The Book Foundation
Not for publication or reproduction either in whole or in part in its present form, except with the permission of the author.
The ideas in this paper constitute an elaboration of some of the founding principles of the Book Foundation Education Project and will be systematically applied in the forthcoming Book Foundation programs.
1. Islamic Education: Educating the Whole Person
What we are witnessing in the state education system in Britain, and no doubt also in other state education systems in the Western world and in other countries which mimic them, is the progressive destruction of the concept and practice of a holistic system of education - that is, a broad and balanced system of education based on an understanding of the full potential of the human being and a system of pedagogy designed to awaken and develop that potential.
This has been a gradual process of attrition, constriction and ultimate strangulation, culminating in a sterile, standardised, bureaucratic system which stifles creativity and demoralises students and teachers alike. We see the triumph of quantification, league tables, and the proliferation of an oppressive and soulless target-driven regime derived from alien corporate models and control-obsessed managerialism. We see unremitting assessment of uninspiring objectives and dangerously narrow prescriptive content.
What is behind this is an agenda geared almost exclusively to a utilitarian concept of education, a reduction of truly holistic education to a narrow band of skills for the workplace. This a concept of education geared to economic performance, competition and efficiency above all else. The British Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) White Paper, Schools: Achieving Success gives the game away in the first paragraph of the Introduction: "The success of our children at school is crucial to the economic health and social cohesion of the country, as well as to their own life chances and personal fulfilment" (my italics). Notice the priorities which are placed first in this sentence.
It was the promise of "Education, Education, Education" as the "number one" priority which was one of the main reasons why the New Labour Party of Tony Blair was elected to government in the UK in 1997. Now, five years on, and with New Labour re-elected to a second term, Tony Blair has reiterated his commitment to education. But what kind of education? In an exclusive interview reported in the Times Educational Supplement of 5 July 2002, Blair states that "Education is and remains the absolute number one priority for the country because without a quality education system and an educated workforce, we cannot succeed economically" (my italics). The real priority is clear, and it is the same one (economic power) as that which governs educational policy in the White Paper.
In his publisher's note to New York State Teacher of the Year John Taylor Gatto's challenging book, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, David H. Albert refers to the words of the social philosopher Hannah Arendt that "The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any".
Gatto's indictment of the assumptions and structures which underlie modern state schooling in the USA exposes the same deadening utilitarian agenda which informs British educational policy, an agenda geared to turning children into cogs in an economic machine, children who are dependent, conforming, materialistic, and lacking in curiosity, imagination, self-knowledge and powers of reflection. This is the modern equivalent of the worst of Victorian education geared to the production of a regimented, empire-serving army of uncritical ledger clerks and petty officials.
Supporting the utilitarian agenda in the UK, and also fuelled by pressure to do well in league tables of performance, is a debilitating testing regime perhaps even more excessive than the national obsession with standardised testing in the USA. A national UK newspaper, reporting recent research by Cambridge University for the National Union of Teachers, refers to a testing "insanity" which is gripping primary schools in the UK. Almost half the weekly timetable is now taken up by mathematics and English lessons and thousands of children as young as seven are being tested every week on their reading. The disproportionate emphasis on the teaching and perpetual testing of a narrow band of literacy and numeracy skills, which are deemed to be essential for economic survival, is taking the heart and soul out of education.
The researchers conclude that "the amount of time for teaching each day does not allow for a broad and balanced curriculum", and creative subjects such as art, drama and music are being increasingly squeezed out of the classroom. In response to the report, John Bangs, Head of Education of the National Union of Teachers, said: "What is shocking about the report is the extent to which arts have been eliminated from primary schools. Tests and targets are wiping out pupil and teacher creativity." In some schools, art is now dropped from the curriculum in the last year of primary school (at age 10-11).
History at A-level (university entrance standard in the UK) is now regarded as such a narrow, limited and impoverished historical education that Cambridge University no longer requires undergraduate historians to have it. The head of history at Latymer School in North London described the A-Level course as "history for the MTV generation - know a little but keep on repeating it".
A joint Royal Society and Joint Mathematical Council working group reported in July 2000 that the teaching of mathematics was increasingly being reduced to nothing but numbers, and that the death of geometry, the study of shape and space, in mathematics education could only be to the detriment of visual and spatial intelligence. It takes little insight to see in this entirely quantitative approach a verification of René Guénon's vision of the "Reign of Quantity" as indicative of the profound crisis in contemporary life and thought.
A Geographical Association survey has found that "geography has been dropped as a subject specialism by more than one quarter of initial teacher-training institutions". Humanities simply do not have the status of core subjects such as English, mathematics and science, so "young teachers who want promotion will probably focus on core subjects".
As if the marginalisation and impoverishment of the arts and humanities and the death of geometry were not enough, a survey by the Association of Language Learning suggests that more than 1,000 schools in the UK are planning to drop foreign language lessons for pupils over 14. In February 2002, the German, Italian and Spanish ambassadors had spoken out in an interview with The Independent about the "sad" standard of language teaching in the UK.
In the recent flurry of debate about the pros and cons of faith schools, Faisal Bodi has argued a strong case for Muslim schools, but I have to question the emphasis in his contention that two well-funded Muslim schools in London have turned out to be "factories for university graduates and professionals".
This is of course meant to be a compliment to those schools, which are indeed models in many ways. Now, no one would deny that there is a pressing need for Muslim graduates and professionals, and those who have attained to this status deserve congratulation, but I have spent most of my working life combating the idea that schools should be "factories" geared only to examination results. We need graduates and professionals who are not only successful in their specialized fields and able to advance their own careers, but also creative, well-educated and well-rounded in the broadest sense, with concomitant cultural, moral, emotional, and spiritual development.
In the face of an impoverished curriculum and its associated regime of perpetual testing, it is hardly surprising that "growing numbers of young teachers are quitting the profession because they think schools are becoming results factories, where heads insist targets are met regardless of the human cost".
We need to be very clear that, as a recent MORI poll has reported, the main reasons given for parents supporting faith schools in the UK are: a desire for their children to be educated in the same values and beliefs as their family (35%); good discipline (28%); and religious ethos (27%). Only 10% cited good exam results. Interestingly, and surprisingly, this partly reflects the reasons cited by parents for sending their children to independent schools (reasons strong enough to motivate many of them to make huge personal sacrifices to pay high fees). In a survey carried out by IAPS (Incorporated Association of Preparatory Schools in the UK) discipline is given as the foremost reason, but other important reasons include small classes and a broad and balanced curriculum, including the survival of those humanities subjects under threat in the state system, resources and facilities for sports, a wide choice of extra-curricular activities, and opportunities for cultural development, including music and art.
You would think that highly motivated and successful parents would place examination results as a top priority, but they do not. In the case of independent schools in the UK, it may be that they take high academic standards for granted. The gap in academic standards between independent schools and state schools is very wide: in those independent schools which take the government tests at age 11, for example, over 95% of children reach the required level in English, mathematics and science, whereas in state schools it is barely 70%. My own experience at a leading independent school in England confirms that their 13 year-olds were generally two or three years ahead of children of equivalent age in the average state school).
It is also vital to note the differences between reasons given by parents for sending their children to faith schools or independent schools. While both groups give discipline as a key factor, the faith school parents emphasise family values and beliefs and religious ethos and identity, whereas the independent school parents emphasise breadth of education, including sport, extra-curricular activities, cultural expression, and humanities. The best Islamic education will ensure that this breadth of education is added to their ethical and spiritual appeal. Interestingly, a recent report showed that young people who have creative hobbies (e.g. playing a musical instrument, collecting things, model making etc.) are happier than those who do not; they suffer from less depression and engage in less crime than those who can only occupy themselves by watching television, playing computer games, or "hanging around" outside with their friends, so there is a clear connection between extra-curricular fulfilment and the maintenance of ethical values and happy families.
The best Islamic education must encompass the two traditional categories of knowledge, and the hierarchical relationship between them: revealed knowledge; attained through the religious sciences; and acquired knowledge, attained through the rational, intellectual and philosophical sciences. In the worldview of tawhid (Divine Unity), knowledge is holistic and there is no compartmentalisation of knowledge into religious and secular spheres. Both types of knowledge contribute to the strengthening of faith, the former through a careful study of the revealed Word of God and the latter through a meticulous, systematic study of the world of man and nature.
The perfection of the Islamic revelation embraces all the diverse aspects of the life of man and roots all of them in the Unity and Comprehensiveness of God. As Seyyed Hossein Nasr explains, Islamic education is concerned not only with the instruction and training of the mind and the transmission of knowledge (ta`lim) but also with the education of the whole being of men and women (tarbiyah). The teacher is therefore not only a muallim, a 'transmitter of knowledge' but also a murabbi, a 'trainer of souls and personalities'. "The Islamic educational system never divorced the training of the mind from that of the soul." Islamic education ideally aims to provide a milieu for the total and balanced development of every student in every sphere of learning - spiritual, moral, imaginative, intellectual, cultural, aesthetic, emotional and physical - directing all these aspects towards the attainment of a conscious relationship with God, the ultimate purpose of man's life on earth.
Syed Muhammad Naguib al-Attas prefers to regard Islamic education as ta'dib, a word related to adab. He defines this term in its true sense (before its restriction and debasement of meaning to "a context revolving around cultural refinement and social etiquette") as "discipline of body, mind and soul" which enables man to recognise and acknowledge "his proper place in the human order" in relation to his self, his family and his community. This order is "arranged hierarchically in degrees (darajat) of excellence based on Qur'anic criteria of intelligence, knowledge and virtue (ihsan)". In this sense, adab is "the reflection of wisdom (hikmah)" and "the spectacle (mashhad) of justice (`adl)."
Within the dual nature of man's own self, the adab of his lower animal soul (al-nafs al-hayawaniyyah) is to recognise and acknowledge its subordinate position in relation to his higher rational soul (al-nafs al-natiqah). In relation to God, mankind has made a covenant (mithaq) and recognised and acknowledged God as his Lord (al-Rabb). His adab in relation to his Lord is to recognise and acknowledge that Lordship and to behave in such a way as to be worthy of approaching nearer to Him. He is motivated by taqwa (consciousness and awe of God) and ihsan, defined by the Prophet as "to adore God as though you see Him, and if you do not see Him, He nonetheless sees you." This spiritual dimension of adab is an "Islamisation" of the original meaning, 'an invitation to a banquet', where the host would be a man of distinction and standing and the guests would be worthy of the honour of invitation by virtue of their refined character and upbringing, expressed in their speech, conduct and manners.
Al-Attas claims that ta'dib is a superordinate concept encompassing not only, 'instruction' (ta`lim) and the idea of 'nurturing', 'rearing', 'nourishing' or 'fostering' (tarbiyah) - i.e. the two elements idenitified by Nasr above - but also 'knowledge' (`ilm). Al-Attas maintains that the coining of the word tarbiyah (which is actually not found in any of the great Arabic lexicons) reflected the Western concept of 'education', which is derived from Latin educare/education and connected to educere (English 'educe', 'draw out or develop from a latent or potential state'). Such education, in al-Attas's view, is "intellectual and moral training geared to physical and material ends pertaining to secular man in his society and state" and cannot therefore describe Islamic education.
The semantic field of tarbiyah also includes minerals, plants and animals (animal husbandry, for example, could be a form of tarbiyah), whereas education in an Islamic sense can only apply to man, who alone of all species is endowed with 'aql. Al-Attas also points out that the concept of 'possession' is implied by tarbiyah in the sense that parents exercise tarbiyah on their offspring and in the sense of 'borrowed possession' in the term rabba applied to men. Only God is al-Rabb, Lord, and, as The Prophet said, "My Lord educated (addaba) me, and so made my education most excellent."
Although al-Attas claims that tarbiyah is subsumed under the over-arching concept of ta'dib, it seems to me important not to marginalize tarbiyah as a fundamental principle of Islamic education. Where al-Attas sees Western contamination in its convergence with the Latin sense of educere ('drawing out or developing from a latent or potential state'), this sense is central to the spiritual dimension of the concept of education developed by the Book Foundation and is elaborated in section 15 below ("The Spiritual Life").
There is also an inherent contradiction in including tarbiyah within the greater explanatory power of ta'dib and yet, at the same time, regarding it as a defective concept "tinged with modernism". Defining Islamic education so strictly in terms of ta'dib and its imperative to "know one's proper place" in the hierarchical order could lead to an under-valuation of two vital aspects of education which are enshrined in the concept of tarbiyah: its "nurturing" function and its role in "drawing out" latent potential.
In a recent paper on the application of religious models to educational administration , Aref Atari has shown how the implementation of both the Christian model of Service-Stewardship" and the Islamic "Khalifah" model "entails a radical transformation in management, thought and practice" away from a hierarchically organised bureaucratic Western model to a what he calls a "caring and sharing spirit". In this climate, trust, love, sympathy, mercy, cooperation, tolerance and altruism are at least as important as efficiency, effectiveness, competition, professional ambition and achievement. The outcome is an organisation which is both "virtue-based and excellence-oriented". Shurah-based management, empowering and working with others, replaces a top-down approach which manipulates, controls and works through others.
Al-Attas himself points out that the "qualitative emphasis of tarbiyah is mercy (rahmah) rather than knowledge (`ilm), whereas the emphasis of ta'dib is knowledge, rather than mercy. We prefer to effect a balance between knowledge and mercy, so that neither is emphasised over the other, for just as mercy without knowledge can foster weakness, delusion, ineffectiveness and foolishness, so knowledge without mercy can lead to egotism, self-aggrandisement, arrogance, intolerance and high-handedness.
A holistic curriculum also aims to reconcile conventional and stereotyped oppositions such as art and science; creativity and rigour; analytic and synthetic styles of learning; logic and intuition; memorisation and comprehension; collaboration and competition; goal-directed learning and exploratory, discovery or investigative learning; innovation and tradition; teaching methods which facilitate learning and those which direct learning; and so on.
Guided by the need for balance, moderation, and harmony, and the existence of complementary pairs of opposites as the underlying fabric of everything in the created universe, it seeks to avoid a vested interest in any one-sided model, paradigm, position conceptual "package", or ephemeral fashion in educational philosophy or methodology. Education is too important a field to be left to the adversarial politics of competing model-builders, for all such models are limited and conditioned human constructions. An Islamic education system must be deeply rooted in a metaphysics derived from the comprehensive and unifying vision of the Qur'an.
It is therefore important to ensure that the sphere of religious studies is not compartmentalised and cut off from knowledge in the humanities and in the natural and social sciences, which are necessary for it to be a meaningful guide in contemporary life. It is also vital that a false and misleading dichotomy is not set up between a type of education which prepares students for "the life of this world" and that which prepares students for the "Hereafter". This is a recipe for a deeply divided mentality and a troubled soul. Concentration on religious studies alone leads to an imbalance and an unintegrated educational system which does not give man the knowledge and skills necessary for engaging in meaningful activities in this life, which, after all, must determine his station in the Hereafter.
Furthermore, there is an underlying unity between all branches of education and all the human faculties and activities involved in learning, and this unity needs to be reflected in an integrated, holistic and multi-disciplinary curriculum which does not draw rigid artificial lines between different subjects and disciplines. In practice, much of modern education is still based on a machine-age model of separate subject areas which encourage a fragmented view of learning. In the absence of a comprehensive and unifying spiritual perspective, it is inevitable that little more than lip-service is paid to the desirability of cross-curricular themes and links.
Nevertheless, al-Attas has stated that, in effect, secular Western education systems, with their core curriculum, are more well rounded than Islamic curricula, because they have the goal of producing an educated man or woman who is able to think and write effectively; to have a critical appreciation of the ways in which one gains knowledge and understands the universe, society and himself; to be informed of other cultures and other times; to have some understanding and experience concerning ethical and moral problems; and to have attained some depth in a particular field of knowledge.
Another imperative is to realise that we need more than a coterie of professionals and academics in a narrow range of specialisations - i.e. law, management, finance, medicine, computers, academe - the ones that traditionally confer status or high salaries and which seem especially attractive to young Muslims keen to advance their careers. There is a pressing need for people who can engage in an open and creative way with the greater "community of communities". We need visionary thinkers at the cutting edge of discourses which address problems and solutions of universal significance for all communities, who can shake off the yoke of academic jargon to make their ideas accessible, and who can reformulate traditional ideas in fresh, modern language; we need more teachers, writers, presenters. We need environmentalists, people concerned about the planet, not just their own back yards. We need creative artists in every discipline, people who can reclaim beauty for Islam, and express the beauty of Islam for all mankind.
If we dislike hostility to Islam in the media, then we should be working as journalists, writers and commentators to present the best face of Islam to a public hungry for enlightenment; we need more Muslim voices who can match the quality of comment coming from many non-Muslims, or from people who have no faith at all, but may nevertheless have a profound sense of natural justice.
If we dislike the misuse of creativity in the West, as for example in the entertainment and advertising industries and in contemporary art, then we should be mastering these media so that we can produce more uplifting material to nourish the human soul. We need to foster the creative spirit in every possible way, not only in obviously creative subjects like music, drama and art, but in every subject and in every activity.
It would be a great pity if Muslim schools, in their desire for recognition and their anxiety to be seen to subscribe to the performance culture of "success", simply reproduce the innate flaws in the worst of the secular education system. The best schools have never succumbed to these flaws in the first place. They include the majority of independent schools which have been exempt from the statutory Key Stage testing regime and which have been able to pick and choose from the unremitting welter of government initiatives and resist the tide of bureaucracy which has engulfed and demoralised teachers. Muslim schools should not be seduced by the government conception of "excellence" which often has little to do with the conception of excellence (ihsan) as understood in the Islamic tradition.
The danger is that faith schools, including Muslim schools, will succumb to purely pragmatic and utilitarian aims in the service of national "development", rather than base the education they offer on an integrated, Islamic vision of education, in which horizontal and vertical dimensions intersect, and in which the whole curriculum reflects an understanding of the true nature of the human being and the full extent of human capacities and faculties. We already see Islamic institutions of higher education which are overemphasizing the applied sciences over the social sciences and humanities (e.g. the call for the 60:40 ratio for natural and applied sciences to social science and humanities in Malaysian universities, as well as the establishment of specialized technology universities). Such imbalance puts national economic development goals over individual human development, and regards the educational process as a factory for producing human "products" and "resources" to drive up the pace of economic growth and national "success".
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