The Madrasah

I read some stuffs about homeschooling – and always admire Susan Wise Bauer idea of classical home education.
You can read the intro here

Classical education depends on a three-part process of training the mind. The early years of school are spent in absorbing facts, systematically laying the foundations for advanced study. In the middle grades, students learn to think through arguments. In the high school years, they learn to express themselves. This classical pattern is called the trivium.

Wow! How inspiring  but reading was much easier than implementing it   I knew that there is  better method from the traditional Islamic education system – the madrasah! And recently I found a book which clearly explained the life in a madrasah.

Check this out – a book from Oxford Centre of Islamic Studies about the life in Nadwat Al-Ulama in India. A forgotten and misunderstood education system inherited from the glorious Islamic ages – a must read!

Perhaps there are few communities in the world among whom education is more generally diffused than among Muhammadans in India. He who holds an office worth twenty rupees a month commonly gives his sons an education equal to that of a prime minister. They learn, through the medium of the Arabic and Persian languages, what young men in our colleges learn through those of the Greek and Latin–that is,grammar, rhetoric, and logic. After his seven years of study, the young Muhammadan binds his turban upon a head almost as well filled with the things which appertain to these branches of knowledge as the young man raw from Oxford–he will talk as fluently about Socrates and Aristotle, Plato, and Hippocrates, Galen and Avicenna: (_alias_Sokrat, Aristotalis, Aflatun, Bokrat, Jalinus, and Bu Ali Sena); and,what is much to his advantage in India, the languages in which he has learnt what he knows are those which he most requires through life.

And again I am inspired !

On vacation

I am in the final week of my 30 days vacation in Malaysia now. Perhaps it is the busiest days for me in my home country — everyday,  every minutes  (I am exaggerating here!) was carefully spent — I was in Melaka ->Batu Pahat ->Gunung Ledang->KL->Muar->Bukit Merah->Taiping->KL->BP and back here in KL now to do my packing. Due to budget constraint (we went back to Malaysia twice this year + abah just have to buy more routers to pursue his CCIE dreams) we have to limit our visits around Malaysia. But, you know being in Malaysia — I just realized how beautiful Malaysia is and everything is fun compared to the  hot 50 degree Celcius, sandy and dry  Riyadh .
Imagine  30 days of waking up late, spent quality time with your family and eating out everyday ! You can read about the adventure at my wife’s blog as I am too busy to write! Photos here

Disconnecting TV?

Stop! Don’t make assumptions yet, I have a 32 inch LCD TV at home and some torrents in progress in this PC but I also knew that TV did more harm than good to me and my children. It has been a topic of interest to me recently that I ordered a book about it from Amazon. .

Its not easy . According to Paul Graham

Distraction is not a static obstacle that you avoid like you might avoid a rock in the road. Distraction seeks you out.

and

And technology is continually being refined to produce more and more desirable things. Which means that as we learn to avoid one class of distractions, new ones constantly appear, like drug-resistant bacteria.

Bacteria? Tell me about it -passing by the game store on my way back from solah at the office everyday — made me think that I need Archos 605 badly !

Ummi asked me recently if watching TV is haram? . So as usual I would changed the topic and said hmm.. where did you got this idea from? I am no expert in this area to say about halal and haram but the idea of TV is bad for us is nothing new to me indeed I think to most us
As parents sometimes, we used TV as a replacement or excuse for us to get the children occupied.

Jaja! Pi tengok TV lah abah got work to do!

It happened so many times that I don’t feel bad about it (OK until now) and if you see my huge collection of DVDs — maybe you can imagine how serious I am in this “time wasted” profession. Can you teach your children just by letting them watch Sesame Street? No — according to Neil Postman TV only provides passive information transfer without 2 way-interactions and do you realize that most of children’s program today are a series of commercial that make you buy things! (Ernie puppets, Barnie , telletubies .. anyone ?!) — even worse if you’re fan Oprah — I told my wife recently that watching Oprah just made her felt insecure and worse making her started buying things advertise in the programme! I don’t like Dr. Phil too;)

Hey, Mom and Dad! Do you know…?

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics:

• The average child watches 3 hours of TV a day — 2 hours of quality programming is the maximum recommended by the Academy.
• Active play time is needed to develop mental, physical and social skills.
• Children who watch violence on TV are more likely to display aggressive behavior.
• Young children don’t know the difference between programs and commercials.

Sources http://www.aap.org/family/smarttv.htm

Back to the topic of distractions, it is not just about TV anymore – almost all media surrounding us has become an entertainment device. The mobile phone, the computer ,the internet can be one too– I could spent hours doing “nothing” infront of a PC on a weekend morning just to notice that its already time for Zuhr prayer . [Not to mention hours fixing the wireless connection or even waiting for the antivirus completed their scanning].There goes my valuable Thursday! (I live in KSA where Thursday and Friday are non-working days or weekend!). My friend used to say that time moving fast nowadays — where did the time go ? You’ll suddenly notice that is already mid-year 2008 but it felt that New Year Eve was just passing by yesterday! [Later we came to agreement about the wasted time on the computer! ]

So will I disconnecting my TV? Our satellite TV decoder was dead 2 days ago, a hard reset didn’t work and also my son complaint that the TV in his room was not working anymore. I think its a sign ..?

p/s Do read this article about your children and TV.

MIND CONTROL?

At Home!

Power of Positive Parenting — Free Online Course Materials — USU OpenCourseWare

Just found an interesting online parenting course, the good news is ..its FREE.

Power of Positive Parenting – Free Online Course Materials – USU OpenCourseWare

Course Description

This course has been developed using portions from several of the books, videos, and audio products produced by Glenn Latham. These materials will give parents the skills necessary to raise children well. Glenn Latham said of his book, The Power of Positive Parenting, which is his definitive book, upon which this course is built, that it has been “subjected to more independent, scientific scrutiny than any parenting book in print today. In every instance, it has been shown to be an effective parenting tool. For that reason, it has been adopted by parent training programs, schools, university professors, early childhood and head start programs, and governmental programs as the basic text for teaching parenting skills.”

Utah State University OpenCourseWare would like to thank Dr. Latham and his family for providing us with the materials and permissions to make this course available. Please note: This course is licensed under the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Creative Commons license. This means that derivative works may not be made from this content without first obtaining permission.

« Previous Entries