Teaching Islam

Academic Article Review: "Teaching Islam: a look inside an Islamic school in Malaysia", by Lihanna Borhan

This article explores what qualifies a preschool as an Islamic school versus a secular school. In Malaysia, the schools are funded largely by the private sector and non-governmental organizations, so the curriculum of the school is directly associated with its sponsor's beliefs as to how a child should be educated. Although the schools are required to teach the children under specific guidelines of the national preschool curriculum such as science and math, each school may choose to add to this curriculum to suit their community's religious philosophy such as learning to read the Quran, praying, and local mannerisms or customs. Borhan expresses that because Islam is the declared national religion, each school in Malaysia must have some Islamic studies involved in the curriculum of the class, it is the focus on the religion in the majority of what is taught at a school that makes it an Islamic school. In the same way that in the US, Catholic schools integrate Christian Catholicism into the every day lives of the students, the Islamic schools attempt to integrate Islamic teaching into the everyday language and everyday learning of the children. Parents send their children to the religiously affiliated preschools in the hope of incorporating the respective religious values in their young children.
The article described in detail the typical day of a child in the Islamic school, which to me, did not seem very different than the preschool I attended as a child. The children in Malaysia receive a similar form of education that the children across the world receive. The reason these religious schools have such negative connotations is because they are associated with the only form of Islamic schooling we in the US know of: extremist madrasas. Borhan shows through her dissection of an Islamic school that the lives of children across the world are so similar, we are only divided by thin veils created by regional customs. Borhan states in her conclusion that "in general, by going to this Islamic preschool the children learned to develop
various skills and knowledge that were mandated by the national preschool curriculum in an environment which was steeped in Islamic values. What the school attempted to do was to make the boundary between ‘secular’ and ‘religious’ education disappear. And, perhaps more importantly, the school made the children feel that learning was not a chore (p 12)."
This approach to teaching is found in schools across the US. By integrating fun aspects like songs, folktales, and other regional customs, the children not only learn their heritage, they learn what is necessary to continue on an academic path. Religious schools do not have to be synonymous with extremism. It is as easy to understand as looking in a mirror. If put under the microscope, our preschools in the US do exactly what the Islamic schools do: teach the children under academic requirements through the use of songs and story in order to incorporate morality in their primary education. This article not only closely examines Islamic preschools, it allows the reader a broad understanding of education worldwide.


Source:
Borhan, Lihanna. "Teaching Islam: a look inside an Islamic school in Malaysia". Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, Volume 5, p 1-13, Number 3, 2004.