Rebekah Kim

In 1981, Eriko Amino received her Ph.D. from Columbia University in comparative literature, writing a dissertation on medieval French literature. When all goes well, a doctorate marks the beginning of an academic career, but for Amino it marked the end. “When I graduated,” she says, “many of us did not find anything other than adjunct positions.” While a friend secured a teaching position in South Dakota, Amino did not want to relocate to a place far from a metropolitan center. Unable to find a teaching position near a city, Amino took a job at a bank. “The decision,” she says, “wasn’t a happy one, but a practical one.”

Almost 30 years later, Amino reflects, graduate school students face similar obstacles. “I have a friend, who is in his 30s, who received his Ph.D. in English from Stanford,” Amino says. “He sent out 40 letters in the hopes of finding an academic position and got no acknowledgment of a single one.”

In recent months, universities have cut faculty costs and imposed hiring freezes to ease the impact of the recession. The Modern Language Association’s university job listings in English, literature, and foreign languages dropped 21 percent in 2008, their biggest decline since 1974. Since May 2008, the American Mathematical Society’s job listings have dropped more than 25 percent. Yet universities across the country continue to award doctorates by the tens of thousands. Columbia’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alone confers hundreds of doctoral degrees every year.

Victims of bad timing, this year’s graduates will face a particularly tough job market. But the recession has only brought into starker relief the fact that job prospects in academia have been slim for decades. Today, less than 50 percent of all Ph.D. candidates will secure tenure, according to education writer Thomas H. Benton’s reports in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The rest must accept low-paying adjunct positions or—like Amino—leave academia entirely.

That many of those with doctorates cannot expect to find jobs in academia should be enough to give pause to anyone thinking about pursuing a Ph.D.—and that’s before considering the significant investment of both time and money grad school requires. The typical grad student—who will spend an average of eight years studying for a doctorate—will accrue $20,000 in debt in graduate school, on top of any undergraduate debt. While top private universities like Columbia provide students with grants and living stipends (at Columbia, a nine-month stipend comes to $22,500), they do not fund master’s degrees, which are now required for admission into many Ph.D. programs. Master’s tuition at Columbia is $18,000 per year, still a sizable chunk of change for any student.

Frustrated with a graduate school system that demands steep tuition but cannot guarantee jobs, Mark Taylor, chair of Columbia’s religion department, published a scathing op-ed in the New York Times last spring titled “End the University as We Know It.” In the article, Taylor argues that graduate programs have been abandoning their students at graduation—that schools fail to offer their students decent-paying jobs in their fields of study, rendering their years of arduous research pointless. To remedy this problem, Taylor wants to reinvent graduate education, so that doctoral programs teach students skills more readily applicable to the world outside academia. The response to Taylor’s article ranged from laudatory to vitriolic. Stan Katz of the Chronicle said Taylor’s list of reform measures was “a bewildering mélange”; Christopher Kelty, professor of anthropology at Rice University, called it “a plank out of the dying Republican Party’s tattered playbook”; and Daniel Drezner, who teaches international diplomacy at Tufts University’s Fletcher School, labeled one of Taylor’s proposals “utter, complete, ridiculous crap.” On the other hand, Taylor says the article produced a significant positive response and that he continues to receive e-mails from current students, teachers, and former academics applauding his ideas.

There is, after all, something a bit odd about a rigorous program of study that trains students for jobs that do not exist. Graduate programs in law, business, and medicine prepare students for a range of lucrative, relatively plentiful jobs. When compared to these professional programs, which boast of placement rates above 90 percent, the state of graduate schools looks particularly bleak. At Columbia, for example, the law school Web site claims that “98% of the Class of 2008 was employed by graduation in a variety of legal fields,” and the business school reported that 92 percent of graduates in 2008 accepted jobs within three months of graduation. In the wake of the financial crisis, those figures will likely have dropped significantly, but there’s still a tremendous disparity between professional and non-professional programs.

Institutions like Columbia’s GSAS aren’t going to place nine of 10 graduates in relevant fields anytime soon. But if graduate school is going to remain relevant, reform—possibly painful reform—will be necessary.

F.or Taylor, that reform will require far more than minor tweaks or patches. It will mean overturning the graduate program as we know it. “Abolish permanent departments, even for undergraduate education, and create problem-focused programs,” he writes in his op-ed. He calls for the elimination of distinct departments of religion, philosophy, or history, to be replaced with “zones of inquiry.” These zones would function as umbrella topics uniting students across disciplines—biology, sociology, political science, or physics.

“Think about it,” Taylor says in an telephone interview. “‘Moby Dick’ is one of the most important analyses of religion we have. Why is ‘Moby Dick’ only in the territory of the English department?” The key to his plan is eliminating barriers—among departments, genres, and subfields. “Webs, not walls,” he proclaims. “To bring the American university into the modern, global society, we need to move from a world of walls to a world of webs.”

These walls exist between and within departments. As academic jobs grow scarcer, scholars must look for their own narrow niches in order to publish unique work. Hyperspecialization, Taylor believes, atomizes the academic community, detracting from the quality and practicality of the research that is produced.

Contemporary Civilization lecturer Paul Weinfield, who received his Ph.D. in religion from Columbia in 2008, echoes Taylor’s view that fields within fields are little more than “smokestacks within smokestacks.”

“There’s a disconnect between the kind of research universities want and the kind of teaching they want,” Weinfield says. As a student, Weinfield specialized in medieval Iranian mysticism, but after graduation, he found that employers were looking for candidates with a broader body of knowledge. “After 9/11, religion professors have been asked to teach very general classes on Islam. But scholars are interested in conducting research on very specialized themes, research that doesn’t apply to undergraduate courses.” In his job search, Weinfield discovered there was minimal demand for his expertise. Most positions, he found, “required more of a basic knowledge of politics and current events than an in-depth knowledge of Islam.”

When Weinfield was part of Columbia’s religion department, he didn’t perceive that the University was tending toward hyperspecialization. He was required to take a few interdisciplinary courses, including survey courses on both Western and Eastern religions, but he feels they fell short of their mission. The courses “were co-taught in a very fragmented way, and basically everyone sleep-walked through them.”

Cloistered in his own narrow subfield, Weinfield received little preparation for jobs in fields outside of academia. His specialization was “a real problem … more of a badge of one’s credentials than an actual skill set.”

Taylor believes his zones of inquiry would address the concerns of people like Weinfield. These zones, he says, would encourage scholarly collaboration and offer students a more practical education. Instead of studying religion, a student in Taylor’s university might study water.

Designed to address the problems of water shortage and management, a water program would incorporate scholarship from ecological, cultural, economic, and religious perspectives. By uniting disciplines for a practical common purpose, the university would bring scholars out of their bubble and provide them with the skills to join non-academic industries. That, at least, is Taylor’s theory. “In many areas, it makes sense to erode some departmental boundaries,” he says. “I think of zones like nodes—points of intersection between disciplines.”

Taylor has already implemented elements of his proposal at Columbia. Beginning this academic year, doctoral candidates in the religion department are required to take an exam in their choice of five zones of inquiry: time, space, body, media, and transmission. Body, for example, encompasses studies in neuroscience, biomedical ethics, and gender.

“What’s involved here,” Taylor says, “is a different vision of higher education for the global world of the 21st century. The current system is 200 years old and tied to outdated political, economic, and social structures. How can we create an educational opportunity that will prepare students for today’s world?” His proposal takes a stride toward solving the problem of employment for doctoral candidates by widening their skill sets and areas of expertise.

Taylor’s program is based on certain assumptions of what is useful or practical. But it’s also based on the philosophy that we can reorganize or re-imagine our systems of knowledge. “The way in which knowledge is structured is not set in stone,” Taylor says. “The world is not divided up into disciplines. Today, scholars develop expertise in a particular area first and then look at problems. But what if we looked at problems first and then figured out what kind of expertise we need to solve the problem?” Taylor wants us to view knowledge as cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural, and applicable to real-world questions, rather than contained within rigid categories. By considering solutions from a wide variety of angles, he insists, scholars will formulate more useful approaches to their fields.

Critics have pointed out some fundamental organizational weaknesses in Taylor’s plan. Should students in the water program be building bridges instead of civil engineers? Can students gain an in-depth knowledge of both environmental biology and the sociology of coastal communities in the same program?

David Bell, dean of faculty at Johns Hopkins University, wrote a response to Taylor’s op-ed in the New Republic the day after Taylor’s article ran. Deeming Taylor’s piece a “yawp of pain,” Bell’s article calls for further proof of grad schools’ obsolescence. He notes that competition for spots at top universities is as fierce as ever, and America remains the world leader in Nobel Prizes.

“Intellectual inquiry has its own logic,” Bell says in an interview. “The logic is often one of specialization. We’re not going to turn Ph.D. programs into vocational programs.” It’s conceivable to see how something like Taylor’s water program might provide jobs outside of the academy for sociologists or anthropologists. But as Bell himself asks, “What do you do with a field like classics?”

Taylor’s response to this criticism reveals the most radical aspect of his program. “I don’t think knowledge for knowledge’s sake is enough,” he says. “It’s only viable if someone else is paying the bill, and as we know, private patronage is drying up.” The only way we can continue to fund the humanities, Taylor argues, is to emphasize the broader societal contribution the study of arts and letters can make. And not every area of study can make a contribution. “We live in a world of limited resources, and not everything that can be done should be done. Some fields will emerge and others will disappear.” As Taylor sees it, no field is eternal and none should be. Classics may be among the disciplines that cannot justify their own existence.

As one might expect, professor James Zetzel, chair of Columbia’s department of classics, has a different perspective. “I would be very worried about an academic world which thought that ancient Greece and Rome should be the center of university education; I would be equally worried if they were banned as obsolete,” he writes in an e-mail.

Taylor replies that Plato and Aristotle won’t necessarily fall by the wayside. “Do you need a department of classics to study Aristotle?” he asks. Universities can still cover the canon—students will simply study the great thinkers in the context of different zones or themes, rather than as part of a curriculum structured by time period. In fact, Taylor adds, “when you only study Hegel in a contemporary philosophy class, you can’t fully understand Hegel.” A fuller understanding of Hegel, he explains, comes from examining his work from different perspectives and within different frameworks.

Still, he acknowledges that his system may sacrifice those areas of study that don’t prove useful. His university would only invest in programs that either contributed to contemporary problem-solving or aided students in the post-grad job hunt.

Others in the academy see Taylor’s reforms as impinging on the intellectual experience that graduate school is designed to provide. Kirsten Ellicson, who studies 19th-century French literature at Columbia, is due to receive her doctorate this fall. “I don’t think that it should be the mission of graduate programs to prepare us for jobs outside academia,” Ellicson writes in an e-mail. “They should continue to train us to think and do research, to become producers of knowledge—while also encouraging us, as my department has, to communicate clearly what we do to people in other fields as well as to people outside academia.” The Ph.D. program is not a means to an end but “an experience in itself,” Ellicson says. “At the beginning, what I knew is that I wanted to continue reading and analyzing literature, to push my reflection on literature farther.”

Instead of complete reform, Ellicson proposes that graduate programs reduce the time it takes to receive a doctorate. “The longer the program takes, the harder it can be to envision yourself, and the job climate, upon completion,” she says. “I do think that some departments could more rigorously push its graduate students to finish earlier, by providing more feedback along the way, by demanding regular exchanges between advisors and grad students.” A shorter Ph.D. program might alleviate some of the intense pressure placed on graduate students to secure tenure-track jobs. If graduate school is more an opportunity for personal and intellectual growth than an expensive and lengthy means of jumpstarting a lifelong career, success for a Ph.D student would mean more than just a professorship.

There appears to be an unbridgeable gap between Taylor’s and Ellicson’s visions. Is it possible to offer a deeply intellectual and practical education without corrupting both ends? How can universities launch their students on a career path while still allowing for in-depth study of the “impractical” subjects?

Maybe they can’t. And maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Rigidly adhering to tradition for its own sake is foolish, but whatever its flaws, the current system has brought us some tremendous scholarship. Creating zones of inquiry in lieu of departments might improve grad students’ job prospects, but it would do so at the expense of the rigor that has produced real intellectual breakthroughs. In the academy, vast banality is often accompanied by a few sparks of genius. But that genius requires cultivation and refinement. Even men like Einstein and Foucault went through the grind of graduate school.

Source: Columbia Spectator

Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama
Back to School Event

Arlington, Virginia
September 8, 2009

The President: Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I’m glad you all could join us today. 

I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.   

Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, “This is no picnic for me either, buster.”

So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year. 

Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility.

I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn. 

I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox. 

I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve. 

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed. 

And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself. 

Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide. 

Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.

And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future. 

You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy. 

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country. 

Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.

I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in. 

So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse. 

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right. 

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying. 

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future. 

That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America. 

Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.

I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall. 

And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.

Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same. 

That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.

Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it. 

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work — that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things. 

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That’s OK.  Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, “I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” 

These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying. 

No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in. 

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals. 

And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best. 

It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?  

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

MEAD GRUVER, Associated Press Writer

As for the other half, no one knows.

District-by-district and school-by-school results from this year’s Proficiency Assessments for Wyoming Students, or PAWS test, have been out for nearly a month. But state and local officials have yet to compile a complete set of scores for the Wyoming Virtual School.

Wyoming Virtual School students essentially are home-schooled with some guidance from public school teachers. The partly online curriculum is provided by a private company, Herndon, Va.-based K12 Inc.

Campbell County School District 1 in Gillette launched the K-6 school in 2006 and enrolled 76 students last year.

This was the first year more than a handful of students in the virtual school took the assessment test, an annual, statewide exam for students in grades 3-8 and 11. The virtual school students took the test in classrooms, not at home.

The available results — the combined scores of about 30 students in Campbell County — show less-than-stellar performance:

— Fifty percent of Wyoming Virtual School students in grades 3-6 scored in either the “proficient” range or “advanced” range in math. The statewide average for grades 3-6 was 76 percent.

— In reading, 41 percent of Wyoming Virtual School students tested in the proficient range or above. The statewide average was 64 percent.

— In writing, 22 percent of Wyoming Virtual School students scored in the proficient range or higher. The statewide average in writing was 53 percent.

“We’re not where we want to be. We’ll continue to work to improve and to raise those numbers in the future,” said Alex Ayers, the district’s assistant superintendent of curriculum and assessment.

K12 Inc. said it didn’t have enough information about the test scores to comment.

While the Campbell County School District compiled test scores for virtual school students who live in Campbell County, the district has yet to obtain scores from students elsewhere in the state.

About half of the virtual school’s students last school year lived in 10 other counties. The reason the Campbell County district doesn’t have those scores is the state Department of Education combined them with scores at brick-and-mortar elementary schools — the schools those students would be attending if they weren’t enrolled at the virtual school.

The principal of the virtual school, Roger Larsen, said he’s been trying to collect the rest of his students’ scores from other districts. He called the situation frustrating.

“The scores get scattered around the state, and just trying to gather them up we’ve found much more difficult than anticipated,” Larsen said.

The department eventually should be able to compile a complete set of scores for the Wyoming Virtual School, said Mary Kay Hill, the department’s director of administration.

“As we move along, you bet. We will be building a system that will allow us to pull up that data and be able to report, statewide, how those kids are doing,” she said.

(© 2009 The Associated Press.

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By Adil James,

Bloomfield Hills–July 4–A new Muslim Montessori school is revving up its engine in Beverly Hills.

Dr. Mouhib Ayas, who is on the board of the new school, explained to TMO that BHA purchased, two years ago, what used to be a Christian Middle School called Kensington Academy, with 50,000 square feet, and 8 acres of land in Beverly Hills.

Last year only approximately 36 students enrolled, but now is the time to begin planning to enroll for next year if you are close to that area–the school has the powerful backing of the well-to-do Muslim professionals of the area, and promises to be another Muslim powerhouse school in the future, to rival Huda and the other excellent local Muslim schools.

The yearly tuition will be roughly $7,000 to $8,000.  There is a comprehensive Montessori curriculum, and every teacher at the school is a certified Montessori method teacher.

The school teaches Arabic language and Islamic studies.

Mr. Ayas explained that it has “everything like a regular middle school,” with a huge gym that dwarfs the size of the already respectable BMUC gymnasium; in addition to the gym is a “library, and an Islamic school.”

In addition to religious studies there is a rigorous mainstream curriculum.  The school’s director is Ms. Sandy Gordon.

Soon non-Muslims may clamor and line up to pay tuition to attend the excellent local Muslim private schools that compete favorably with Cranbrook and Detroit Country Day at a fraction of the cost.

Source: muslimmedianetwork

Picture Source: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_1jkvR0uFKhM/R7cH-LULD-I/AAAAAAAAADw/cLxy0f3kdys/s320/P28-05-07_10.36%5B01%5D.jpg

Dr. Ibrahim B. Syed, Ph.D analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of Public, Parochial, Private non-parochial, Islamic, Virtual Islamic, or Home Schools in the United States.

Education is the birth right of every Muslim and Muslimah. Islam puts considerable emphasis on its followers to acquire knowledge. Investment in education is the best investment one can make, because it eventually leads to intellectual property. Intellectual property is the intangible property, which no one can steal or destroy. This is the property on which no Government can levy a tax. It was as a result of application of knowledge that Muslims were the superpower of the world for twelve centuries.

Today, globally Muslims have the lowest literacy rate. Education of Muslim children in the west has both opportunities and challenges.

In the Western World the purpose of education is to provide for the economic prosperity of a nation. At a personal level the purpose of education is to acquire academic and professional skills that enable one to earn a respectable living with riches and fame, and also a luxurious and comfortable life. For a Muslim providing economic prosperity of a nation does not contradict his/her Islamic beliefs, however focusing the goals of education solely for the purpose of money making is unpalatable. Muslims want to impart Islamic education.

The vast majority of Muslims think that Islamic education means acquiring Islamic religious knowledge-study of Qur’an, Arabic, Hadith, Sunnah, Seerah, Fiqh, Islamic history, and allied subjects. As a matter of fact, in the present world broadly speaking we have two types of Muslims. Those who have followed the Western type of education or secular education and those who have acquired Deeni or Islamic education.

In the twentieth century, due to colonialism and Western influence, Muslim parents concentrated on imparting only Secular education to their children. The weak or not so bright students were sent to Deeni (religious) Madrasas (schools) in their own countries or to one of the Middle Eastern countries. The Muslims who emigrated to Western countries became aware of their religious identity and wanted to impart both Islamic and Secular education, what is now known as “Integrated Education.” When they lacked the numbers and resources, they sent their children to public schools during the week and to the Islamic schools in the Mosque or Islamic Center during the weekends.

As their numbers grew and acquired sufficient resources, they have opened full-time Islamic Schools from kindergarten (K grade) to 12th grade (senior or final year) in High School. In North America, an estimated 300 Islamic Schools are functioning which impart Integrated education. There are even a few full-time Hifz schools in North America producing homegrown Huffaz (plural of Hafeez-a scholar who has memorized the Qur’an). It takes about two to three years of full-time study to become a Hafeez. During this time the student takes an equivalent to sabbatical leave from his or her public or parochial school.

This paper analyzes the choice the parents make in sending their children, to Public, Parochial, Private non-parochial, Islamic, Virtual Islamic, or Home School. Their advantages and disadvantages.

The greatest objective of education is to prepare the young generation for leadership. Islamic education is of course has the highest objective, and more than that can hardly be imagined. The aim of Islamic education is Character building. Growth and development of an Islamic personality should be the final goal of any Islamic School. Islamic values are the foundation of the Islamic personality. As Muslims our educational aim is to develop the personalities of our children to the end that they will be conscious of their responsibility to God (the Creator) and to fellow humans. The aims and objectives of Islamic education have been defined in the Recommendation of the Committee of the First World Conference on Muslim Education as:

“Education should aim at the balanced growth of the total personality of man through training of the human spirit, intellect, rational self, feelings and senses. The training imparted to a Muslim must be such that faith is infused into the whole of his/her personality and creates in him/her an emotional attachment to Islam and enables him to follow the Qur’an and Sunnah and be governed by Islamic system of values willingly and joyfully so that he/she may proceed to the realization of his/her status as Khalifatullah to whom God has promised the authority of the universe.”

We need to prepare the younger generation having leadership quality and not to be the followers of alien ideologies but to play the role of torchbearer by their excellence in knowledge, character, and positive action. Some scholars believe that this quality can be developed in Muslim youth by a direct study of the Qur’an with a view to solve the problems of life in its light. A program of action to bring up the younger generation for leadership has not yet been formulated.

Every Muslim parent is advised to raise his or her children well and properly. A happy home, comfort, care and love, providing the necessities of life and a good education are some of the responsibilities that parents are required to fulfill. Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) said whoever is not kind to young people is not one of us and the best teaching that a parent can give a child is the teaching of good manners and character. The Muslim child absorbs the Islamic values from its parents, teachers, peers, friends and the environment, including the care-givers. Nip it in the bud is the best advice. Otherwise once the Muslim child develops undesirable habits and unethical values, it becomes extremely difficult to make the child into a good Muslim/Muslimah.

Parents play a vital role in the education of their children. Early childhood education program emphasizes the role of parents. It declares that learning begins in the first days of life and continues for long. Parents should develop a habit to read with their children every night. Parents should provide an Islamic environment, an Islamic culture. It is hypocritical to do things differently and expect the child to have Islamic values. Parents set the best examples for their children to imbibe. Like parents the role of family has also been considered important in learning and upbringing the children.

As the children grow the teachers, community elders, their friends exert deep influence on the character of the child. The parents should choose the right schools for their children. Audio-Visual media such as TV, Video, video games, Movies, peer pressure could play an effective role in erasing the Islamic personality the parents are building and deeply influence the behavior of the children for years. It takes constant and continuous effort on the part of the parents and others to keep our youth on the path of Islamic values. Otherwise they will become an American statistic. Character education, promotion of order and discipline and ending the culture of guns and drugs from schools are the important steps of Islamic education. Islamic education should open the door of college education for every Muslim.

The frontiers of learning are expanding across a lifetime. All the people, irrespective of age, must have a chance to learn new skills. Internet is now the power of information. The classroom, library and even the children’s hospitals are planned to connect with it for easy access to knowledge.

In America the parents of Muslim children are facing the challenge of picking the right school for their children. Parents can choose the school their children will attend. Parents would like to send their children to a school that promotes academic excellence and a value centered educational environment. The following pages list the different types of schools available for Muslim children, their advantages and disadvantages.

Why Islamic education?

American society today is drifting aimlessly in a sea of problems:

Crime

• Guns and violence including rape

• Sexual promiscuity and immorality

• Drugs

• Homosexuality

• Poverty

• Divorce

• Single parent families

• Children traumatized emotionally and psychologically as a result of broken families

• Disrupted upbringing

• One million teen-age pregnancies of unmarried mothers per year

• Sexually abused children

• Spousal abuse

• Child abuse

All of this has great influence on and impacts the Muslims living in America, especially the children and youth. The parents try to teach Islamic values and morals to the children, hence children are to maintain these values at home environment. Outside the home, the children are in a totally different environment. At times the outside social environment is in opposition to what Muslim children are learning at home. As a result of this conflict, children are fighting a psychological battle in their minds.

Islam is very deeply concerned with the welfare of human society and the family is considered to be the cornerstone for building the right society. Raising children in this culture and expecting Islamic values from them is a unique and very tough challenge. Muslim families are at a disadvantage in meeting the psychological and spiritual needs of the children. Giving more religious teachings to children at home is not enough. It is extremely important for parents to spend time with their children. Parents have to find time to be with their children at home, school, games, on the playground, field trips, picnics, and tours. The most essential element is to establish an open channel of communication with the children. An effort should be made to create an environment wherein children should not hesitate to say to their parents their thinking and feelings.

The school system in America deals with the teaching of academic subjects. The system has also been gearing up to teach life skills, such as prevention of smoking and drug abuse, prevention of heart disease, pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Children should get Islamic education at an early age. In an effort to inculcate Islamic values, the teachings should be done at home as well as Islamic centers or Islamic schools. Islamic schools should create opportunities for Muslim children to get together to bond with each other as this would help in establishing confidence in an Islamic identity and get psychological support. When children meet other children who are Muslim, it enhances their confidence in being a Muslim and they feel more comfortable about their identity and they assert their Islamic identity in non-Muslim environment with more ease and comfort.

Islamic identity, according to some, refers to characteristics of thought, behavior, and attitudes emanating from the Islamic beliefs; and it should be manifested in an Islamic way of life. The practice of Islam gives Muslims a tangible identity that they live with and project to the rest of the society. It can be preserved by their dynamic interaction with the realities of the American system of life and influencing and reforming the society through Islamic thoughts. The best role model is the parent’s character. The social support systems, such as Islamic centers, weekend or full time Islamic schools should be built in communities across the country.

Problems in Islamic Schools

• No Adaab or Islamic etiquette or behavior

• Parents want teachers to be lenient

• Some girls and boys meet secretly in the basement.

• They have girl-friends and boy-friends

• They do smoke

• Profanity is written on the walls, desks, blackboards, etc.

• Behave roughly: laughing, talking, screaming, rip off their Hijab on the buses.

• Discipline: Behavior is no different from the Public Schools.

• Teachers are not fair. Spoiled kids as their parents are rich or important

• Less school activities for girls. Little opportunity to interact with other students.

• Islamic schools are running without an Islamic curriculum, often without a syllabus

• No textbooks.

• No qualified and trained teachers or certified teachers. (Quality in education is not possible without good teachers.)

• Those who attend Muslim high schools do not fare better in college.

• Non-Muslim teachers who are qualified and certified. (Live-in boyfriend, rejects institution of marriage. Wear tight and revealing outfit. Promote gay agenda, anti-religion agenda, or insensitive to Islamic values and events)

• Qualified and certified Muslim teachers work in Public schools. As Islamic schools do not offer viable salaries, benefits (pension health benefits, etc.)

• When they leave Islamic schools and graduate from colleges, some of them, they do marry non-Muslims as the Muslim community and their parents have exerted zero influence on them.

• Chronic shortage of space, science labs, auditoriums, gyms, playgrounds, libraries, bathrooms.

• High turnover rate (30 to 40 percent annually) of teachers.

• Parents’ fear Islamic schools trade off academics for Islamic environment.

• Organization, planning and discipline -suffer most in Islamic schools.

• Governance is the big reason why most Islamic schools suffer

• Do not develop an autonomous and unique decision-making (governance) structure

• School Boards require training in how to run a school

• School Boards rarely include women

• Parents do not play a part in Governance structure

• No qualified administrators

• Some parents worry Islamic schools offer an inferior quality of education.

• Children are not prepared to face competitiveness and the challenges of the modern world.

• Seriously lacking in Muslim literature and culture.

• For many Muslim families, Islamic schools are not affordable.

• In sparse Muslim population areas, Islamic schools are not financially viable.

• Very few trained Muslim teachers in special education or none

In North America a major problem is the prevalent moral degradation of the society. In establishing Islamic Schools, Muslims lack a clear perception of their goals and seldom evaluate the final result if it is worth the money in producing the desired results. Many Islamic schools have run into financial difficulties. Their dreams have crumbled down, resulting in scaled down projects after short-lived disastrous ventures.

Home Schooling

The best and safest place for a Muslim child to be educated

• Home schooling is possible only for a very small number.

• Requires motivated parents who are qualified.

• Parents should be trained and willing to devote long hours every day.

• Parents should impart both ‘Islamic’ and ’secular’ education

• Prepare the children to successfully compete in the outside world.

• Parents rejoice in the experiencing a child harvest the fruits of an education.

• Taking children from pre-reading to reading is an exhilarating experience.

• Public and / or private schools may have turned children away from being interested, self-motivated learners and taken the joy of learning away from them.

• The public/private schools are not as thorough as a parent wishes.

• There is no available or affordable local full time Islamic school.

• The Islamic school does not provide the entire K-12 educational experience.

• Public schools work against the parent’s authority and unfriendly to Muslim children-Hijab.

• Public school texts and classroom materials may be destructive to Islamic values and parental authority.

• Parents develop their own curriculum, pick out books, texts and workbooks that best suit their needs and family or learners style.

• Home schooling removes children from an environment of drugs, violence, alcohol, sexual experimentation, gangs, and peer pressure.

• It returns them to a healthy, safe, God-centered learning environment.

• A school schedule that is friendlier to the demands of an Islamic life can be followed.

• Classes can be held on Saturday and Sunday, continued during Christian holidays, lightened during Ramadan and stopped for Eids.

• When family moves and relocates, continuity in education is preserved.

• Homeschoolers do not have to fit the child to the curriculum

• Homeschoolers make the curriculum fit the individual child.

• Misconception: parents need to know everything or spend all day teaching.

• School days need not be as long, either.

• One-on-one instruction is faster than one-on-30.

• Home schooling is legal in all fifty states, Canada, the United Kingdom and many other countries

• Homeschooling of children with learning disabilities, special needs or gifted and talented is possible

• There are magazines, WEB sites, distance learning programs and curriculum specifically designed for and devoted to this segment of the homeschooling population.

• SOCIALIZATION: Muslim families arrange weekly or monthly field trips or social events. Participate in local Boy/Girl Scouts, sport teams, craft and sewing classes, YMCA (physical education requirements).

• Muslim organizations that meet social needs of Muslim children: Muslim Youth Camps, MYNA, local Masjid youth programs, summer camps, vacation camps, Muslim Athletes United International

• Home school students watch much less television than students nationwide.

• Home school student achievement test scores are exceptionally high.

• Home schooled students have higher scholastic achievement test (SAT) scores than students who attended other educational programs.

• Homeschooled children are winning Spelling Bee and Geography Bee National Contests.

Public Education

No tuition fees. Public schools are run with tax-dollars to which Muslims contribute.

• Have qualified, trained and certified teachers

• Teachers are paid well, with all the benefits

• Provide secular curriculum which has many good skills like critical thinking

• Tries to inculcate thirst for knowledge

• Teachers are strict about homework

• Classes are scheduled in blocks with longer times.

• Provide college preparation with emphasis on science, math, English and other core subjects.

• Provide real life experience-meet children of all strata of society, diversity, co-ed

• Sufficient space for buildings, libraries, labs, playgrounds, gyms, Internet and individual PCs

• Public schools in suburban areas provide quality education, relatively in a safe environment

• Provide almost free Textbooks.

• Provide free or subsidized lunches for low-income Muslim families.

• Provide advanced classes for gifted and talented children.

• Provide education for special children who are slow learners or mentally /physically handicapped

• Public schools provide an excellent opportunity for advancing the cause of Islam

• Gives opportunities for Muslim students and teachers to dispel misconceptions about Islam

Problems of Public Education

• Smoking

• Alcohol

• Drug abuse

• Boyfriend-girlfriend -romantic pair- starts early in pre-school

• Sexual Experimentation,

• Violence

• Gangs

• Peer Pressure

• Secular curriculum places undue emphasis on western culture and ignores Muslim culture

• English literature is devoid of Muslim authors and Muslim topics

• Cultural heritage (provides identity and belonging to a cultural group) taught is totally Western.

• Muslim youth torn between school culture and Muslim culture at home

• Religious holidays are celebrated but no Muslim holidays

• Lying is accepted as growing up aspect.

• Family concept is deeply eroded

• Social studies class does not give credit to Muslim/Islamic contribution to the development of West

Others

Correspondence courses

• Distance learning via the World Wide Web and Internet. (www.thegateway.org)

• Virtual Islamic Schools

• Non-Muslim Parochial Schools

• Non-Muslim Private Schools

• Charter Schools-funded by state and local governments are Independent public schools formed by teachers, parents and/or community members. Exempt from state and local laws and/or policies in exchange for a written contract (or Charter) that specifies certain results are achieved. NOT ALLOWED TO TEACH RELIGION. However school’s mission may emphasize on the study of a particular language, cultural and ethnic traditions, and history infused with state’s core curriculum.

Examples of Charter Schools: Star International Academy and Universal Academy. Both are in Detroit, Michigan. WEB page: http://www.uscharterschools.org/

Charter schools provide solid foundations of knowledge and skills to compete in the world.

• Admission is open to all state residents and students pay no tuition.

Source: Dr. Ibrahim B. Syed, Ph.D

Picture Source: http://www.ifew.com/insight/authors/ibsyed.jpg