate environment which will motivate the child, as far as material, cultural and behavioral aspects are concerned, to fashion the development of his personality and achieve his social integration. The best that can be done in this respect is to provide various  instructive materials and means for the parents so as to make them aware of the importance and gravity of their educational role.