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**Aafimoq** · 07-08-2012, 10:47 PM

RH: What are your thoughts on Muslim youth and public education of today?

HamzaYusuf: I think modern school is a negative experience. I believe you can learn more out of school than in it. There is now a universal education system, whether you are in an Arab country, China or somewhere else. This universal education is only going to vary according to the political atmosphere of the given country. For example, in Iraq, the indoctrination is probably more obvious whereas in the US it is just more subtle. School is an artificial construct to socialize individuals into a group identity. The whole idea of a "school of fish" is that everyone swims together whereas traditional Islamic education was completely individualized. What it did was give people all those tools (in the West called "liberal arts") such as grammar, rhetoric, and logic, through which people could actually think and use their brains.

In public high schools, you are not given tools, you are given information and data. In fact, a metaphor that is used in education today is that you're basically a hard drive that needs to be written with a given software. You will then fulfill whatever are the social needs of the society. Schooling today is designed only to matriculate people into the logic of the system itself. Then people end up in meaningless jobs doing meaningless work, and never really think about what type of society they're contributing to. End Quote

Obviously this does not mean that we drop out or under achieve in school, but as Muslims we can come up with something better.

07-08-2012, 10:47 PM	#1
Aafimoq Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 420 Senior Member	What are we learning in a State School? RH: What are your thoughts on Muslim youth and public education of today? HamzaYusuf: I think modern school is a negative experience. I believe you can learn more out of school than in it. There is now a universal education system, whether you are in an Arab country, China or somewhere else. This universal education is only going to vary according to the political atmosphere of the given country. For example, in Iraq, the indoctrination is probably more obvious whereas in the US it is just more subtle. School is an artificial construct to socialize individuals into a group identity. The whole idea of a "school of fish" is that everyone swims together whereas traditional Islamic education was completely individualized. What it did was give people all those tools (in the West called "liberal arts") such as grammar, rhetoric, and logic, through which people could actually think and use their brains. In public high schools, you are not given tools, you are given information and data. In fact, a metaphor that is used in education today is that you're basically a hard drive that needs to be written with a given software. You will then fulfill whatever are the social needs of the society. Schooling today is designed only to matriculate people into the logic of the system itself. Then people end up in meaningless jobs doing meaningless work, and never really think about what type of society they're contributing to. End Quote Obviously this does not mean that we drop out or under achieve in school, but as Muslims we can come up with something better.
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