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**UrUROFlS** · 06-27-2012, 12:34 PM

Salaam Pouring Rain:

Mathematics can be taught with curriculum that is already available on the market. When choosing math curriculum, I stayed away from abeka and saxon math. What Christian curriculum offers parents is structure and ease and a sense of belonging to a wider community rather than tackling homeschooling alone. I know homeschooling in the US has undergone some important shifts where the landscape is no longer just about homeschooler (read Christian) vs. non-homeschooler/state but there are groups now within the homeschooling community that are strengthened by money and resources that aren't as available for those outside the fold and in this landscape one sees the more established (and in a sense older) Christian groups on one side and the rest of us on the other. The downside to all of this is that where homeschooling was (and still is to some degree) a push against state mandated curriculum, we now have groups who push curriculum within the homeschool community, driving a wedge between them and others. They lobby for their interests and help make curriculum that fits their worldview but this does not solve the problem for the rest of the homeschoolers. Those of us who homeschool may be familiar with curriculum fairs and all sorts of bells and whistles (curriculum and tools) to help educate our children and it adds up $$$$. I guess what I'm trying to say is that Christian groups need less state funding than other groups who piece together their curriculum which not only adds to frustration (sometimes) but also can add up ($) quite quickly. Homeschoolers need to stay on top of their state/provincial legislation relating to education. Homeschoolers need to keep it simple and not be taken in by all the fancy, colourful gadgets out there. Homeschoolers need to get in touch with others and form communities where they can exchange tools/curriculum and even help each other teach various skills they have. It would be nice to have affordable Islamic curriculum (especially since state funding can be $0 or, like my province, up to $1500 per school year)... but I still don't think math is the area where Islamic curriculum is needed.

Unconsciously or subconsciously some times we in the Indian subcontinent end up talking about local matters in global terms. The same is the case of my OP. Indeed the problem of wholesome education of Muslim children has to be solved globally so that is very much a goal. In the mean time we can muse about the solution the context of the Indian subcontinent. Here home schooling was the only schooling till some time ago and the situation changed after British arrival and by now home schooling has disappeared from the scene. So in India we do not have any home schooling vs public schooling debate. In fact that there is a home schooling versus public schooling debate in the US is minimally known around here. So thanks again for the run down on that.

My concern is the present thread is about the integration of religious and secular education - in the context of Indian subcontinent and universally too it should not be any different. At present we have Madarsa education where there are a few strokes of modern topics like geometry but by and large it is cut-off from those branches of knowledge that have given enormous power, strength and advantage to the western society that, perhaps subconsciously or unconsciously, maintains the crusading attitude. On the other hand we have modern education institutions, either managed by Muslims but mostly not, where the education secular in the sense of anti-religious because the left/communist/socialist combine monopolized the intelligentsia. Of course we must have lapsed some where to give them a walk over but this realization does not solve the problem. So these institution churn out educated people who are mostly Macaulian. Lord Macaulay was the British civil servant and educationist and his assignment was to solve a specific problem - by 1857 the British had completely subjugated India and then the problem was how to keep the things that way, that is how to keep the hold of British Empire on India. Macaulay's solution was simple - educate Indians in a manner that their skin remains what it is but their mentality is of white people. We managed to send the British back but the education system designed and built by them still keep churning out the sons and daughters of Macaulay. Of course British ideal has been conveniently replaced by the American ideal but the story of the so called modern education remains the same - to disdain your own culture and religion and to take it as undesirable burden. Lack of confidence and self hatred is the result and the religious education is considered as getting left behind and the religiously educated person is not to be taken seriously and religion might not be the opium of the masses but it certainly is considered a poor choice.

Now a lot of water has flowed down the rivers after independence from the British in 1947. Most of this time was lost by us Muslims in either simply remaining scared of majority for no fault of ours - some of our brothers took their share in the form of a new state called Pakistan. What was required was to immediately start worrying about equity for Muslims in independent India but that was not to be the case. In the meantime anti-Muslim forced have been hard at work and managed to infiltrate all the powerful institutions of India, police, bureaucracy, education and even military. Urdu, because it came in to existence after arrival of Islam in India, has been very thoroughly neutralized. Physical resources are out of reach of Muslims and hence they can not compete with the official education system.

In spite of that Muslims have managed to establish many educational institutions. Most of them are just exactly the same as the rest of the left oriented institutions - the secular institutions. Then there are few which are really Islamic in the sense that the morning prayer of the school ends with one Islamic supplication. Then there are some fundamentalist Muslim schools where they have the temerity to introduce one Islamic subject - theology, that is one paper, per year for three years. (Sorry of the sarcasm - it should not be there.) People say that there are some institutions who are better than that but I suppose I got to his the road before I shoot my mouth on that.

Coming to individual subjects - I agree with you Mathematics is one subject of which our religious establishment should not be scared at all of. But who will tell them. But again that is not my objective - to introduce modern topics in Madarsa.

There one more aspect that is relevant but I shall leave that for later time, IA.

06-27-2012, 12:34 PM	#16
UrUROFlS Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 466 Senior Member	Salaam Pouring Rain: Mathematics can be taught with curriculum that is already available on the market. When choosing math curriculum, I stayed away from abeka and saxon math. What Christian curriculum offers parents is structure and ease and a sense of belonging to a wider community rather than tackling homeschooling alone. I know homeschooling in the US has undergone some important shifts where the landscape is no longer just about homeschooler (read Christian) vs. non-homeschooler/state but there are groups now within the homeschooling community that are strengthened by money and resources that aren't as available for those outside the fold and in this landscape one sees the more established (and in a sense older) Christian groups on one side and the rest of us on the other. The downside to all of this is that where homeschooling was (and still is to some degree) a push against state mandated curriculum, we now have groups who push curriculum within the homeschool community, driving a wedge between them and others. They lobby for their interests and help make curriculum that fits their worldview but this does not solve the problem for the rest of the homeschoolers. Those of us who homeschool may be familiar with curriculum fairs and all sorts of bells and whistles (curriculum and tools) to help educate our children and it adds up $$$$. I guess what I'm trying to say is that Christian groups need less state funding than other groups who piece together their curriculum which not only adds to frustration (sometimes) but also can add up ($) quite quickly. Homeschoolers need to stay on top of their state/provincial legislation relating to education. Homeschoolers need to keep it simple and not be taken in by all the fancy, colourful gadgets out there. Homeschoolers need to get in touch with others and form communities where they can exchange tools/curriculum and even help each other teach various skills they have. It would be nice to have affordable Islamic curriculum (especially since state funding can be $0 or, like my province, up to $1500 per school year)... but I still don't think math is the area where Islamic curriculum is needed. Unconsciously or subconsciously some times we in the Indian subcontinent end up talking about local matters in global terms. The same is the case of my OP. Indeed the problem of wholesome education of Muslim children has to be solved globally so that is very much a goal. In the mean time we can muse about the solution the context of the Indian subcontinent. Here home schooling was the only schooling till some time ago and the situation changed after British arrival and by now home schooling has disappeared from the scene. So in India we do not have any home schooling vs public schooling debate. In fact that there is a home schooling versus public schooling debate in the US is minimally known around here. So thanks again for the run down on that. My concern is the present thread is about the integration of religious and secular education - in the context of Indian subcontinent and universally too it should not be any different. At present we have Madarsa education where there are a few strokes of modern topics like geometry but by and large it is cut-off from those branches of knowledge that have given enormous power, strength and advantage to the western society that, perhaps subconsciously or unconsciously, maintains the crusading attitude. On the other hand we have modern education institutions, either managed by Muslims but mostly not, where the education secular in the sense of anti-religious because the left/communist/socialist combine monopolized the intelligentsia. Of course we must have lapsed some where to give them a walk over but this realization does not solve the problem. So these institution churn out educated people who are mostly Macaulian. Lord Macaulay was the British civil servant and educationist and his assignment was to solve a specific problem - by 1857 the British had completely subjugated India and then the problem was how to keep the things that way, that is how to keep the hold of British Empire on India. Macaulay's solution was simple - educate Indians in a manner that their skin remains what it is but their mentality is of white people. We managed to send the British back but the education system designed and built by them still keep churning out the sons and daughters of Macaulay. Of course British ideal has been conveniently replaced by the American ideal but the story of the so called modern education remains the same - to disdain your own culture and religion and to take it as undesirable burden. Lack of confidence and self hatred is the result and the religious education is considered as getting left behind and the religiously educated person is not to be taken seriously and religion might not be the opium of the masses but it certainly is considered a poor choice. Now a lot of water has flowed down the rivers after independence from the British in 1947. Most of this time was lost by us Muslims in either simply remaining scared of majority for no fault of ours - some of our brothers took their share in the form of a new state called Pakistan. What was required was to immediately start worrying about equity for Muslims in independent India but that was not to be the case. In the meantime anti-Muslim forced have been hard at work and managed to infiltrate all the powerful institutions of India, police, bureaucracy, education and even military. Urdu, because it came in to existence after arrival of Islam in India, has been very thoroughly neutralized. Physical resources are out of reach of Muslims and hence they can not compete with the official education system. In spite of that Muslims have managed to establish many educational institutions. Most of them are just exactly the same as the rest of the left oriented institutions - the secular institutions. Then there are few which are really Islamic in the sense that the morning prayer of the school ends with one Islamic supplication. Then there are some fundamentalist Muslim schools where they have the temerity to introduce one Islamic subject - theology, that is one paper, per year for three years. (Sorry of the sarcasm - it should not be there.) People say that there are some institutions who are better than that but I suppose I got to his the road before I shoot my mouth on that. Coming to individual subjects - I agree with you Mathematics is one subject of which our religious establishment should not be scared at all of. But who will tell them. But again that is not my objective - to introduce modern topics in Madarsa. There one more aspect that is relevant but I shall leave that for later time, IA.
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