We give children our best hours for grades: Religion gets what is left

After school, traffic and coaching, religious learning is left to the most exhausted hour of the day — then we wonder why faith feels like obligation rather than a space of belonging.

In thousands of Dhaka households, a typical day for children runs the same course, and it explains why deen ‘religion’ so often lands at the very end of it, when there is nothing left to give.

The children leave home early, often before 8AM. By the time they finish school around half past one and return home pushing through the traffic, it is already past lunchtime.

By 4PM, they are already at the lesson with a tutor. So, when it is finally time for the Quran recital and salat with hujur around, children are exhausted from a long day.

They recite as they yawn from tiredness, and the parents feel satisfied that deen has been attended to.

What the children actually absorb, without anyone intending it, is a lesson no lesson plan contains: that Islam is what happens after everything else is finished, in whatever energy is left over.

Consider our households. The joint family that once had a dadi teaching surahs at bedtime are rarer now — she is in Cumilla; the family, in Bashundhara.

A 2025 study of 420 Dhaka schoolchildren aged six to fourteen found that among those in English-medium schools, daily screen time averaged 5.46 hours, with 56 percent of the full sample unsupervised.

A preliminary 2026 study of Dhaka’s SSC examinees found roughly three in four showing depressive symptoms by the time results were published, a finding that still awaits peer review.

Into this backdrop, we insert religious teachings as an afterthought — then wonder why so many, by university, treat namaz as a formality abandoned in the hall room.

The reason is worth stating plainly.

Children sustain religious practice not because they were instructed thoroughly, but because they feel secure — in their parents, and in Allah. Obedience without that bond holds only as long as someone supervises.

Our tradition understood this: knowledge passes through “suhbah”, companionship, not instruction alone.

The Prophet (peace be upon him) said, “He is not of us who does not show mercy to our young.”

The instruction to teach salah from age seven is paired with patience until ten. Surah Luqman, our clearest model of parenting, opens each instruction with “ya bunayya”, O my dear son, before mentioning prayer.

Our children meet the reverse order: rules first, warmth later, if at all.

And correction mostly arrives through the cane. The High Court declared corporal punishment in schools unlawful in 2011, yet enforcement remains uneven, and many parents consider corporal punishment as a sign that the hujur is serious.

A child struck while learning surah al-Fatiha learns what to associate with it.
This is where school structure matters more than parents realise.

A family weighs familiar options: English medium, English version, Bangla medium, Alia and Qawmi madrasa.

The general routes leave the deen to that seven o’clock hujur; the madrasa route raises fair worries about competitiveness. Parents must choose which half of their child’s future to prioritise.

A new category of schools is emerging in Dhaka that refuses the choice between raising a good Muslim and preparing a doctor or engineer.

These new Islamic schools (notably, in locations such as Uttara, Bashundhara, Khilkhet) teach the English version of the Bangladeshi national curriculum, essentially following the same syllabus, the same public examination processes, the same pathway to medical and engineering admission, while blending Qur’anic Arabic, salah and adab into the ordinary school schedule.

The key point is this blend. When children read the Qur’an in the same building, in the same daylight hours as mathematics and science, Arabic becomes an ordinary subject rather than an evening imposition.

Salah is prayed in jamaat with classmates at Zuhr, not alone under supervision at night. Adab is modelled by teachers all day, not only during a thirty-minute lecture.

Children do not learn Islam and then, separately, everything else — they practise their deen while learning.

The dividend for parents is the evening itself — no second shift, no tired children coaxed through recitation.

The schedule is built on this premise at Al Ehsan Academy in Khilkhet, where this writer serves as the principal.

Parents evaluating any school might ask: is my child learning deen while being alert, or while depleted of energy?

The recovered evening is where the rest happens. Pray in jamaat as a household.

Advice about mosque attendance usually assumes sons, since most of our mosques still lack a women’s facility — a failing our masjid committees should address.

But a father leading Maghrib at home, his wife and daughters praying behind him, teaches congregational prayer to every child in the house, not only the sons.

Read together at bedtime instead of spending time on a screen.

Ask how the children are before correcting them. Speak of Allah’s mercy as often as His punishment: a child who hears mainly of azab grows anxious, one who hears of rahmah grows attached.

None of this argues for lower expectations. But faith bolted onto a tired child falls off at the first opportunity.

Our generation asked whether our children were learning enough.

The better question is whether they were awake for it, and whether they felt loved while they learnt.

(The writer: Principal, Al Ehsan Academy, Khilkhet, Dhaka)