‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’*
This oft-repeated question heard across countless primary schools quite nicely sums up the problem with schooling. For the purpose of school is not about what you want to achieve when you grow up or how you want to improve society, but about which career path you wish to choose. The purpose of schooling is to get you a job. The purpose is to create cogs for the economic machinery – you may become a dull cog (garbage man, waiter, teacher) or a shiny cog (lawyer, doctor), but cogs you will all become.
Schooling creates career professionals. This is pounded into students from day one with the constant question of what you want to become.
This is the major concern for high schoolers when they choose a university to attend.
This is the major concern at the university level when students choose which degree to pursue.
And this is the major concern when the college student graduates and ‘enters’ into society.
Education has always taken a back to seat to careerism.
After all, every society has its own barometer of success. Hunter-gatherer societies placed a premium on those with adept hunting skills. Societies based on warfare deemed an individual with excellent fighting skills as successful. Tribal societies perceived strength in numbers, so a large number of sons was considered invaluable. In our modern capitalist society, one who has a ‘nice job’ and thus has accrued the most wealth is considered most successful.
But as Muslims, we have our divinely-sanctioned definition of success – faith and piety. Regardless of how good or bad we may be at hunting, fighting, or shopping, our success is measured by our level of spiritual development and servitude to our Lord.
And so, schools have failed at developing humans and have merely become the gatekeepers for the job-based professional economy as well as the national military. They have perfected the means for churning out ‘human resources’, citizens pliant enough to subserviently fit into the capitalistic model or become unquestioning soldiers in the battlefield. Schools excel at producing eager consumers and smoothly functioning bureaucrats.
Additionally, I am convinced that sending our kids off to school for 8 hours a day to be raised by complete strangers contaminates the parent-child bond. It plants the seed of deviation away from the parent’s thought-process. It paves the way for the child to accept, maybe even celebrate, a difference of opinion with his parents.
Once this reverence is corrupted, the child ceases to see the parents as sources of guidance deserving ultimate respect, viewing them instead as guardians charged merely with the child’s physical well-being and sustenance. The influence and sovereignty of the parents is eventually replaced by outside institutions such as school, government, or pop-culture.
Instead of impressing upon them the importance of family, religion, and community (social values that schools of the past focused on), modern day schooling hammers into our children’s minds that the most important goal is to get into a good college. And they must get into a good college in order to get a good job. And they must get a good job so as to live a comfortable life.
And that, my fellow readers, is the crux of the schooling failure.
The essential goal of schooling is materialistic success. Anything more is icing on the cake. Enlightening of the child’s mind, if it occurs, is merely accidental. To say otherwise is naïve at best.
I’m choosing not to be naïve.
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*I ranted in a previous post on my issues with a similar socio-cultural phenomenon - the casual question of 'What do you do?'
حقیقتِ زندگی
8 hours ago
7 comments:
JazakAllah for that insightful 2-part series.
I heard a khutbah a few years ago which talked about how the school system - as we know it today - is an artificial construction, and a remnant of the Industrial Revolution.
How the separation of children into age groups - i.e. everyone in a certain grade / class is the same age - is unnatural, because in real life, there are no such separations. Your workplace is a mixture of people of different ages. Society out there is a mixture of people of different ages. Even your family - at home and extended family - is a mixture of different ages.
So, putting kids into groups like that is artificial because it's not a reflection of the real world.
Unfortunately, I didn't find out anything more about the schooling system BEFORE the current one came into being. ANd you alluded to values that "schools of the past" taught / encouraged.
Did you mean pre-Industrial Revolution? Or did you just mean "good old-fashioned values" (which would still include most the 20th century, prior to the 80s, I would think).
Have you done research into the schooling systems of the past?
In terms of the ideal Islamic model - as exemplified in the early generations - what is the education system? How is it structured? How does it achieve "education" rather than churning out workers?
Assalamu alaikum
These days some muslim children study full time in madrassas where the subjects are different but somehow the structure is similar.
However theoretically your idea is ok but practically what does it imply ? what will your children do when do grow up ? how will they provide for thier families and you in your old age ?
If they are unequipped for dealing with the real world, then will surely lapse into poverty
Assalamu alaikum,
Dreamlife: you talked about separation of ages. That is very true! About 11 years ago, I heard a lecture by Hamza Yusuf that talked about how today's US society (and some others) are very age segregated. 5 year olds have to play with 5 year olds, when adults get together they don't include their teenage children, etc. Then, he contrasted it with society at time of Prophet Muhammad where young and old used to sit together. The stories of Abdullah Ibn Abbas are all evidences of that.
I and my wife are also home-schooling, and there is definite benefits in schooling different ages together. Check out the movie Etre et Avoir (To be and to have) to see some of the dynamics of a mixed-age educational setup.
Naeem (not the blog author)
AA-
@DL, Here is a good resource for reading on what many famous philosophers and thinkers thought of education:
http://goo.gl/KPs07
The site includes such visionaries as Ghazali, Ibn Sina, and Ibn Khaldun as well a host of other well-known non-Muslim thinkers.
Reading their thoughts on education gives you a good idea of how warped our modern system of schooling really is.
@Anon1, why does choosing to opt out of the modern schooling system have to result in ignorance and poverty? I am not pulling my kids out and simply letting them stay home to watch TV and eat pizza all day. I envision them growing up to be extremely productive and active participants in greater society, Insha'Allah
@Naeem (not the blog author), I completely agree with both you and DL on the point of intermixing different age groups. And thanks for the film reference - I will definitely check it out!
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YOU MAY BE AMAZED TO KNOW THAT IT IS COMPLETELY DIFFERENT FROM WHAT IT IS THOUGHT TO BE TODAY. TO SEE WHAT IT ACTUALLY IS – VISIT THE WEBSITE http://www.hezbuttawheed.com AND READ THE BOOK “DAJJAL? THE JUDEO-CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION!” AND WATCH THE DOCUMENTARY “DAJJAL? THE JUDEO-CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION!”.
Asa, you might want to read the book, "boys adrift" .....covers part of the issue really well
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