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!

Madrasah Life

A student’s day at Nadwat Al-Ulama
By Mohammed Akram An-Nadwi – Oxford Centre of Islamic Studies

As quoted taken from a book written by MAJOR-GENERAL SIR W. H. SLEEMAN,1788-1856. Resident at the Court of Lucknow, India describing the education in a madrasah.

Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official by William Sleeman

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 !

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?

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.

Back to the original topic –my kids are in a long holiday (until early January 2008 ) and basically I was not so happy with the kids spending too much time playing or watching TV. Imran would be gone missing with his friends playing — only came back looking for food and before I knew it he would disappear again – and Jaja would be watching cartoon all day as usual. Ammar was bored and during this cold winter in Riyadh he would spend more time under the blanket than anything else ( I think he got it from me ) .

So, I thought of getting them to do some written exercise , the books looked soooo boring — I decide to look in the internet for some Math/Science/English etc etc worksheet exercises. I find a few but one of them Edhelper.com seemed to be the best of them all.

The website looks simple but rich with contents, you can find categories of worksheets — Math, English , Geography , Science and what I like most about it is the Critical Thinking parts + Puzzle . It covers materials for K-12 — (kindergarten to High School) and surprisingly for Special Needs too.
The website can generate random pdf worksheets and can be nicely printed on A4 paper based on the categories chosen (with answers too!) so parents can also plan a daily exercise for the kids accordingly. You should check it out — you can choose to use them for free or decide to have a wider selection or full access by paying some fee at maximum of USD40/year

Cool isn’t it?! Its actually one of the best introduction to Law of Physics– Newtonian Mechanics? (the fun way!) for our children. The actual game above (deluxe version!) is yet to be released but you can try the original Crayon Physics here.

Some snapshots .

Believe me its not easy , but my kids had fun playing it.

It’s nobody’s birthday that day but seemed that the “only” song that’s Sabrina knew

Here another version.

At home, the two youngest daughters are growing up fast and need more attention than ever. Sabrina started playing PC games –I am not sure how, one day she played around with the laptop and ended-up at this games for girls website. And that was history, since that moment ummi’s laptop has been a subject of quarrel between all the females at home (yes it does include the youngest Alysha and Ummi too!) . Sabrina would spent hours in front of the laptop dressing up her “princess” later print them on papers.

Alysha was in a stage of discovery with her very minimum vocabularies (she just turned two last month!) – she would try everything from jumping off from the bed or painting the wall with crayons. She’s now officially declared as the most wanted mess-maker in the house , changes clothes every hour and also started calling herself as “Baby”

Alysha did her “singing” act.

Son
All the times that I cried, keeping all the things I knew inside,
Its hard, but its harder to ignore it.
If they were right, Id agree, but its them you know not me.
Now there’s a way and I know that I have to go away.
I know I have to go.
(father– stay stay stay, why must you go and
Make this decision alone? )

Do read Cat Steven‘s journey into Islam here .

p/s NO my sons are not getting married anytime  (this) soon