Training—like democracy, free markets, freedom of the press, and “universal human rights” — is a type of topics whose advantage is taken into account self-evident. So is the prevalence of the industrially superior international locations in achieving them. Consequently, any package deal that arrives with considered one of these magic labels on it, routinely qualifies for the “green channel” at our entry ports. No questions requested. This uncritical acceptance has severely crippled our dialogue of all these very important matters. For instance in training most of our dialogue facilities round literacy statistics and the necessity to have so many graduates, masters, Phd’s, and so many professionals — engineers, docs, and so on.— in a given nation based mostly on the requirements within the industrially superior international locations. The central difficulty of curriculum, and much more elementary difficulty of the aim of training usually don’t appeal to our consideration; they’ve already been determined by the “advanced’ countries for us and our job is only to follow in their footsteps to achieve their level of progress.Indeed they have. In the “first” world, education has become an extension of the capitalist system. Its purpose is to provide qualified workforce for its machinery of production and eager consumers for its products. Stated in a more polished form, the purpose of education is to provide for the economic prosperity of a country. Similarly on a personal level today the purpose of education is to be able to earn a respectable living.While earning halal living and providing for the economic well being of a country are certainly important Islamic goals as well, the linking of education to financial goals is extremely unfortunate. It turns the centers of learning into mere vocational centers in their outlook and spirit. It degrades education and through it the society.To bring home the pivotal but forgotten role of education we need to recall that there is a fundamental difference between human beings and animals. Instincts and physical needs alone can bring ants, bees, or herds of beasts together to live in a perfectly functioning animal society. Human beings do not function that way. They are not constrained by nature to follow only those ways that are necessary for the harmonious operation of their society. If they are to form a viable, thriving society, they must chose to do so. What drives that choice is the sharing of common goals, beliefs, values and outlook on life. Without a common framework binding its members, a human society cannot continue to exist; it will disintegrate and be absorbed by other societies. Further, the society must ensure that the common ground will continue to hold from generation to generation. This is the real purpose of education. The education system of a society produces the citizens and leaders needed for the smooth operation of that society, now and into the future. Its state of health or sickness translates directly into the health or sickness of the society that it is meant to serve.Today we find many internal problems — corruption, injustice, oppression, crippling poverty — everywhere we turn in the Muslim world. If we think about it, we may realize that most of these problems are man-made. Which is another way of saying that they are largely traceable, directly or indirectly, to the education system that produced the people who perpetuate the problems. The rulers who sell out to foreign powers and subjugate their people; the bureaucrats who enforce laws based on injustice; the generals who wage war against their own people; the businessmen who exploit and cheat; the journalists who lie, sensationalize, and promote indecencies, they are all educated people, in many cases “extremely” educated people. Their education was meant to prepare them for the roles they are playing in real life. And it has, although in a very unexpected way!The problem plagues all layers of society. Why are Muslim communities in the grip of so much materialism today? What should we expect when our entire education system is preaching the gospel of materialism? Why have we effectively relegated Islam to a small inconsequential quarter in our public life? Because that is precisely where our secular education system has put it. Why in our behavior toward each other we see so little display of Islamic manners and morals? Because our imported education system is devoid of all moral training. Why our societies are sick? Because our education system is sick.This is the real crisis of education. Before we got into this mess by importing from the Colonial powers what was current and popular, education in our societies was always the means of nurturing the human being. Moral training, tarbiya, was always an inalienable part of it. The ustaz,(teacher), was not just a lecturer or mere professional, but a mentor and moral guide. We remembered the hadith then, “No father has given a better reward to his kids than good ethical coaching.” [Tirmidhi]. Our training system was knowledgeable by this hadith. Our darul-ulooms nonetheless keep that custom however the variety of college students who go by their gates is minuscule in comparison with the secular colleges.Within the U.S. and Europe, the faculties have been began by the church. Later as forces of capitalism overtook them, they molded them into their picture. Ethical coaching was a casualty of that takeover. However capitalism and their political economic system did want folks skilled to work underneath these techniques. So citizenship coaching was retained as an vital, although diminishing, part of the curriculum— a religion-free subset of the ethical coaching it displaced. No matter civility we see right here is basically a results of that leftover part. The imported variations within the Muslim international locations, although, had even that part filtered out. And the outcomes are seen.We will resolve our downside as soon as we understand our errors. The primary function of our training system should be to supply certified residents and leaders for the Islamic society. Tarbiya, actual Islamic ethical coaching, should be an integral a part of it. This should be the soul of our training, not a ceremonial husk. All plans for bettering our training will probably be completely ineffective except they’re based mostly on a full understanding of this key reality. This requires revamping our curricula, rewriting our textbooks, retraining our academics, and realizing that we should do all this ourselves. We do have a wealthy historical past of doing it. Are we lastly prepared to show to our personal in-house treasures to redo training the best way it ought to all the time have been?
Function of Training
