In the name of God, Most Merciful, Most Kind.
And so, with a few rapid words, I jumped over the divide that had slowly been closing, like two cliffs inching back towards the other after a shake-up.
"Um, and what if someone is interested in teaching here," I asked the friendly woman, Irish to the bone and yet swathed in a love for the Eastern culture she had adopted almost two decades ago and for the place she had called home for just as long.
"Teaching?" she asked as she stood in the balmy office, bright with yellow paint and rainbow-filled bookshelves.
"You know, sometimes my friends are interested in teaching," I found myself trying to get out as my kids tumbled and stumbled around me, wanting to play with children who had gone home for the last time this year, a few weeks ago.
"I'm interested in teaching," I finally heard myself say. "Oh, okay, yes, we are looking for teachers, what is your experience?"
Well, I had taught in Sunday school for a year, and there was that time I helped out at a summer camp. And besides, I'm a mom who was about to homeschool her kids so I have been reading up on the issue (when I pull myself away from politics and community news).
The woman, a teacher at the school for fifteen years before being asked to head up the KG program, kindly guided me around the wide space, framed with narrower classrooms where children between the ages of 2 and five would be filling in a few months time.
"Mama, where's the kitchen?" asked Fatima, wide-eyed and hopeful. The previous day we'd toured a smaller, Arabic school where a bright kitchen beckoned. Here, there was one we discovered and which we were shown through the window of a locked door.Well, I had taught in Sunday school for a year, and there was that time I helped out at a summer camp. And besides, I'm a mom who was about to homeschool her kids so I have been reading up on the issue (when I pull myself away from politics and community news).
The woman, a teacher at the school for fifteen years before being asked to head up the KG program, kindly guided me around the wide space, framed with narrower classrooms where children between the ages of 2 and five would be filling in a few months time.
Ever since reading "Dumbing us down" by John Taylor Gatto, read feverishly in just one night while baby slept on and off between feedings, I have been weary of school settings for my girls. I did enroll the eldest in a local Islamic school for a few months, and that went very well, but I continue to fear the possibilities that she might be "dumbed" down and unable to reach her full spiritual and mental potentials.
But I digress.
Homeschooling was an equally challenging possibility and when a friend here in the Middle East nipped it in the bud, saying it would be impossible here without a support group and/or places to actually go to for exploration, I realized structured school was the only way to go.
And so the tour at this girl's school, reputable and sturdy. Structured and perhaps limiting. But maybe, just maybe, uplifting....
and might I be a part of it?
* * *
A book called, Concentric Circles; Nurturing Awe and Wonder in Early Learning by Elma Ruth Harder, is my saving grace.
Educating children would otherwise seem a typical and almost mundane task. But this woman, a Saskatchewan teacher, mother and convert to Islam who has taught around the world, has managed to inspire in me a determined belief that education is indeed political and that it is time Muslims reclaim the tools to educate their own youngsters in a way that is in harmony with the true purpose of existence.
yeah, I'm serious.
"It can be argued that each civilization produces material which naturally advocates and reflects its own worldview, and thus there is nothing wrong with this industry churning out millions of copies of educational resources destined for markets where people freely choose to purchase what they buy. This may be true on a theoretical level, but as things stand we live in a world where people do not have this free choice. The educational material produced on this pattern by a well-established industry has advantageous marketing and selling strategies and its global reach is unmatchable by any other kind of material, not because of some inherent superiority of the worldview. . .but by the sheer economic and political leverage enjoyed by the Western civilization.
[...]This brings these young Muslims in direct contact with a worldview --and a value-system based on that worldview--that runs against the grain of the Islamic worldview. This, naturally and inevitably, affects learners in deeply-rooted ways which can lead to internal conflicts of a psychological and spiritual nature. This has in due course been recognized by many perceptive Muslim scholars, who have called for an epistemic correction of knowledge."
Wow.
So wouldn't it be something to flip the status quo on its head? Teach kids the 'why' of things, not just the 'what' and 'how'? In an Islamic society, mention of God will be inevitable, but a focus on a natural way of life; of understanding permeating the curriculum would be so wholesome and so fulfilling -- as reading this book has been.
Would Islamic schools be convinced for the need of stopping the use of those dastardly school bells that interrupt thought, as Mr. Gatto so accurately points out? Would children be encouraged to explore, discover, feel their way into the world instead of learning by rote as is much of the case in the Middle East? Would children by given the chance to truly understand?
Dangerous, because as some might argue, the whole point of school is the control of the masses and a Quranic worldview, just as Islam itself, is all about individual and communal empowerment.
....the kind of empowerment that isn't looked upon too well in the totalitarian regimes right now.
And so, perhaps this is as subversive as it gets. Teaching Muslim kids to think.
Hope I get the job, Insha'Allah (God willing).
But I digress.
Homeschooling was an equally challenging possibility and when a friend here in the Middle East nipped it in the bud, saying it would be impossible here without a support group and/or places to actually go to for exploration, I realized structured school was the only way to go.
And so the tour at this girl's school, reputable and sturdy. Structured and perhaps limiting. But maybe, just maybe, uplifting....
and might I be a part of it?
* * *
A book called, Concentric Circles; Nurturing Awe and Wonder in Early Learning by Elma Ruth Harder, is my saving grace.
Educating children would otherwise seem a typical and almost mundane task. But this woman, a Saskatchewan teacher, mother and convert to Islam who has taught around the world, has managed to inspire in me a determined belief that education is indeed political and that it is time Muslims reclaim the tools to educate their own youngsters in a way that is in harmony with the true purpose of existence.
yeah, I'm serious.
"It can be argued that each civilization produces material which naturally advocates and reflects its own worldview, and thus there is nothing wrong with this industry churning out millions of copies of educational resources destined for markets where people freely choose to purchase what they buy. This may be true on a theoretical level, but as things stand we live in a world where people do not have this free choice. The educational material produced on this pattern by a well-established industry has advantageous marketing and selling strategies and its global reach is unmatchable by any other kind of material, not because of some inherent superiority of the worldview. . .but by the sheer economic and political leverage enjoyed by the Western civilization.
[...]This brings these young Muslims in direct contact with a worldview --and a value-system based on that worldview--that runs against the grain of the Islamic worldview. This, naturally and inevitably, affects learners in deeply-rooted ways which can lead to internal conflicts of a psychological and spiritual nature. This has in due course been recognized by many perceptive Muslim scholars, who have called for an epistemic correction of knowledge."
Wow.
So wouldn't it be something to flip the status quo on its head? Teach kids the 'why' of things, not just the 'what' and 'how'? In an Islamic society, mention of God will be inevitable, but a focus on a natural way of life; of understanding permeating the curriculum would be so wholesome and so fulfilling -- as reading this book has been.
Would Islamic schools be convinced for the need of stopping the use of those dastardly school bells that interrupt thought, as Mr. Gatto so accurately points out? Would children be encouraged to explore, discover, feel their way into the world instead of learning by rote as is much of the case in the Middle East? Would children by given the chance to truly understand?
Dangerous, because as some might argue, the whole point of school is the control of the masses and a Quranic worldview, just as Islam itself, is all about individual and communal empowerment.
....the kind of empowerment that isn't looked upon too well in the totalitarian regimes right now.
And so, perhaps this is as subversive as it gets. Teaching Muslim kids to think.
Hope I get the job, Insha'Allah (God willing).
