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India-Pakistan
Learning reform
2015-08-20
[DAWN] THERE are increasing calls to change the curriculum taught at madressahs across the country to include English, mathematics and the sciences. My own research, as well as that of others, on madressah education shows that the present curriculum is indeed problematic and may not even satisfy the limited aim of preparing scholars and teachers of Islam.

The current madressah curriculum and the psychology of its teaching have played a major role in creating an environment that encourages hostile or negative attitudes between different sects of Islamic thought and those who are secular in thinking.

Mathematics and the sciences draw on inductive logic and thinking, which analyses lots of evidence and seeks a way forward that can make rules to explain what is observed or known.
Even when the djinn must be allowed for?
These rules are then applied by deductive logic to make decisions on what to do, on the path to follow. These subjects are best taught by getting students to pass through the two stages of logic: that is why practical experiments, demonstrations and concrete models are employed. The consequence of using deductive logic alone is almost always learning by rote, which means learning without meaning.

Does this sound familiar?

Madressah teachers and students do not go through the inductive thinking stage and move immediately to the deductive rules of the Koran. This means madressah students are not required to think for themselves, and their schooling means there is no place for creativity. Madressahs represent orthodoxy and teach with an unscientific curriculum. I collected several madressah students' opinions regarding the system of education they are experiencing, and their opinions on the teaching of science and mathematics. Some students showed great interest in these subjects. They reported that there was a lack of science education in their institutions; many complained that they were not taught science in any meaningful depth, and that experiments could not be conducted due to the lack of funding.
Posted by:Fred

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