The Real Purpose of Education

By K. Baig
Education like democracy, free markets, freedom of the press, and “universal human rights” is one of those subjects whose virtue is considered self-evident. So is the superiority of the industrially advanced countries in attaining them. Consequently, any package that arrives with one of these magic labels on it, automatically qualifies for the “green channel” at the entry ports of developing countries. No questions asked. This uncritical acceptance has severely crippled their discussion of all these vital topics. For example in education the discussion remains centered around literacy rates and graduation statistics. The central issue of curriculum, and even more fundamental issue of the purpose of education normally do not attract attention; they have already been decided by the “advanced” countries and the job of the rest of the world is only to follow in their footsteps to achieve their level of progress.
Capitalist System
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. This linking of education to financial goals is extremely unfortunate. It degrades education and through it the society.
To bring home the 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. If they are to form a viable, thriving society, they must choose to do so. What drives that choice is the sharing of common goals, beliefs, values and outlook on life. 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.
Muslim Societies are Sick
Today we find many internal problems corruption, injustice, oppression, crippling poverty everywhere we turn in the Muslim world. These problems 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 “highly” educated people. The problem plagues all layers of society. Muslim societies are sick because their education system is sick.
Before they began blindly importing from the Colonial powers what was current and popular, education in Muslim 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 greater gift to his children than good moral training.” [Tirmidhi]. Our education system was informed by this hadith. Our darul-ulooms (Centers of Learning) still maintain that tradition but the number of students who pass through their gates is minuscule compared to the secular schools.
In the U.S. and Europe, the schools were started by the church. Later as forces of capitalism overtook them, they molded them into their image. Moral training was a casualty of that takeover. But capitalism and their political economy did need people trained to work under these systems. So citizenship training was retained as an important, though diminishing, component of the curriculum a religion-free subset of the moral training it displaced. Whatever civility we see here is largely a result of that leftover component. The imported versions in the Muslim countries, though, had even that component filtered out. And the results are visible.
Moral Training
We can solve our problem once we realize our mistakes. The first purpose of our education system must be to produce qualified citizens and leaders for the Islamic society. Tarbiya, real Islamic moral training, must be an integral part of it. This must be the soul of our education, not a ceremonial husk. All plans for improving our education will be totally useless unless they are based on a full understanding of this key fact. This requires revamping our curricula, rewriting our textbooks, retraining our teachers, and realizing that we must do all this ourselves. We do have a rich history of doing it. Are we finally willing to turn to our own in-house treasures to redo education the way it should always have been?
(Taken from islamicity.org)