Islamization of the Curriculum: an Agenda for Model Islamic Nursery Schools in Nigeria

ISLAMIZATION OF THE CURRICULUM: AN AGENDA FOR MODEL ISLAMIC NURSERY SCHOOLS IN NIGERIA

BY

DR. RAFIU IBRAHIM ADEBAYO

E-mail address:

Phone number: 0703 546 7292, 0805 978 3314

DEPARTMENT OF RELIGIONS,

UNIVERSITY OF ILORIN,

P.M.B. 1515, ILORIN,

NIGERIA.

ABSTRACT

The current trend in Islamic thought - Islamization of knowledge, is becoming a global issue in the Muslim world. Scholars in various disciplines have been striving tirelessly to recast knowledge in its entirety, from the Islamic perspective. The proliferation of Muslim schools in Nigeria is an indication of the Muslims’ awareness of the programme. However, most of these Muslim schools are yet to grasp the major intent of the programme as they regard mere inclusion of Islamic Studies and Arabic in the school curricula as Islamization of knowledge. This paper exposes the expected Islamization agenda of Muslim schools with particular reference to private Islamic nursery schools. In this wise, the programmes of studies, activities and guidance in the school set-up are given Islamic touch.

INTRODUCTION

Pre-primary education according to the National Policy on Education is “the education given in an educational institution to children aged three to five plus prior their entering the primary school.”1 The first five years of a child are very crucial and important in his life as whatever he is exposed to during the period has a serious and lasting effect on him in future. No serious government takes the education of her citizens at that stage with levity. In France, the central government shares the largest responsibility of the total cost of educating the children while the local authority provides the remainder. In England and Wales, it is the local authorities that control and administer the pre-school education through nationally prepared guidelines. In West Germany, the pre-primary institutions are privately owned.2 This is equally the case in Nigeria.

As precious as the pre-primary education is, it is sad to note that it received an unappreciable attention by the Nigeria government and citizens for a long time. The National Curriculum Conference held in Lagos in September 1969 as historic as it was, failed to address any issue related to pre-primary education. Rather, it focused much on primary, secondary, tertiary education, teacher education, science and technical education as well as women education.3 The 6-3-3-4 system of education is silent about pre-primary education as well. It was not until recently that the Federal Government of Nigeria broke its silence on it and realized the need to have a say in the conduct of nursery education and thus clearly stated the purpose and direction of pre-primary education in Nigeria in the National Policy on Education (NPE) published in 1977 and revised in 1981and 1998. This policy stipulates that the first ladder of education would be handled and manned by private individuals but monitored by the government.4 Consequently, the Nigerian Educational Research Council (N.E.R.C) started to organize series of seminars, workshops and lectures to educate proprietors of nursery schools on how the goals of nursery education could be achieved.

The indelibility of the knowledge acquired by young and innocent children suggests the paramount importance of early childhood education. Knowledge in childhood is likened to an engraved mark on a rock, which is difficult to rub off. As it is better to train boys than to mend men, the Holy Prophet Muhammad (P.B.O.H.) emphatically mentioned it that children must be religiously educated in their early stages. He asked parents to command their children to be observing salat when they are seven years of age. In another instance, he observed that the moment a child is able to distinguish between the left and the right hands, he should be commanded to pray. They should have been given elementary knowledge of Islam before this time. This is because a child could only be asked to pray after he had been taught what to say while praying, how to pray, whom to pray to and other pre-requisites of prayer. Sowing the seed of Iman and Islam in the heart of children was not taken lightly by the companions of the prophet. Once a man was arrested by the police for drinking in Ramadan and when the case was brought before ‘Umar, he remarked: “Woe to you! Even our children are keeping fast in this month”5

Pre-primary education is not a new development among Muslims in Nigeria. The first stage of Qur’anic education started as early as the third year of life. Before the advent of Western education in the country, early Islamic and Qur’anic education was given prominence among the Muslims. Classes were held at the Mallams’ houses under the shade of trees and in the mosque premises. Major Denham and Captain Clapperton observed that such schools were scattered all over Nigeria as they saw them in places like Kuka, Katsina and Sokoto between 1821 and 1830. In 1961 there were about 27,600 Quranic schools with a total of about 423,000 pupils in northern Nigeria.6 In this level of education, emphasis was laid on learning shorter chapters of the Qur’an through repetition and by rote, alphabets of the Arabic language as well as acquisition of some writing skills.

In the Nigeria situation, the reasons for establishing contemporary nursery institutions are summed up in the words of Orebanjo who says:

The increasing awareness in education resulting from the UPE (Universal Primary Education) scheme, the need for working mothers to leave their children in safe hands, the dwindling number of domestic hands, nannies and grandmothers and others factors led to the establishment of these Institutions in urban and rural areas.7

It is an undeniable fact that nursery schools are established to create an atmosphere conducive for the children to use language for comparing, describing, analyzing and explaining. The language is no other than English. The mother tongue is thus relegated to the lowest ebb. Under the pretext of providing the above opportunities for children, the Christians started establishing nursery institutions as a means of transforming and preserving their religious culture and tenets. The failure of the Muslims to realize that education is a product of a particular worldview and is tailored towards some particular socio-historical and civilizational contexts, made them register their children and wards into these Christian oriented schools. Before they realized it, their children had started praying in Jesus name, closing their eyes while praying and shouting Halleluyah. The little Islamic culture imbibed from home was technically knocked out of their hearts and instead of developing interest in their religion, they are taught to hate it unconsciously.

The reaction of some conscious Muslim organizations and individuals to the evangelization plot of the Christians via nursery education culminated in the establishment of Muslim nursery schools where Muslim working parents could leave their children to be exposed to western education without losing their religious identity. The dwindling patronage of Qur’anic schools by Muslims equally calls for the establishment of Islamically oriented nursery schools. Except in rear cases, most Qur’anic schools operate only in the afternoon for children to attend after their normal western school hours.8 The financial constraints facing most of the Quranic schools as a result of running ‘free education’ by them forced many of these schools to metamorphosise into Islamic nursery primary schools where fees are charged and parents are ready to pay.

The involvement of Muslims in the contemporary nursery education business is a new development in Nigeria. Schools of such are expected to carry out dual roles of meeting the challenges of western education as well as creating an environment conducive for learning Islamic oriented disciplines. In the bid to combine these two responsibilities, many of these schools have fallen into either of the two extremes of introducing too much Arabic subjects to their curriculum or rather giving too much western subjects priority that Islamic ones are gradually elbowed out. Thus, the need to propound an agenda towards Islamizing the curriculum of Islamic nursery schools to enable them function effectively in the two realms of western and Islamic contexts.

A CRITIQUE OF THE DOMINANT NURSERY SCHOOL CURRICULUM.

Various attempts to define, classify, analyze and conceptualize the word ‘curriculum’ have resulted into loss of some of its essential realities. While some take it to mean what teachers teach and what learners learn, it is a synonym of syllabus, course of study, scheme of work, lesson note or lesson plan to some. However, such mean and shallow definitions have been rectified by Wilkins who sees curriculum as ‘the overall learning programme in a school which covers time-tabled lessons, sports, social activities and all other facilities through which the school aids the development of its pupils.’9 In other words, curriculum consists of the programme of studies, programme of activities and programmes of guidance. The programme of studies refers to all academic subjects offered in schools, while the programme of activities includes inter-scholastic and inter-moral activities like athletics, school publications, music programmes, clubs and societies, all which vitalize the curriculum. The programme of guidance involves guidance services rendered in the school. Concisely, curriculum is the totality of all the experiences, planned or unplanned, which the child is exposed to in the four walls of the school.

The profanity of the aims and objectives of the dominant nursery school curriculum is one of the serious setbacks of the curriculum. The secularist modernist worldview as well as the dismissal of God as a major characteristic of western education generally raises its ugly head in the nursery curriculum. According to the Nigerian Educational Research Council, the general goals of nursery education in Nigeria are:

(i.)  To effect a smooth transition from home to school and to provide adequate care and supervision for the children while their parents are at work;

(ii.)  To help the child to adjust to social norms;

(iii.) To inculcate in the child a spirit of enquiry and creativity through the exploration of nature and the local environment, playing with toys, and artistic and musical activities, etc;

(iv.) To teach good habits especially good health; and

(v.)  To teach the child the basic academic skills.10

One important manifestation of the goals is that they are tailored towards producing godless children who right from the onset of their lives are devoid of seeking knowledge of their creator. It thus produces a materialistic personality in the individual who looks at religion and spiritual needs as private and not basic to human life on this earth.11

In realisation of the above objectives, subjects like Creative Art, Social Norms, Physical and Health Education, Language and Communication Skills, Mathematical Skills as well as Scientific and Reflective Thinking are prescribed by the Nigerian Educational Research Council for nursery schools. Guidelines on these subjects are made available for effective teaching and learning.12 This further reveals the secularist tendency of nursery education curriculum. In this curriculum guideline, religious education is conspicuously not included. Education without religion is like tea without sugar, a zombie or rather, a body without soul, and the absence of soul in the body makes it hopeless, useless and valueless. Mutahheri aptly observes the result of such kind of education when he says:

Knowledge without faith is a sharp sword in the hand of a drunken brute. It is a lamp in the hand of a thief to help him pick up the best articles at midnight. That is why there is not the least difference in the nature and conduct of the faithless man of today who has knowledge and the faithless man of yesterday who had no knowledge. After all what is the difference between the Churchills, Johnsons, Nixons and Stalins of today and the Pharaohs, Genglis Khans and Attilas of yore?13

Apart from the above, any education aiming at effecting a smooth transition from home to school but which lacks religious education at that crucial level of education may be contrary to the cultural state of the environment which education must portray. It thus becomes irrelevant to Nigerians majority of who profess one religion or the other; hence the first goal of nursery education is rendered unachievable. Realizing this shortcoming in the nursery curriculum, some schools introduced Religious Education into their curriculum. A sort of window dressing Islamic Studies is introduced into some so-called Islamic nursery schools curriculum as a subject thereby giving the false impression that pure Islamic tenets are imparted to the young ones. Or what can we say of some Christian proprietors who include Islamic Studies as a subject into their schools’ curriculum to lure unconscious Muslim parents to bring their children to their schools? This attitude is confirmed by Salaudeen when he writes:

The inclusion of Islamic Studies in most of the nursery schools is simply to make them attractive to Muslim parents who will assume that the aspect of Islamic education is being taken care of. In fact, it is merely window- dressing14

The force of homogenization, hegemonization and Europeanization in the name of globalization has eroded not only the Islamic culture from the innocent minds of the young pupils, but also their natural language. The medium of instruction in the conventional nursery schools is English. The standard of nursery schools is measured by the level of their students’ mastery of the language. Without any scintilla of doubt, English is the lingua franca in every nursery school in Nigeria. This however is, at the expense of the mother tongue, which according to the National Policy on Education should be the prescribed language of instruction at that level of education.15 This creates a gap between the theory and practice of education in the country. According to Fafunwa, instruction through the mother tongue at the early stage of education helps to develop curiosity, manipulative ability, manual dexterity, mechanical comprehension and co-ordination of the hand and eye.16 One evil effect of emphasizing foreign language over mother tongues is that it isolates children from their culture and from their nature. They thus become specialists in foreign language, unable to use their own mother tongue and unable to function well in their own world. Thus, education at this stage fails to play the role of cultural transformation and preservation, whereas according to Al-Attas “education preserves the basic structure of society by conserving all that is worthwhile in basic values and institutions by transmitting them to the next generation and by renewing culture afresh whenever degeneration, stagnation or loss of values occurs.”17