AIOU Solved Assignments code 625 Autumn & Spring 2024 Assignment 1& 2 Course: Perspective of Elementary Education (625) Spring 2024. AIOU past papers
ASSIGNMENT No: 1& 2
Perspective of Elementary Education (625) Semester
Autumn & Spring 2024
AIOU Solved Assignment 1& 2 Code 625 Autumn & Spring 2024
Importance of education in modern times cannot be understated being the integral part of our lives. Education helps in evolution, improves one’s position in society, provides wide exposure, helps in decision making independently and maintaining healthy lifestyle. Those nations who recognized the importance of education are ruling the entire world. But unfortunately, developing nations like Pakistan are still striving due to neglecting the importance of education. Even seven decades have been elapsed of its independence; Pakistan is still far behind of the world in the field of education. Education policies were framed at various points of times to streamline the important field of education but unfortunately none of them was implemented in true letter and spirit. Just three months after creation of Pakistan, its founder Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah called for national education conference.
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National Education Conference 1947: First National Education Conference was held at Karachi from November 27th to December 1st, 1947. Quaid-i-Azam was its convener. He provided basic guidelines for future educational development. He also emphasized people to realize the sense of honour, integrity and selfless services to the nation. At this occasion, Fazal-ur-Rehman, the Education Minister of the country proposed three dimensions of education, i.e. spiritual, social and vocational. A number of committees were also formed at this occasion such as Primary and Secondary Education Committee, Adult Education Committee, Technical Education Committee, Scientific Research Committee, University Education Committee, Women’s Education Committee and Cultural Relations Committee. The major recommendations of the conference were:
i) Free and compulsory education in Pakistan ii) Education should be teamed with Islamic values and iii) Emphasis on science and technical education.
Unfortunately, this policy could not be implemented properly due to various reasons including increased number of immigrants and other administrative problems of new born country and British colonial system was continued.
National Commission on Education 1959: The Commission was addressed by the President of Pakistan, General Mohammad Ayub Khan, on January 5, 1959. Commission made education compulsory upto 10 years of age. It made religious education also compulsory. Further commission also recommended equal expansion for boys and girls education. Major recommendations of the commission include character building, compulsory primary education focus on science and technical education, national language as medium of instruction, three-year degree program, elimination of illiteracy, establishment of university grants commission, combination of internal (25%) and external (75%) evaluation in examination system and introduction of religious education in three stages, i.e. 1) compulsory at middles level, 2) optional at secondary level and 3) research at university level.
Recommendations of the National Education Commission were very useful but due to limited resources and conditions of country they were not applied in a better way.
New Education Policy 1970: The revised proposals were reviewed by the committee of the cabinet in the light of implications of the announcement by the President in his address to the nation on November 28, 1969. The new Education Policy was finally adopted by the Cabinet on March 26, 1970. Emphasis on ideological orientation, emphasis on science and technology education, decentralization of educational administration, eradication of illiteracy and formation of national education units were salient features of this educational policy. This policy was also not implemented mainly due to the war with India, separation of East Pakistan, and collapse of the military government.
Education Policy 1972: Zulifqar Bhutto announced a National Education Policy on 29 March 1972. Salient features of this policy include promotion of ideology of Pakistan, universal education, equality in education, personality development, curriculum based on socioeconomic needs of the society, integrated technical and science education, active participation of teacher, students and parents in educational affairs, nationalization of educational institutions, free & universal education up to Class X for both girls & boys (first phase October 1972, all public & private schools to provide free education up to class VIII, Second phase starting 1974, free education extended up to Class X). This policy was a good approach towards betterment, but has many drawbacks due to which it cannot be achieved thoroughly e.g. universal basic education, shift towards agro-technical studies etc.
National Education Policy 1979: Minister for Education announced this policy in October 1978. The Draft work plan of the policy was presented to the Cabinet in December, 1978. The Policy was announced in February 1979. In 1979 National Educational Conference was held for reviewing the education system and developed following aims:
i) Fostering loyalty to Islam, ii) Creation of concept of Muslim Ummah
iii) Promotion of science and technical
education and iv) Equal opportunities
The following strategies were suggested to achieve the goals:
1.Curriculum revision, 2. Merging madrassa and traditional education, 3. Urdu as a medium of education, 4. Effective participation of community in literacy programs, 5. Linked scientific and technical education and 6. Separate set up for male and female.
This policy was not implemented properly and failed due to lack of planning and financial resources.
National Education Policy 1992: A National Conference was held at Islamabad in April, 1991 under the chairmanship of the Federal Education Minister. In this Conference scholars, writers, newspaper editors, scientists, teachers and Lawyers proposals for preparing the Education Policy. The policy framework was discussed by the Education Minister with the Education Committees of the Senate and the National Assembly. The Policy was announced in December 1992. The major aspect, aims and goals of National Education Policy include Promotion of Islamic values through education, improvement in women education, range of general and technical education at secondary level, demand oriented curriculum, expended span of graduation and post graduation, use of AV aids promoting private sector to participate in enhancement of literacy. This policy could not be implemented due to change in political scenario of country.
National Education Policy 1998-2010: The Prime Minister advised the Ministry of Education to design a new Education Policy in January 1998. The first revised draft was submitted to the Cabinet on 18 February, 1998. The Policy was announced in March 1998. Major objectives of National Education Policy include making the Quranic principles and Islamic practices an integral part of education system, to achieve universal primary education, to meet the basic educational needs of every individual, to expand the basic education, to ensure equal opportunity of higher education, laid emphasis on diversification, to make curriculum development a continuous process, to introduce in-service training programs for betterment of education.
Suggestions for achievement of above goals were:
i) Introduction of idea of multiple text
book, ii). Diversification of curriculum,
iii) Development of National Testing Services, iv) Expansion and emphasis on technical and science education, v) Upgrading the quality of Deeni Madaras, vi) Teacher training programs both pre and in service and vii) Introduction of comprehensive monitoring system.
Education Sector Reforms 2005-2010: This originated from the policy of 1998-2010 and focuses on development of human resources. The existing Education Policy was announced in 2009. The major thrust areas of ESR include free and universal primary education, free text books, equal access to opportunities of learning and improving all aspects in quality education, introduction of new educational curricula, development of training learning resources and materials, offering incentives for private sector, introduction of computer course at all levels, strengthening of research in higher education and grant for affiliation of madrasas, allocation for education would be 7% of the national GDP by 2015, literacy rate will be enhanced to 86% by 2015, a Bachelor degree, with a B.Ed, shall be the minimum requirement for teaching at the elementary level and masters degree for the secondary and higher secondary with a B.Ed, shall be ensured by 2018.
Ultimate Objectives of Pakistani Education policies is advancing literacy rate upto 80% in 2018 from 57% in 2009 which seems to be impossible under present scenario. For attaining higher literacy rates, government should prioritize education. Govt. should work on war footing basis to combat illiteracy in the country.
AIOU Solved Assignment 1& 2 Code 625 Autumn & Spring 2024
The Progressive education movement was an integral part of the early twentieth-century reform impulse directed toward the reconstruction of American democracy through social, as well as cultural, uplift. When done correctly, these reformers contended, education promised to ease the tensions created by the immense social, economic, and political turmoil wrought by the forces of modernity characteristic of fin-de-siècle America. In short, the altered landscape of American life, Progressive reformers believed, provided the school with a new opportunity–indeed, a new responsibility–to play a leading role in preparing American citizens for active civic participation in a democratic society.
John Dewey (1859–1952), who would later be remembered as the “father of Progressive education,” was the most eloquent and arguably most influential figure in educational Progressivism. A noted philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer, Dewey graduated from the University of Vermont in 1879, taught high school briefly, and then earned his doctorate in philosophy at the newly formed Johns Hopkins University in 1884. Dewey taught at the University of Michigan from 1884 to 1888, the University of Minnesota from 1888 to 1889, again at Michigan from 1889 to 1894, then at the University of Chicago from 1894 to 1904, and, finally, at Columbia University from 1904 until his retirement in 1931.
During his long and distinguished career, Dewey generated over 1,000 books and articles on topics ranging from politics to art. For all his scholarly eclecticism, however, none of his work ever strayed too far from his primary intellectual interest: education. Through such works as The School and Society (1899), The Child and the Curriculum (1902), and Democracy and Education (1916), Dewey articulated a unique, indeed revolutionary, reformulation of educational theory and practice based upon the core relationship he believed existed between democratic life and education. Namely, Dewey’s vision for the school was inextricably tied to his larger vision of the good society, wherein education–as a deliberately conducted practice of investigation, of problem solving, and of both personal and community growth–was the wellspring of democracy itself. Because each classroom represented a microcosm of the human relationships that constituted the larger community, Dewey believed that the school, as a “little democracy,” could create a “more lovely society.”
Dewey’s emphasis on the importance of democratic relationships in the classroom setting necessarily shifted the focus of educational theory from the institution of the school to the needs of the school’s students. This dramatic change in American pedagogy, however, was not alone the work of John Dewey. To be sure, Dewey’s attraction to child-centered educational practices was shared by other Progressive educators and researchers–such as Ella Flagg Young (1845–1918), Dewey’s colleague and kindred spirit at the University of Chicago, and Granville Stanley Hall (1844–1925), the iconoclastic Clark University psychologist and avowed leader of the child study movement–who collectively derived their understanding of child-centeredness from reading and studying a diverse array of nineteenth and twentieth-century European and American philosophical schools. In general, the received philosophical traditions employed by Dewey and his fellow Progressives at once deified childhood and advanced ideas of social and intellectual interdependence. First, in their writings about childhood, Frenchman Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) emphasized its organic and natural dimensions; while English literary romantics such as William Wordsworth (1770–1850) and William Blake (1757–1827) celebrated its innate purity and piety, a characterization later shared by American transcendentalist philosophers Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) and Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862). For these thinkers, childhood was a period of innocence, goodness, and piety that was in every way morally superior to the polluted lives led by most adults. It was the very sanctity of childhood that convinced the romantics and transcendentalists that the idea of childhood should be preserved and cultivated through educational instruction.
Second, and more important, Dewey and his fellow educational Progressives drew from the work of the German philosopher Friedrich Froebel (1782–1852) and Swiss educator Johann Pestalozzi (1746–1827). Froebel and Pestalozzi were among the first to articulate the process of educating the “whole child,” wherein learning moved beyond the subject matter and ultimately rested upon the needs and interests of the child. Tending to both the pupil’s head and heart, they believed, was the real business of schooling, and they searched for an empirical and rational science of education that would incorporate these foundational principles. Froebel drew upon the garden metaphor of cultivating young children toward maturity, and he provided the European foundations for the late-nineteenth-century kindergarten movement in the United States. Similarly, Pestalozzi popularized the pedagogical method of object teaching, wherein a teacher began with an object related to the child’s world in order to initiate the child into the world of the educator.
Finally, Dewey drew inspiration from the ideas of philosopher and psychologist William James (1842–1910). Dewey’s interpretation of James’s philosophical pragmatism, which was similar to the ideas underpinning Pestalozzi’s object teaching, joined thinking and doing as two seamlessly connected halves of the learning process. By focusing on the relationship between thinking and doing, Dewey believed his educational philosophy could equip each child with the problem-solving skills required to overcome obstacles between a given and desired set of circumstances. According to Dewey, education was not simply a means to a future life, but instead represented a full life unto itself.
Taken together, then, these European and American philosophical traditions helped Progressives connect childhood and democracy with education: Children, if taught to understand the relationship between thinking and doing, would be fully equipped for active participation in a democratic society. It was for these reasons that the Progressive education movement broke from pedagogical traditionalists organized around the seemingly outmoded and antidemocratic ideas of drill, discipline, and didactic exercises.
Pedagogical Progressivism
The pedagogical Progressives who embraced this child-centered pedagogy favored education built upon an experience-based curriculum developed by both students and teachers. Teachers played a special role in the Progressive formulation for education as they merged their deep knowledge of, and affection for, children with the intellectual demands of the subject matter. Contrary to his detractors, then and now, Dewey, while admittedly antiauthoritarian, did not take child-centered curriculum and pedagogy to mean the complete abandonment of traditional subject matter or instructional guidance and control. In fact, Dewey criticized derivations of those theories that treated education as a mere source of amusement or as a justification for rotevocationalism. Rather, stirred by his desire to reaffirm American democracy, Dewey’s time- and resource-exhaustive educational program depended on close student–teacher interactions that, Dewey argued, required nothing less than the utter reorganization of traditional subject matter.
Although the practice of pure Deweyism was rare, his educational ideas were implemented in private and public school systems alike. During his time as head of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago (which also included the fields of psychology and pedagogy), Dewey and his wife Alice established a University Laboratory School. An institutional center for educational experimentation, the Lab School sought to make experience and hands-on learning the heart of the educational enterprise, and Dewey carved out a special place for teachers. Dewey was interested in obtaining psychological insight into the child’s individual capacities and interests. Education was ultimately about growth, Dewey argued, and the school played a crucial role in creating an environment that was responsive to the child’s interests and needs, and would allow the child to flourish.
Similarly, Colonel Francis W. Parker, a contemporary of Dewey and devout Emersonian, embraced an abiding respect for the beauty and wonder of nature, privileged the happiness of the individual over all else, and linked education and experience in pedagogical practice. During his time as superintendent of schools in Quincy, Massachusetts, and later as the head of the Cook Country Normal School in Chicago, Parker rejected discipline, authority, regimentation, and traditional pedagogical techniques and emphasized warmth, spontaneity, and the joy of learning. Both Dewey and Parker believed in learning by doing, arguing that genuine delight, rather than drudgery, should be the by-product of manual work. By linking the home and school, and viewing both as integral parts of a larger community, Progressive educators sought to create an educational environment wherein children could see that the hands-on work they did had some bearing on society.
While Progressive education has most often been associated with private independent schools such as Dewey’s Laboratory School, Margaret Naumberg’s Walden School, and Lincoln School of Teacher’s College, Progressive ideas were also implemented in large school systems, the most well known being those in Winnetka, Illinois, and Gary, Indiana. Located some twenty miles north of Chicago on its affluent North Shore, the Winnetka schools, under the leadership of superintendent Carleton Washburne, rejected traditional classroom practice in favor of individualized instruction that let children learn at their own pace. Washburne and his staff in the Winnetka schools believed that all children had a right to be happy and live natural and full lives, and they yoked the needs of the individual to those of the community. They used the child’s natural curiosity as the point of departure in the classroom and developed a teacher education program at the Graduate Teachers College of Winnetka to train teachers in this philosophy; in short, the Winnetka schools balanced Progressive ideals with basic skills and academic rigor.
Like the Winnetka schools, the Gary school system was another Progressive school system, led by superintendent William A. Wirt, who studied with Dewey at the University of Chicago. The Gary school system attracted national attention for its platoon and work-study-play systems, which increased the capacity of the schools at the same time that they allowed children to spend considerable time doing hands-on work in laboratories, shops, and on the playground. The schools also stayed open well into the evening hours and offered community-based adult education courses. In short, by focusing on learning-by-doing and adopting an educational program that focused on larger social and community needs, the Winnetka and Gary schools closely mirrored Dewey’s own Progressive educational theories.
Administrative Progressivism
While Dewey was the most well known and influential Progressive educator and philosopher, he by no means represented all that Progressive education ultimately became. In the whirlwind of turn-of-the-century educational reform, the idea of educational Progressivism took on multiple, and often contradictory, definitions. Thus, at the same time that Dewey and his followers rejected traditional methods of instruction and developed a “new education” based on the interests and needs of the child, a new cadre of professionally trained school administrators likewise justified their own reforms in the name of Progressive education.
Administrative Progressives shared Dewey’s distaste for nineteenth-century education, but they differed markedly with Dewey in their prescription for its reform: administrative Progressives wanted to overthrow “bookish” and rigid schooling by creating what they believed to be more useful, efficient, and centralized systems of public education based on vertically integrated bureaucracies, curricular differentiation, and mass testing.
Professional school administrators relied on managerial expertise in order to efficiently supervise increasingly large public school systems. Significantly, the new administrators, borrowing the language and practice of efficiency experts like Frederick W. Taylor, attempted to rationalize disparate school districts within one hierarchically arranged system of primary, middle, and high school institutions. Powerful school boards–often comprising elite business and civic leaders–hired professionally trained school superintendents to implement policies and to oversee the day-to-day operations of these vast educational systems. The superintendent, often a male, distanced himself from the mostly female corps of teachers, not to mention the students the school was intended to serve. In the name of efficiency, superintendents relied on “scientific,” if often sterile, personnel management techniques, which had been developed by and for private industry and imported to the school setting by way of business-friendly school boards and through graduate training at the newly developed schools of education.
The school’s turn toward bureaucratic efficiency directly shaped curricular construction. In particular, the idea of differentiation became a new watchword in administrative Progressive circles, reflecting the burgeoning economic and status markers signified by the attainment of educational credentials. By differentiating the curriculum along academic and vocational tracks, school administrators sought to meet the needs of different classes and calibers of students, and to more tightly couple educational training with educational outcomes. While administrators justified this curricular innovation (which was most often used in the high schools) on the basis of equal opportunity for all students based on ability, it reflected a larger, more significant shift in the basic aims and objectives of American education. Where the school once provided intellectual and moral training, in the face of an increasingly diverse student population, Progressive administrators took their chief professional administrative responsibility to be the preparation of students for their future lives as workers in the American labor force.
For many contemporary observers, however, curricular differentiation was little more than a euphemism for “social control,” which critics suggested curtailed liberal education in order to meet the labor demands of America’s budding industrial society. While this is a cynical view of the Progressive administrative drive, there is much justification for it. Founded in 1906 by a committee of educators and business and industrial leaders, the National Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education (NSPIE) helped organize vocational education programs in high schools around the country during the first several decades of the twentieth century. Vocational education, which critics conveniently, if incorrectly, linked to Progressive education, was expressly designed to train students for immediate employment following, and often in lieu of, graduation.
On the other hand, administrative Progressives justified the rise of vocational tracks by pointing to the relatively miniscule college-going population and by proclaiming it as an effective means of assimilating newly arrived immigrants into American life and institutions. That these students’ high school education was essentially terminated before it ever started was of little concern, for in the face of rapid social upheaval, which reformers believed eroded the traditional institutions of church and family, the school was the last best hope to inculcate immigrants with American values, while simultaneously providing industry with a consistent influx of trained workers.
The interest in the efficient management of bureaucratic school systems and students was strengthened further by developments in educational psychology and intelligence testing. Among the twentieth century’s prominent educational psychologists, E. L. Thorndike (1874–1949)–who studied under William James at Harvard, and taught at Columbia University’s Teachers College during Dewey’s tenure–was undoubtedly the most influential. Presaging the rise of post–World War I mass intelligence testing by relying on intelligence tests in his own studies as early as 1903, Thorndike’s research advanced a narrowly focused stimulus-response definition of intelligence that justified the spread of worker training through vocational education at the same time that his mechanistic conception of intelligence corrupted Dewey’s own ideas about the organic connection between thinking and doing. Thorndike, relying on data gathered from his study of 8,564 high school students in the early 1920s, labeled his theory of intelligence psychological connectionism. Thorndike likened the mind to a “switchboard” where neural bonds (or connections) were created between stimuli and responses. He believed that students of higher intellect formed more and better bonds more quickly than students of lower intellect.
For the administrative Progressives, Thorn-dike’s findings were nothing short of revolutionary: By emphasizing the preponderant role of native intelligence through the statistical analysis of mass-administered intelligence tests, Thorndike and his fellow testers–H. H. Goodard, Lewis H. Terman, and Robert M. Yerkes, among them–provided school officials and policymakers with scientifically incontrovertible evidence in favor of increased psychometric testing and pupil sorting. In comparison with Dewey’s more human and material-intensive approach to education, which required individualized student attention and creative pedagogy, Thorndike’s conception helped reify separate curricula and perpetuate patterns of unequal access. Precisely (if paradoxically) because of the malleability of the idea of Progressive educational reform, it was possible for both pedagogical and administrative Progressives to advance their radically different agendas in the name of democracy during the first several decades of the twentieth century.
Life-Adjustment Progressivism
Yet the internal contradictions and ideological inconsistencies of the pedagogical and administrative Progressives in many ways forecast the demise of the Progressive education movement. A system of education that championed both child-centeredness and individuated attention on the one hand, and explicit curricular differentiation through intelligence testing on the other, was perhaps destined to collapse; and with the introduction of life-adjustment education during the 1940s and 1950s, the Progressive education movement did just that.
Life-adjustment education emerged on the scene during the 1940s and witnessed its heyday during the early days of the cold war. The cause of life-adjustment education was advanced by leaders of the vocational education movement like Charles Prosser, who helped pass the monumental 1917 Smith-Hughes National Vocational Education Act, who believed that the school’s main function should be to prepare students for the work world. To this end, the life adjusters borrowed generously from the pedagogical and administrative Progressive lexicon by advocating that schools should test and track students at the same time that they should improve students’ physical and emotional well-being. Ultimately, the United States Office of Education’s Commission on Life Adjustment Education for Youth coopted the mantel of Progressive education. Using commission reports published in 1951 and 1954 as its blueprint for action, the life adjustment movement succeeded in instituting its therapeutic curricula–geared toward the development of personal hygiene, sociability and personality, and industrious habits of mind–at thousands of schools around the country.
Critics denounced the public school’s shift toward an overtly custodial function as both anti-American, anti-intellectual, and, ironically, antidemocratic. In the shadow of Joseph McCarthy’s communist witch hunt, the Progressive’s sponsorship of international understanding through education, the perceived penchant for feel-good classroom instruction, and the alleged liberal political orientation of Progressive educators cut against the grain of 1950s conservative America. The alleged anti-intellectualism of adjustment pedagogy, however, fueled even more criticism. Among others, the historian Arthur Bestor led the charge against life adjustment’s anti-intellectualism. In his Educational Wastelands (1953) and The Restoration of Learning (1955), Bestor argued that life adjustment’s emphasis on vocational instruction and life management skills marginalized the place of traditional core subjects. According to Bestor, it was impossible to be a fully educated person in the absence of at least some exposure to traditional liberal studies.
In this traditional view, most similar to the nineteenth century concept of education as mental discipline, Bestor was joined by other neotraditionalist educational luminaries, including Robert Maynard Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago and advocate of the great books curriculum, and James Bryant Conant, the highly respected and influential president of Harvard University. All three men agreed on the fundamental aimlessness and futility of life adjustment education in particular, and American high school education in general. Thanks to these men’s efforts, the tenor of the national conversation on education changed dramatically, as more educators and public officials came to believe that it was once again time to think anew about the direction of American education.
Not surprisingly, in the midst of intense neotraditionalist scrutiny and growing public dissatisfaction with life-adjustment education, the Progressive Education Association, the principal administrative organ of the Progressive education movement, closed its doors in 1955; two years later, following the Soviet Union’s successful launch of Sputnik I, the general orientation of American education shunned life adjustment pedagogy and embraced traditional academic studies in the liberal arts, mathematics, and the hard sciences. With the communist threat looming ever larger, the neotraditionalists believed the future of American democracy depended on a return to traditional academic studies.
Progressive education did not entirely disappear, however. The fundamental tenants of Progressive education’s pedagogical and administrative functions continue to inform contemporary educational debates. What is the relationship between education and democratic citizenship, between teachers and students? Are school districts too large? To what extent is the school responsible for the emotional as well as intellectual development of its pupils? Do achievement tests provide valid and reliable measures of student learning? Is the core curriculum sacrosanct or amenable to change? These are just some of the questions Progressive educators attempted to ask and answer, and they are questions that educators still wrestle with at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
AIOU Solved Assignment 1& 2 Code 625 Autumn & Spring 2024
The Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) was the most effective orator of all the times. He knew how to address the hearts, and thus he became the beloved one of the hearts. He first made himself loved, and then sought the ways to educate people. He used a style in his speeches that affected people and made them think, so he achieved permanent behaviour change in people by means of the best educational methods.
If we want to lead people to behave positively and prevent them from acting badly, the safest way to do this is to reward and appreciate positive action.
To be loved and appreciated is what people crave. In the process of learning, people conclude from the appreciation and approval of the educators what they are doing right and what they are doing wrong.
Ibn Abbas (ra) tells: “One day I prepared some water in a pot so that the Prophet could perform ablution. When the Prophet saw the pot, he asked who had prepared it. Once he learned that it was me who had prepared it, he prayed for me, “O Allah! Increase his understanding in religion”. (Bukhari, Invitation, 19)
One of the best methods of education is giving examples, as stories and examples more stick in the mind. Man can look at the face of the truth through these examples and stories and can perceive it more easily. The information given in the form of a story becomes more significant in the mind, and is remembered for much longer. We should read Islamic stories to our children, tell them about historical events and prefer to give all messages in form of stories. For this purpose the Prophet (PBUH) highlighted the significance of the prayer with such a metaphor:
“What would you say if there were a river in front of a man’s house and he bathed in it five times a day, would he remain dirty?” Those who were there replied, “No, no dirt would remain on that man”. Upon this the Prophet (PBUH) said, “This is how it is with the five daily prayers. Allah (SWT) cleans sins by means of them.” (Bukhari, Mawaqit, 6; Tirmidhi, Adab, 80)
One of the most effective ways of teaching is demonstrating by means of practice. People do not forget what they are taught with practice. Teaching by practice is the most fruitful method of teaching. Our Prophet (PBUH) saw a boy who was skinning a sheep and said to him: “Let me teach you.” He put his hand between the skin and the meat until he reached up to the armpit of the sheep, and then he said: “Skin it like that, young man!” (Dawud, Taharat, 73; Ibn Maja, Zabaih, 6)
Our Prophet showed a man who asked about it how to perform ablution. In some narrations it is said that he repeated it three times. (Ibn Maja, Taharat, 48) Teaching by practice engages both the eyes and the ears, and thus helps the information to stick in the mind.
Another way of providing information which will stay permanently in the mind of the learners is to make use of drawings and figures. The right lobe of brain records drawings straight into the photographic memory and it does not forget them for a long time. For that reason, teaching making use of drawings and visual methods encourages the subject matter to be understood well. The Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) explained the features of the ways of Allah and Satan by drawing shapes on the ground while sitting together with Jabir (ra). Jabir (ra) told the story as follows: When I was sitting together with the Prophet, he drew a line in front of him and said, “This is it; this is the path of Allah (SWT)”. Then he drew two lines to the right of this line and two lines to the left of the same line and said, “And these are the paths of the Satan”. Then he put his hand over the line in the middle and recited the following verse: “This is my straight path, so follow it, and do not follow other paths, lest they scatter you from His Path. This He has enjoined upon you, that you keep from disobedience to Him in reverence for Him and piety to deserve His protection.” (An’am, 6:153)
Underlining and repeating the important points during teaching is an important teaching method for making the subject matter remain in the mind. The learner feels that what is repeated is important. To be able to memorize information, we repeat it. Through repetition the information is transferred from the short term memory to the long term memory. Since the information is strengthened in the mind, it may be easily recalled even if a long time passes. For this reason, when the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) introduced new information to his companions, he often used to repeat it three times and in that way he tried to get the important points to stick in the mind. Also the number of repetitions could change according to the capacity of the interlocutors. Some might get it when it was said just once and some might need more repetitions. Anas (ra) said: “When the Messenger of Allah said a sentence he used to repeat it up to three times making sure that it was understood.” (Hakim)
Learning by writing is one of the best ways of education. While writing the attention is focused on the subject and you have a text if you want to remember the topic in a detailed way. Writing once is equal to reading ten times. By writing, we engrave the topic both on the paper and in our minds and hearts. The Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) said as follows regarding this issue: “Bind knowledge by writing.” Furthermore, emancipation of the prisoners of the war in return for teaching literacy to people shows the significance that he attached to reading and writing. (Abu Dawud, Adab, 6)
The Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) was sent to promote good morality. His words of advice were reflected from Allah who is the Compassionate as a reflection of mercy, thus, he would say good words and commit good deeds. He knew that evil words blemish the heart, and evil in the heart reflects upon the soul. For this reason, he never said an evil word to friend or foe. The Prophet would not speak in a way that would break anybody’s heart. When he was treated badly, he did not take it personally and he generalized it and then corrected it. When someone complained to him about someone, or he saw a fault in someone, he did not fling the fault in the agent’s face. Educationalists and psychologists say that for sustainable long-term education, a stable and uncritical relationship between teacher and learner is a must.
When we look at our Prophet (PBUH), he would say, “what is the matter with those people that they say or do so and so!” and thus he made people realize that what is wrong is the behaviour, and he did not insult or scold people. He did not criticize the person, but rather the faulty action, and he tried to correct it in the best way.
When we consider the life and practices of the Prophet (PBUH), we see that if we apply his lofty methods when we are in a difficult position, the problems will be solved, our paths will be illuminated, and we will easily see the farthest horizons. If we avoid practising these methods just through negligence, we will be the losers. It is a big mistake to consider them unimportant. Those who make the methods of the Prophet into good habits for themselves will find that they act straightforwardly and become successful.
AIOU Solved Assignment 1& 2 Code 625 Autumn & Spring 2024
Apart from the Holy Quran, Shah Waliullah also wrote authentic books on Hadith, the principles of Hadith, Tafseer and on mystical subjects. But the most popular book of “Hujatul Baligdh”. This book explains how Islam was found suitable for all races, cultures and people of the world and how successfully it solves social, moral, economic and political problems of human beings. He died in Delhi on the year 1176 AH corresponding to 1762 AD, behind the central jail. There is a vast ground and a graveyard known popularly as “Mehindin Kakhitta” which contains in it the grave of Shah Waliullah and his progeny.
Hazrat Shah Waliullah was fortunate of having children who were great scholars and god-fearing men like himself. His eldest son Shah Abdul Aziz was born in 1159 AH and died in 1258 AH corresponding to 1825 AD. At the age of 17 he had become an accomplished scholar and began teaching like his father. For 60 years, he continued teaching and preaching Islam. The blessing of his knowledge reached every corner of the Indian sub-continent. Because of his versatile genius he was giving the title “Ayatullah”, a sign of God.
The second of Shah Waliullah Rafi-uddin. He was born in 1163 AH and died in 1253 AH. His scholarly qualities may well be judged from the fact that when Shah Abdul Aziz had become to teach he passed on his responsibilities to Shah Rafi. Among the work of Shah Rafi his urdu translation of the Holy Quran.
The third son of Shah Sahib was Shah Abdul Qadir who was born in 1162 AH and died in 1250 AH. He was also a big scholar by his nature, he loved solitude, and he spent his whole life in a secluded room of Akbar Badi mosque. He did not much attend to literary writings, however, his urdu translation under the title of “Mozih ul Quran” was his monumental achievement which is recognised by scholarly circles.
His fourth son was Abdul Ghani. He was a saintly person. His son Shah Ismail Shaheed was a unique personality who had combined in himself all virtues of scholarly and mystical personalities.
In short, due to sincere and dedicated efforts of Shah Waliullah and his family the illustrious banner of Islam kept flying over the Indian sub continent despite the decline and fall of the Mughal empire. In Spain, the faith of Islam disappeared with disappearance of the Muslim rule. Many Muslims were killed and many were converted to Christianity. In India however the intention of the British Government did not realize and Muslim India did not convert to the faith of the ruling people despite missionary efforts of the British Government who spent millions of pounds on missionary activities and arranged lectures, debates and seminars to propagate their faith. The failure of the British Government in converting Muslim India was due to the dedicated efforts of Hazrat Shah Waliullah and his noble family.
Shah Walliullah was a great Muslim reformist of 18th century in India. He was a brilliant thinker and scholar with critical insight of political scenario of that time. He worked for the betterment and true education of Muslims on right Islamic norms. At that time in the Muslims after ruing India magnificently were going to lose power. The decline of Muslim rule in India had already begun and Muslims were being exploited at every facet of life. In order to bring Muslims of India on right path and help them Shah Walliullah worked really hard. He was born on 23st February 1703 in Delhi and he died in 1762. His father was a famous religious personality at that time his name was Abdur Rahim he was a famous educationist who was running a Madrasah called Madrasah –i-Rahimiyah. Shah Walliullah got his early education under his well educated father who taught him well and he was also enrolled in Naqshbandiyya Sufi order to enrich his spiritual insight. Soon he got permission to teach at father’s Madrasah, where he continued teaching for next 12 years. In 1730 he got a chance to go to Mecca where he performed pilgrimage and got lucky to get education from the leading Muslim scholars of that time. It was a time when a new thought got roots in his mind that the position and predicament of Muslims at home was overwhelming. That it was a time for Muslims of India to adopt true spirit of Islam, this is because of their religious decline Muslims of India were facing decline in social, political, and economic aspects as well. So he decided to take a lead and started working to show Muslims actual spirit of Islam in rational manner. He contributed literary fields as well like; in 1738 he translated Quran into Persian despite of opposition he faced by orthodox Ulemma. He worked to bring together Shiites and Sunnis and Ulemma and Sufis. He proposed ways like Ijtihad in Islam and denounced blind Taqlid. He believed in grooming of Muslims as a society and educated them to live up as a society in which economic and social justice would prevail. He educated Muslims of India to emancipate Muslim society from economic injustices and social biases. He wrote almost 50 books on various subjects he trained a group of Ulemma to spread the true knowledge of Islam. He opened many branches of his school in Delhi to spread his school of thought. His versatility was his main asset; he worked on every prospected field which could raise the standard of Muslims as a nation or individual entity. He laid the foundations of all political, religious, and intellectual movements which would initiate in Indian sub-continent by Muslims in future. He was an authentic theologian and scholar of Islam; he had great understanding of Quran and Hadith. He also gave many economic theories which gave reasons which became the cause of decline of Muslims. Politically Shah Walliullah was a vibrant personality. He ran an indigenous political movement of its kind in India. He tried to unite Muslims as a single entity. His main political agenda was a retain Mughal Empire; he became the cause to invite Ahmad Shah Abdali to India in order to fight Marathas who were undermining Mughal rule at that time. Thought his efforts to maintain Muslim rule in India did not capitalize but it would provide an insight for future political, intellectual and religious movements in India.
Work of Shah Wali Ullah
On reaching Delhi, he devoted most of his time in writing books and to preaching in public meetings. The teaching activity was limited to the lessons of Hadith. The political and the moral degeneration of the Muslims had tremendous effects on the sensitive thinking mind of Hazrat Shah Waliullah. His famous book “Al-Tafheematul llahia” minutely pen points all the various defects, shortcomings and vices, which had taken roots in various sections of the Muslims. His aim, metaphorically speaking, was to destroy the rotten moral buildings and to reconstruct a new mansion over it. He bluntly wrote in one of his writings “I have arrived to destroy every old in region at present.
Quran Translation into PersiAN LANGUAGE
The most monumental task he performed was to translate the Quran from Arabic to Persian which was the language spoken by the Muslims at that time in India. His aim was that educated Muslims may have access to the Quran without depending on the scholars who had opposed his reformatory measures. The short sighted ullama gathered and wanted to kill him for his sin of translating the Quran from Arabic to Persian but he continued with his task till he completed it. This task was appreciated by Allah so much so that the Quran is translated to many languages.
Hujatul Baligdh (Popular Book)
Apart from the Holy Quran, Shah Waliullah also wrote authentic books on Hadith, the principles of Hadith, Tafseer and on mystical subjects. But the most popular book of “Hujatul Baligdh”. This book explains how Islam was found suitable for all races, cultures and people of the world and how successfully it solves social, moral, economic and political problems of human beings.
Al Fauzul Kabeer Fee Usool
.Al Fauzul Kabeer Fee Usool at Tafseer, a booklet in Persian that follows his Persian translation of the Qur’an. It contains the nucleus of the Qur’an, the rules for interpretation, and interpretations of the Qur’an by other famous scholars
Analyzing his political thought, Iqbal states:
“The Prophetic method of teaching, according to Shah Waliullah is that, generally speaking, the law revealed by a prophet takes especial notice of the habits, ways and peculiarities of the people to whom he is specifically sent. The Prophet who aims at all-embracing principles, however, can neither reveal different peoples nor leave them to work out their own rules of conduct. His method is to train one particular people and to use it as a nucleus for the build up of a universal `Shariah’. In doing so, he accentuates the principles underlying the social life of all mankind and applies them to concrete cases in the light of the specific habits of the people immediately before him.” (“Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam”)
Letters By Shah Wali Ullah
He wrote open letters to:
Mughal rulers, to give up their corrupt and inefficient practices.
Soldiers, for forgetting to inculcate within themselves the spirit of Jihad.
Artisans, workers and peasants, reminded them that on their labors the economic prosperity of the state depends.
The Emperor, to teach a lesson to the Jats threatening the Mughal Empire and also wrote to him not to give jagirs to mansabdars, who were not loyal to the state.
Masses, to be conscious of their duties and not to indulge in the accumulation of wealth.
He wrote to Ahmad Shah Abdali to give up the life of ease, draw the sword and not to sheath it till the distinction is established between true faith and infidelity. His efforts resulted in Maratha debacle at the hands of Ahmad Shah Abdali and Najibud Daula in the third battle of Panipat in 1761 A.D.
The times of Shah Waliullah
Shah Waliullah lived during the times that can best be described as disastrous for the mughal dynasty in India. The descendants of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb are alleged to have squandered the wealth amassed by their forefathers on entertainment, dance, music and wasteful constructions. The Shiites exercised significant influence on the court. The kingdom was reeling under the severe spells of droughts, poverty, hunger, hopelessness and purported indifference and cruelty at the hands of their rulers. The character of the people were alleged to have fallen to the lowest levels of “civilised” behavior.
According to Hazrath Salman Nadwi:
The sway of the Moghal Empire was only namesake, Muslims were engulfed in wrongful and unnecessary traditions, frauds and scoundrels had kidnapped the graves of the pious and became their custodians, the seminaries were disputing on the topics of philosophy and wisdom, religious edicts were being literally interpreted by jurists. Leave alone the common men; even scholars were ignorant of the meanings and teachings of the Qura’an, hadith and theology
Service to Mankind
After returning from Mecca and Medina, the miserable condition of Indian Muslims inspired him to improve their character, buck up their morale, inculcate the feeling of selflessness and love for their fellows.
He overhauled the existing education system, separated the faith from unlawful invented traditions (bidaat), unnecessary and unwanted suspicions regarding Islam and its holy books. He presented what he considered pure and pristine Islam to the people.
AIOU Solved Assignment 1& 2 Code 625 Autumn & Spring 2024
The philosophy of education of Friedrich Froebel, 1782-1852 stresses the respect with which the individuality and ability of each child should be treated; the importance of creating a happy, harmonious environment in which he or she can grow; and the value of self-activity and play as a foundation on which the integrated development of the whole person can be built.
Friedrich Froebel was a German eductionalist. He was known best for the founding of kindergarten. Froebel was born in 1782 in the village of Oberwebach in Thuringia, Germany. His childhood was difficult because his mother died when he was a baby and his father abandoned him. Froebel was given to his uncles care, who had a son that died at the age of ten. Froebel never showed much interest in school except for the field of mathmatics. Despite his many hardships, he had a strong christian faith and a love for nature. This is what was said to be central to his thinking as an educationalist. After several attempts of trying to attend the University, he was finally allowed. This is when he got into debt from tuition payments and was thrown in prison.
After Froebel’s college years, he got a job in the forestry department at Bamberg. After this, he got a teaching job at Frankfort. His strong christian faith led him to the field of education. Froebel later married a woman who shared his beliefs and values. She died in 1836 and he remarried in 1851. Two months after Froebel’s 70th birthday, he died.
Froebel first came into teaching through a school run along Pestalozzian lines. He believed that humans are essentially productive and creative, and that fulfillment comes through developing these in harmony with God and the world. His vision was to stimulate an appreciation and love for children, to provide a new but small world for children to play with their age group and experience their first gentle taste of independence. His kindergarten system consisted of games and songs, construction, and gifts and occupations. The play materials were what he called gifts and the activities were occupations. His system allowed children to compare, test, and explore. His philosophy also consisted of four basic components which were free self-activity, creativity, social participation, and motor expression. Froebel’s kindergarten system grew internationally as an educational movement. It is a well established part of the American school system as well as many other parts of the world.
Friedrich Wilhelm August Froebel (Fröbel) (1782 – 1852). Friedrich Froebel, the German educationalist, is best known as the originator of the ‘kindergarten system’. By all accounts he had a difficult childhood. His mother died when he was a baby, and his father, a pastor, left him to his own devices. He grew up, it is said, with a love for nature and with a strong Christian faith and this was central to his thinking as an educationalist. He saw, and sought to encourage, unity in all things.
The purpose of education is to encourage and guide man as a conscious, thinking and perceiving being in such a way that he becomes a pure and perfect representation of that divine inner law through his own personal choice; education must show him the ways and meanings of attaining that goal. (Friedrich Froebel 1826 Die Nenschenerziehung, pp. 2). He came into teaching via a school run along Pestalozzian lines (and spent time at Yverdon). Friedrich Froebel’s enduring significance was through his formulation of the ‘kindergarten system’ with its emphasis on play and its use of ‘gifts’ (play materials) and ‘occupations (activities).
Friedrich Froebel believed that humans are essentially productive and creative – and fulfilment comes through developing these in harmony with God and the world. As a result, Froebel sought to encourage the creation of educational environments that involved practical work and the direct use of materials. Through engaging with the world, understanding unfolds. Hence the significance of play – it is both a creative activity and through it children become aware of their place in the world. He went on to develop special materials (such as shaped wooden bricks and balls – gifts), a series of recommended activities (occupations) and movement activities, and an linking set of theories. His original concern was the teaching of young children through educational games in the family. In the later years of his life this became linked with a demand for the provision of special centres for the care and development of children outside the home.
Froebel’s abiding influence has come in part from the efforts of followers such as Bertha von Marenholtz-Bülow and the thinkers such as Diesterweg. We have seen the development of kindergartens, and the emergence of a Froebel movement. For informal educators, Friedrich Froebel’s continuing relevance has lain in his concern for learning through activity, his interest in social learning and his emphasis on the ‘unification ‘of life.
