Islamic Pedagogy

{bit.ly/4c13knZ} I’ve spent my whole life in academic institutions, first as a student then as a teacher. I taught for 15 years in the USA, 6 in turkey and 25 years in Pakistan. In this talk, I would like to draw some lessons from these life experiences. An Urdu version of the talk is: Islamic Styles of Pedagogy (urdu). The English video below is followed by a writeup:

Our religion teaches us that each life is infinitely precious. Each individual life is potentially as valuable as the entire humanity. Our students have enormous potential, and it is our job as teachers to bring out this potential. I found that this effort to bring out the hidden potential in the students to be of immense value, and extremely fruitful. Countless books have been written on the principles of etiquette (Adab) for Islamic education, extracted from the Quran and the Hadith. I will just mention a few. Our knowledge should not give us Pride. Instead, it should make us humble. We should value our students as having more potential than ourselves and we should take care to value their time and to give them useful knowledge. The Prophet ﷺ made Dua for useful knowledge and sought protection from useless knowledge. We have a tremendous opportunity because our students, if inspired and motivated, shape the future of the world – just like the students of our Prophet ﷺ did. Whereas our religion teaches how to become the best human being that we can be, modern education is designed to suppress and destroy this potential, and turn us into human resources, interchangeable parts in the capitalist machine for the production of wealth.

Since I myself was educated in the West, I experienced and absorbed the dominant Western pedagogical models. It was long personal journey to recover from the damage done to me by this educational process (see: Recovering from a Western Education) . It is worth providing a brief summary, so that the reader can understand where I am coming from. In the 1970s, I studied at MIT and Stanford and then for 15 years I taught at top universities in the USA. I left for two reasons:

1. my children were growing up and I didn’t want them in public schools in the USA where they would acquire American culture
2. I felt that I was being paid for the job of educating the children of foreigners when our own children in our own countries were not educated and this was my responsibility

When a chance offer materialized, I left and spent six years (from 93 to 99) at a leading Turkish University. After that I moved back to Pakistan, and have been teaching here since. I found my experience as a teacher much more satisfying because I felt that these students are my students and their successes were my success, and their failures were also my own failure. So, I tried very hard to make sure that they would succeed. My students responded to my efforts by giving me their best performances, and many graduates are now placed in good institutions in Pakistan, and around the world.

After my return, I noted many differences that forced me to change my approach to teaching from the one I had learnt in the West. While in USA, I saw that at the top universities, the best students were highly competitive and also very confident of their skills. In Pakistan, especially in the Public Sector, I found that the students had a defeated and colonized mindset. They could not imagine that they could be the world’s best. However, in terms of raw talent, our students are just as good as anywhere around the world. Unfortunately, the imitative educational system we have is designed to destroy their capabilities – they learn to aim low like the crows, instead of claiming their birthright to fly high (See: The Way of the Eagles bit.ly/42CCjTp ). Students can only achieve according their ambitions, and it is the job of the teacher to believe in the students, and to teach them to reach for the stars (See: Reaching Beyond the Stars: bit.ly/azRBS ).  

There is another, much bigger, difference between the role of the teacher in Market societies which now dominate the world and in a traditional Society traditional Islamic society.  In a market Society a teacher is paid for his work and he does educate the students in return for his salary.  As opposed to this, in an Islamic Society the teacher is a mentor, a life-guide, a counselor, an advisor, and he acts in a parental role. He worries about the personality development of the students. But the most important job of the teacher is to create desire and enthusiasm for the pursuit of knowledge in the students. In my experience, I have found that the greatest obstacle to high achievement is lack of self-confidence in our students. The students do not even try to learn because the experience that they have had with learning is very bad. They have been trained to not try to think instead just to memorize. Trying to master alien subjects in a foreign language has proven so difficult, that they consider themselves incompetent, and incapable of learning. They cannot identify the real causes for their failure: the educational system, the subject matter, and the teacher.

Building the confidence of our students is essential if we want stellar achievements from them. This requires work on multiple fronts. One the psychological front, we need to work on decolonization of minds. Defeats and failure on every front for the past two centuries has led to a defeated mindset in the Ummah as a whole. But, in addition to building psychological confidence we also need to provide the skills to match. Creating confidence in car-driving skills, without teaching the skills, will lead to crashes. It is the teacher’s job to build this confidence, and this starts by believing in the potential of our students. If we believe that our students have the potential to change the world, they will perform to fulfill our expectations. In addition to self-confidence, we also need to rebuild the shattered confidence in our heritage religion, heritage, and culture. I also have several lectures on this topic which are linked here: How to Launch an Islamic Revival.

In order to act as a guide, a mentor, and a life-coach, we need to create a very different relationship from the one that we are accustomed to. In a market society, the teacher’s only concern is to teach a subject he has no other relationship with the student. Instead we have to become helpers and partners of the students in their quest for knowledge. We have to switch the students from striving for scores to become knowledge seekers. This is a very difficult transition because the students have been burnt in the past. The thirst for knowledge comes naturally; it is part of human nature. But, students have been frustrated by past educational experiences. Both the subject matter and the teaching style has been designed to discourage students to search for knowledge. Students have tried many times and have failed. They have acquired the false belief that we are unable to learn. To switch their mindsets, we must change our own mindset and style of teaching as well as the subject matter. We vastly underestimate our students. Instead of discussing the big problems facing our society, facing the ummah, facing the world, or facing us in our personal lives, we teach them nitty-gritty details of trivial questions which make no sense and deprive them of the excitement of learning. If we engage with them on problems which actually matter in the real world, and teach the technical stuff as part of what is needed to solve them, they would be very eager and excited and keen to learn. I have found personally that when I started this approach, it was immensely valuable for the students. The students became engaged and interested, and acquired skills. Instead of the textbook approach which builds micro skills and defers engaging with the real world, we start with a real-world problem and then develop whatever tools techniques theories we need to solve the problem. We can also address life experiences and discuss how we go about solving problems that we face in our lives. Whenever we relate something to the experience of the students either as individuals or social problems that we face as communities, they will be very eager to learn about those. For more details about how to implement this educational method in teaching economics, see “How to Motivate and Inspire Students (URDU)“

Lecturing is a very poor way to generate learning. To learn, the students must tackle the subject, must engage with it, and struggle with it. One way to do this is the inverted classroom. We assign students some reading or some materials or some video lecture and then in class we discuss it. One method that I found useful is to put up a list of questions that I plan to discuss. Put up one question on the blackboard, and ask every student to write the answer to that on their front of them in on a piece of paper. Now, exchange papers and then ask a student what is the answer that is written in front of you. Then have a discussion – “is this the correct answer?” “what is the flaw in it?” “how should we grade it?” etc. In the end all of the students acquire a much deeper knowledge not just by learning the right answer but by also learning the wrong answers and the way in which they are wrong. This is tremendously helpful for learning.

Changing the methodology for assignments and exams is also very valuable in generating learning. We can give them take-home exams. By habit, they will initially copy from each other and cheat. We have to inform them that the take-home will not be graded. Actually I need to know how well you’re doing and by looking at your answer I will know what you have learned. If you cheat and deceive me, I will be unable to help you.  Initially, students do not believe this, but eventually they come to realize it. This takes the stress out of exams. They can self- grade the exams in their own classrooms. We can randomly distribute the exams among the students, grade them together. We ask students to discuss the answers and come agreement on what is good and what is bad. This methodology for assignments and exams creates much more comfort and much more learning on the students than the stressful methodology currently in use. It also provides us with a lot more information about what the students are learning, and about the students who are good, as well as those who are having difficulties. We can create small groups of students and ask the good students to help those who are having trouble.

One questions that came up on this material was that we teachers try very hard but when it comes to midterm we find the students fail miserably. Actually this should never happen. It should never  come as a surprise to us what the students are doing on the midterm. If, at the end of every class we assess what the student has learned, we will know exactly what the students are capable of and what they are not capable of. We should be building skills in every class, and we should be evaluating our students progress in every class. If we do this, we will know exactly what the students are capable of doing, and will not have any surprises regarding their lack of learning on the midterm. This is our job as teachers and if the students fail that means that we have failed them. Instead of thinking of exams as means of evaluating our students we should think of them as means of helping the students to learn

So to summarize the job of the teachers is to inspire, to motivate, and to build skills. We have to teach the students that they can do whatever they want to do, and to teach them to reach for the stars. We have to motivate them that acquiring an education, even though it’s a struggle, and even though studying and trying to solve challenging problems can be frustrating, it is worthwhile. Knowledge is extremely valuable, and can change our lives, and change the world. But in addition to this inspiration and motivation, you also need to build skills. If we teach students confidence but don’t teach them how to perform, then performance failures will crush their confidence. So confidence and skills should be developed in parallel. That’s the job of the teacher and that’s both very difficult and very challenging and also extremely rewarding. In fact, it is the most rewarding task in the world: all the prophets were sent as teachers. As teachers, we follow the highest profession. For more details, see Principles of An Islamic Education May Allah T’aala give us the Taufeeq to fulfill our responsibities, to change the lives of our students, and through them the world, for the better.