Islamic Versus Modern Western Education

Abstract

The Islamization of education, which is part of the more overarchingdiscussion of Islamizing knowledge, has activated Muslim social and naturalscientists as well as scholars in the humanities. The wide extensionof scholarly fields involved has colored the discussion and multiplied itsviews. For a reader in the subject of Islamic education, this multiplexpicture can be confusing and make it hard to distinguish petween the differentcomponents.In his research, Kitaji has attempted to compare the modem westernand Islamic educational systems. He has divided his research into fourmain parts. First he gives an outline of national education. In this part, hedeparts from the problems faced by the Japanese educational system,where the drop-out rates have nearly doubled in the last ten years. In thecase of Japan, he finds that the curriculum is rigid and does not take intoaccount individual differences in the ability to absorb information. Hefurther argues that the psychological atmosphere discourages pupils, forthe system tries to control them by regulating their attitudes and psychicalappearance (i.e., hair-style and clothes).From the particularity of Japanese schooling, he turns to a descriptionof the western educational system in general. What Kitaji does is to generalizethe western educational system in terms of Japanese actual experiences,western educational philosophy (mostly French), and westerndomestic critics. This results in a generalization that is far too broad, andI, who live in Sweden, tecognize only a few of the author’s characteristicsof the western educational system. However, Kitaji makes an importantpoint, which I assume pertains nearly to all western countries’national educational system: neglecting the pupils’ identity formation, particularlythe spiritual part. He also emphasizes the fact that nationaleducation is based upon the state’s demands rather than the pupils’ individualneeds. Although Kitaji stresses the state’s role in the developmentof structure and of curriculum, his recurrent emphasis of the state’s rolein curriculum development makes it difficult to grasp whose conscious orunconscious forces are actually working. The research would maybe bemore substantial if some comments had been made on this subject ...