Why are so many Islamic schools lacking in qualified teachers, cirriculum; etc?
Answer
Islamic schools, in many places, have started from scratch with community support. It is for this reason that you see the schools starting out slowly in getting qualified teachers. Most schools may have one or two experienced and qualified teachers, but it is not technically obligatory for private schools to have certified teachers.
Having said that, it is even more complicated to find committed teachers that are serious about Islam as well as being qualified and experienced teachers. As far as cirriculum is concerned, most of the schools did not start out institutionalized. Most of the schools started out with each community putting forth a cirriculum that reflected what they had learned, especially schools taht were put together by the immigrant community.
At this time, there are codified cirricula that have been put together in South Africa, Nigeria, Britian and even here in America. These schools are lacking in other things. For example, some of these schools lack gymnasiums or other facilities. Many of the schools that were bought have all the necessities that a school needs. However, some schools do not.
What it comes down to is the amount of committed individuals each respective school has coupled with the amount of resources that each school has to firstly purchase property that is either an already fully functioning school or property that can be used to build an acceptional school. Along with that, funds are needed to get qualified teachers. Some communities don't have the resources to get everything that is needed at once and have to build slowly. In the past 5 years, there has been a raised awareness and drive in the Muslim community here in America to put together excellent schools.
Currently, we are trying to immobilize the Islamic schools throughout the country so that schools throughout the country can have all the necessary tools to give the youth excellent facilities to learn in. As a personal reflection, I have noticed that most of the communities in America have established masajid and other important necessities that a Muslim community needs. I think that the communities will soon shift their focus to Islamic schools and academics and all the resources that currently exist will be inculcated into the schools.
Name
Zahra
- United States
Profession
Question
Do you think that Islamic schools or home schooling is better for young children at this time?
Answer
It depends. In very small communities where schools are not an option, then homeschooling is the solution. However, in communities where the resources to build Islamic schools are available, then parents should put their kids into the Islamic schools. The reason for this is that the children who are homeschooled may miss out on the social process of education.
Name
Aisha
- United States
Profession
Question
What is the necessity of having Islamic schools?
Answer
The first thing is to fulfill our first objective in life, which is education. It should be balanced to reflect the character of a balanced muslim spiritually, psychologically, mentally; etc.
The second reason is, that in Islam, that practicing the faith requires some basic knowledge, that the Prophet (SAAWS) referred to as obligatory upon every Muslim. It is important for us to prepare these children to be able to raise their own children with the proper Islamic understanding and character.
The third point is, that if we are looking into the future of Islam in this country, we have to start preparing the generations now and soon to come to be prepared to be the future leaders of this ummah.
Fourthly, there is a vast knowledge that Allah has given to us that we need to prepare the future generations to have (Chapter 31:27 Al-Qur'an). We want to provide our youth with the arena and opportunities in that arena to reestablish ourselves as the leaders on the earth in knowledge (Chapter 34:6 Al-Qur'an). For example, there is a book called "Human Development As Described in the Qur'an & the Sunnah: A Correlation with Modern Embryology" by A.A. Zindani, M.A. Ahmed, M.B. Tobin, and T.V.N. Persaud. This text will help us to answer some of the questions dealing with important current issues, such as human genome research and it opens our eyes to the potential that Muslims have to promote scientific research from a Qur'anic perspective. There are many books like this that need to have a generation to research and put forth scholarship dealing with them.
The Islamic schools wil provide the motivation and the environment for a collective effort to further promote this kind of research.
Name
Adil
- Canada
Profession
Question
I have noticed that in Islamic schools, the children that attend are not always the perfect example of an ideal muslim youth. What can be done with your children if you fear that they will be negatively effected by their classmates in the private Islamic school?
Answer
1) The children in the schools reflect what we have in the homes. They bring their character and outlook from home into the Islamic schools.
2) There is no question that if you compare the behavior of children in Islamic schools to that of public schools, the difference is night and day. This is because in the public schools, the idea of morality and upright character is missing. In the Islamic schools, you may have children that are not perfect, but they come out better in the end through the right understanding being put forth for them.
In the Islamic schools, you have children that may start the Islamic school from say, grade 5. They bring all that they learned from the public school with them into the Islamic school. Children are children and they effect each other. Therefore, the solution to this problem is to have strict discipline policies that have to been agreed upon or at least consented to by the parents. The second thing is that people have to deal with these things carefully. Three, we should have parental counseling so that all the children will be dealt with properly. Sometimes, it is the parents that are the problem, not the kids. The last point is that children are children. The least unexpected child can come with the most unexpected act. Take for example, Adam's (AAS) son killed his other son, Yusuf's brothers lied to their father, Nuh's son rejected him. These are examples of this point.
Name
Hassan
- United States
Profession
Question
Do you think there is an important difference in having Islamic schools that put together more traditionally-based cirriculum versus perhaps what could be called a more modern approach to learning?
Answer
The idea of having an "Islamic school" means different things to different people. For example, to some communities, the idea of an Islamic school is actually a Muslim school. What this means is that a group of parents got together and decided that they wanted to have their children in a Muslim environment, so they put together a school to educate their children regardless of their commitment to Islam.
To others, an Islamic school means having an enviroment where the cirriculum has all the various fields and sciences integrated together, educating the children under the preceps of Islam.
Lastly, there are schools that are specialized in the Islamiyyat, such as a school that specializes in the memmorization of the Qur'an. These schools are another example of having an Islamic school.
Therefore, the term means different things to different people. This is why there is an important difference is having schools in having schools that have a more traditional base versus a more modern approach. However, all of these schools provide our children with a healthy environment to grow.
Name
Sarab
-
Profession
Teacher
Question
If Muslim communities around the country are crying out to build strong muslim schools, then why is it so hard to develop an Islamic school with a good ISLAMIC background. Currently, I am teaching at an Islamic school, but its very political to some degree. How can a school avoid being political and stick to Islamic foundations?
Answer
I did answer this question before in reference to different communities have different backgrounds. Sometimes the situation is that people have a lack of confidence in Islamic schools because of a lack of experience in that area. For example, an area may not have any Islamic school that has a densely populated muslim community. A group may step forward and start a school. The majority of the community may hesitate to enroll their children until they see that the school has taken off. What happens then is that once they see a model for them to follow, communities often start putting together many schools that follow the leader. In Toronto, we started with one school. Now, there are now 10 schools that were put together based upon the success of that first school. Even in America, the number of schools have grown 6 or 7 times. It is on the agenda of almost every community once they start putting together their communities.
About the politics, running any institutions, especially when you have people functioning on different levels, you cannot expect to aviod at least some level of politics. Therefore, to reduce the negative aspect of politics (because not all politics are bad) is to clearly define the responsibilities of each participant in this school. These branches should be separate yet working together. The problem starts when people start interfering in other people's domain of responsibility. I sit in an internation board titled the International Board for Educational Research and Resources (IBERR). We have prepared a series of handbooks for Islamic schools. One of them have is titled "A Handbook For Founders of Islamic Schoools" which is used to clearly define these various relationships.
Name
Abdul Saboor
- United States
Profession
Question
I have some experience with weekend schools. So I will give some observations;
1. Sometimes there is no clear objectives of the founders? As if it is sometime enough to say we have a school
2. There is no quality control on curriculum and teachers.
3. There is no clear criteria in the recruitment process of teachers .
4. There is a need to continuously train our teachers about class management, instuction methods for different subjects. This is usually not a priority in some schools.
5. Funding is a problem. I think the main thing to address here is to keep communities aware of the figures we are spending a ginst what we really charge and then involve the parents/community in getting back the balance.
6. In addition to the above the question comes who is your target and if the fees are affordable by 30% of the families then we are saying to the 70% Allah may help you. So , there is somekind of selectivity. So, trhere is necessity to establish some kind of scholarship system to enroll at least who are smart but cannot afford it.
In this case we have to be careful when addressing our communities that our schools cannot enroll all the muslims in the area.i.e. we need to be realistic.
7. Regarding facilities it very important to work with local counties to utilize some of the facilities.
8. Some incentives has to established to say thank you for the excel teachers as well as kids, besides the admin staff.
9 Volunteering should be encouraged through clear scope of help requested.
I would you to comment in these areas, may be I am mistaken or over reacting
Answer
All what you said might be true because each school works at different levels. There are different circumstances.
The center here focuses on collecting information and material from the various schools. We take it and process it and then send it back out to the schools. By doing this, we can put together a lot of valuable information for the future. Also, we started having a summit for schools in Kansas City that focused on putting together the concerns that reflect what you have posted in your question, then maximizing the best of everything. The next step is to call together all the school principals to start deciding on a collective cirricuclum; etc.
As far as volunteer work, the situation varies. Because our schools are not ideal private schools in every sense of the word (Our Islamic schools are very community oriented). Therefore, volunteer work is very vital to the existence to the schools. However, it should be carefully and clearly organized because sometimes the volunteers try to interfere in the running of the school. This is why the relationships in the schools must be clearly defined.
