25 February 2010

Muslim homeschoolers swell in numbers

Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Muslim homeschool.

For the longest time, many people looked askance at homeschool as if it were a desperate attempt by fundamentalist Christians at burying their heads in the sand. Misconceptions abound, but no matter. Although it is true that for Christians, the preservation and inculcation of faith values and a religious worldview have been among the primary appeal to homeschool, there are many other compelling reasons for deserting conventional schools.

But these days homeschool is no longer the preserve of Christians alone.

Today, you can find homeschoolers of all colour or creed, spread across the globe. And they are doing it out of a strong can-do spirit that refuses the dictates of the state or so-called education experts who dare to deny parents the right to raise their own children in the way they see fit. Of faith communities that have adopted homeschooling as the education methodology of choice, Muslim homeschoolers are the most notable. In Malaysia, there is a growing number of Muslim families who have not only discovered the joy of educating their children at home – see for example, MamaFiza and Rasheedah – but are also spreading the good word with passion and exuberance.

In the US where three-quarters of the country’s 2 million homeschoolers are Christian, Muslims are swelling the ranks. Here’s a report by Tara Bahrampour of The Washington Post that should interest homeschoolers in our country:
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ON A CHILLY AFTERNOON IN WESTERN LOUDON COUNTY, a group of children used tweezers to extract rodent bones from a regurgitated owl pellet. A boy built a Lego launcher. A girl practiced her penmanship. On the wall, placards read, “I fast in Ramadan,” “I pay zakat” and “I will go on hajj.”

Welcome to Priscilla Martinez’s home — and her children’s school, where Martinez is teacher, principal and guidance counselor, and where the credo “Allah created everything” is taught alongside math, grammar and science.

Martinez and her six children, ages 2 to 12, are part of a growing number of Muslims who home-school. In the Washington area, Martinez says, she has seen the number of home-schoolers explode in the past five years.

Although three-quarters of the nation’s estimated 2 million home-schoolers identify themselves as Christian, the number of Muslims is expanding “relatively quickly,” compared with other groups, said Brian Ray, president of the National Home Education Research Institute.

They do so, he said, for the same reasons as non-Muslims: “Stronger academics, more family time, they want to guide social interaction, provide a safe place to learn and . . . teach them [their] values, beliefs and worldview.”

Parents say it is an attractive alternative to public schools, with whose traditions and values they are not always comfortable, and Islamic schools, which might be too far away, cost too much or lack academic rigor.

Parents say it is an attractive alternative to public schools, with whose traditions and values they are not always comfortable, and Islamic schools, which might be too far away, cost too much or lack academic rigor.

If Muslims have come to embrace home schooling later than others, it might be in part because so many Muslims in the United States are immigrants who might not be aware of the option. In fact, for many immigrants, the idea of home schooling runs counter to their reasons for coming to America, which frequently include better educational opportunities. And public school has long been seen as a key portal to assimilation.

When Sanober Yacoob arrived from Pakistan 13 years ago and began to home-school her three children, she was the only immigrant she knew of who was doing so. Others from Muslim countries “thought I was weird,” she said. “One of them said to me, ‘I hope you’re not going to destroy yourself, and they will grow up ignorant.’ ”

Now, more are following in her footsteps, and many use the highly regarded Calvert curriculum for home-schoolers.

[Continue reading Muslims turning to homeschooling here.]

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7 February 2010

Malaysian education in the corner

Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Malaysian schools.

A letter to Malaysiakini by someone who addressed himself/herself as Angry Parent despairs over the way education is going in Malaysia. The point in the letter is the policy reversal relating to the teaching of Science and Math in English. Six years after its implementation, these two subjects will now be taught (again) in Bahasa Malaysia beginning in 2011. The language row has been intensely fought by proponents on both sides of the fence. But as this parent explains, advocates of “a near-monolingual educational system in Malaysia will eventually paint themselves and the entire country into a corner.”

Arguing for BM, the Government pointed to less than sterling performance among students in rural constituencies who struggle with English, even as other politicians, academicians, and nationalists, decry the use of English as a medium of instruction a betrayal of culture. (Here are 2 arguments for BM – here and here).Angry Parent writes that English as the language of choice in the global arena as well as in the fields of science and technology underscores its relevance and importance for Malaysian students, and more urgently, the country’s future too.

Although the English language lags behind with an estimated 1.3 billion speakers, it has the widest distribution covering 54 countries within the British Commonwealth across all six inhabited continents, in the US and is widely utilised within the European Union, particularly in the Scandinavian countries.

In fact, English is often the language of choice used in proceedings and documentation within the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), based in Geneva. English is not only advancing in the world of science and technology, it is also gaining momentum in countries where English is not even a national language.
The progressive evolution of international trade, ICT and education has changed this world into a border-less one. Partisans who continue to advocate a near-monolingual educational system in Malaysia will eventually paint themselves and the entire country into a corner.

Is it any wonder that so many of our local university graduates are not employable or marketable because most of them are monolingual? Many of these so-called educationists themselves are not employable in the private sector, nor are they prominent leaders in the world of science and technology.

To be a developed country, one needs a world-class educational system. Not one that is determined by partisan politics.

Angry Parent gives more examples of the published use of English in the sciences, tech tools and devices (including e Readers that make English medium books even more accessible), the continuing brain drain of the country’s young and brightest, and highlights what Malaysian students stand to lose.

In addition, online courses and reference materials are blooming on the Internet. Most of them are in English. Leading technical institutions, such as, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have made a wide range of lectures by its teaching staff freely available over the Internet through its OpenCourseWare (OCW) programme.

The Public Library of Science (PLoS), a non-profit organisation of scientists and physicians committed to making the world’s scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource, is publishing papers covering biology, medicine, computational biology, genetics, pathogens and tropical diseases which are, likewise, freely available through its website.

Other leading institutions, such as the University of California at Berkeley (UCB) and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) are joining hands with MIT in this effort. They have even set up channels on YouTube. College students around the world can now experience and access world-class lectures from MIT, UCB and CMU, minus the fees, from YouTube.

Angry Parent concludes:

Therefore, is it any wonder that our ‘brain drain’ is literally irreversible, the multimedia super- corridor remains nothing more than a real-estate project and our biotechnology park and ‘rubber city’ remain a far-fetched dream.

In taking one step forward, the country has taken two steps backward. And for all this, we have our short-term thinking politicians to thank for.

Well, the Government has decided and there is no turning back. You can read the whole letter by Angry Parent here.

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5 February 2010

The socialization bubble

Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Socialization.

Every time homeschool crops up in a conversation, critics usually warn if we risk raising social misfits. “How would your kids learn social skills? They don’t mix around with other kids, don’t join team sports like we did in school?”

However it occurred to me that instead of comparing what kids in a conventional school enjoy (more friends, competitive sports, etc) and what homeschool kids purportedly miss (more friends, competitive sports, etc) we ought to consider the bigger issue of motivation.

Homeschool isn’t easy and it certainly isn’t a ticket to heaven. For many families, it means a single-income lifestyle, making do with less, taking more risks than one’s comfortable with. Still, the whole idea of educating one’s children at home does seem so left-field, so back-to-the-kampung it’s romantic. So what’s it worth then?

If you have to ask, those of us who homeschool are fairly sure that the good outweighs all that regular schooling promises. Like the story of the merchant who sold everything he owned to buy the pearl of great value: what he gave up was nothing compared to what he gained or stood to gain. He didn’t have to knead his forehead, and wistfully say that with house(s) and car(s) sold, bank accounts emptied, stocks and shares cashed out and used up, his popularity rating down to zip (that happens when people think you’re crazy), yeah, life would have been way cool if, you know, he had all that AND the one precious pearl too.

I’d like to think homeschoolers are just like that merchant in Jesus’ parable. Of course people who educate their children at home are no more saints than the next-door neighbours who do not. Like all normal human beings we’re not exempt from the dilemma of difficult choices. But we’re not disappointed that life’s unfair: you don’t get to tick all the boxes. No one gets everything they want anyway. It’s hard, but if you have to choose a few good things from among heaps of other good stuff, you do what you have to do and stick it out.

Homeschooling families in Malaysia know their children’s circle of same-age friends will invariably shrink, competitive sports will probably be out of reach, there will be no trinkets to win, and goodness, even fewer tales of derring-do and great achievements to regale one’s family and friends. But is that so bad?

In some ways, the myth of socialization comes pretty close to the oft-touted ‘wisdom of crowds,’ that wisdom naturally and usually reside on the side of the many. Now this, I’m not so sure. Take a look around and see what years of socialization have done for our youths. Juvenile crimes and vandalism are on the rise, and so is violence in schools. Parents lament the loss of respect for elders while employers wonder at the dearth of social skills among new hires. And let’s not even go near the ever widening ethnic divide in plural Malaysia.

So let me burst a few bubbles here:

• Children do not need lots of friends.
• More socialization does not lead to better social skills.
• Kids do not need to be constantly pumped up on activities.
• It is not the parents’ job to keep their children entertained.
• Competitive sports are not the only place for young people to learn teamwork.

But don’t take my word for it. Check out this piece by Danielle Olander. Another study by Dr Larry Shyers reports consistently fewer behavioral problems among homeschooled children, and this was because they “tend to imitate their parents while conventionally-schooled children model themselves after their peers.” The same study concludes: “The results seem to show that a child’s social development depends more on adult contact and less on contact with other children as previously thought.”

When you choose to homeschool your kids, it does not mean they give up socializing. God forbid that you lock them in the house all day! It simply means redefining priorities and deciding how and with whom you socialize. Never mind that you’ll have to put in a bit more effort to let your children interact outside the home. All the better to have them cultivate meaningful relationships with everyone, regardless of their station in life, colour or faith, young and old.

Here’s an opportunity to teach that life is more than meeting every felt need, social or material. It’s not about collecting friends and weighing what you can get out of all that socializing. When children learn that it is more blessed to give than receive, they have learnt the most important social skill of all.

*Photo: Unsocialized homeschoolers camp at Forest Reserve Institute Malaysia (FRIM)

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