Fortunately, the contributors to Schooling Islam (2007), eleven internationally renowned scholars brought together by Robert Hefner and Muhammad Qasim Zaman to examine the different modes of modern Muslim education and their implications for national and global politics, provide new insights into Muslim culture and politics in countries as different as Morocco, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, India, Indonesia, Mali, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Great Britain. The authors demonstrate that Islamic education is neither timelessly traditional nor “medieval,” but rather that it is complex, evolving, and diverse in its institutions and practices. Citing historical instances of pedagogical reform and attesting to a flexible list of texts and subjects used in religious instruction – (most notably, Arabic grammar and lexicography, rhetoric, logic, Islamic jurisprudence, the prophetic traditions (ahadith), Qur’anic interpretation (tafsir), theology (kalam), pre-Islamic and early Islamic poetry, mathematics, astronomy, philosophy and Islamic history, economics, politics and sociology, and modern adaptations of “customs and common usages” – ‘urf and ‘adat – including world religions, European history and languages) – they convincingly challenge the hyperbolic assertion that Islamic education deadens all sense of inquiry. Moreover, they reveal the extent to which the struggle to capture hearts and minds occurred in Muslim lands before the Western media discovered the madrasas, as well as the degree to which Islamic schools remain on the frontline of regional and national debates surrounding culture and politics. Finally, they unanimously conclude that the present struggle, which is concerned with both the political functionalization and the internal dynamics of Islamic education, will shape a generation of young Muslims and their relations with the West.

In his introduction to the volume, Robert Hefner remarks that the reform of Islamic education was given momentum by the decline of Muslim political power: “In colonial settings, Islamic schools were functionalized to sustain Muslim values and ‘ulama social standing, even in the absence of a Muslim-led state. After the Second World War, national independence seemed at first to offer Muslim educators an opportunity to relax their guard. But postcolonial nation-building only ushered in new struggles to control the commanding heights of public ethics and culture. This was no more forcefully the case than [in debates] on the question of where Islam should figure in new programs of mass education” (p.32). Recalling the resurgence of personal piety and public observance which swept through many Muslim societies in the 1970’s and 1980’s, and citing contemporary examples, like the increased involvement of the Egyptian ‘ulama in politics in response to the regime’s efforts to co-opt al-Azhar scholars, as well as the politicization of Pakistani madrasas, particularly during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, Hefner states that the primary question today as regards Islamic education “is not whether it should be drawn up into broader political projects (functionalized), but whose projects they should be and how they should engage the plurality of peoples, powers, and ideas that marks our age” (p.33).

According to Hefner, a second line of reflection that emerges in the chapters of Schooling Islam concerns the internal dynamics of Islamic education rather than its functionalization. Indeed, a number of authors discuss how the rise of modern Islamic education has brought about a shift in the distribution and style of Islamic knowledge. The earlier pattern of informality and, in Louis Brenner’s phrase, “initiatic transmission” gave way to classrooms, fixed curricula, examinations, and professional teachers. In these relatively depersonalized settings, many believers came to view their faith as “a subject which must be ‘explained’ and ‘understood”’ (Eickelman 1992, 650) on the basis of formal doctrinal canons. The transmission of Islamic knowledge was abstracted from intimate teacher-student relationships, with their habits of dress, bearing, and deference, and repositioned in classrooms and quick-read textbooks (see Berkey, chpt.2). More recently, as debates over Islamic knowledge have moved from elite circles into restless, mobile and ever-more technologically savvy mass societies, the authority base of teachers in live classrooms and that of print textbooks have begun to be challenged by participants in virtual chat rooms and producers of YouTube video clips, who argue an increasingly diverse set of views. Many of the latest shifts in the internal dynamics of Islamic education – such as Muslims’ increasing reliance on electronic Qur’anic devices, online sermons, and instructional hajj videos, the integration of nasheed, “Islamic rap,” religious cartoons and children’s books in Islamic weekend school curricula, the emergence of international dawah conferences and online fatwa resources, and the recent (2004) establishment of the International Alliance of the ‘Ulama – have not yet been sufficiently examined by scholars of Islamic and social sciences.

The lack of evidence suggesting that the agonistic pluralism of Muslim politics and learning will diminish in the near future leads Hefner to make a third and final conclusion as regards the cultures and politics of contemporary Islamic education. Rather than viewing the ferment surrounding religious schooling as proof that the modern Muslim world dances to the beat of a different drummer than that of the West, East Asia, and Latin America, he reminds us that mass education of a moralistic temper has been the hallmark of nation-making and societal reform since the late nineteenth century’s “Age of Education” (Zeldin 1977); ie. that a moral agenda of one sort or another lay at the heart of state educational projects that unfolded in disparate parts of the late nineteenth-century globe (Fortna 2000, 35). Hence, Hefner argues, “[We] in the West would be truer to our own moral history were we to recognize that our schools and politics, too, bear the imprint of struggles over how children and citizens should ethicalize and behave. Current debates over Islamic education, then, do not represent Muslim civilization’s regression to some pre-modern past. They are a civilizationally specific response to the challenges of pluralism, knowledge, and ethics faced by all citizens in the late-modern world” (p.35).

Schooling Islam has been described as the most comprehensive work available in any language on madrasas and Islamic education. Because it gives a broad, comparative overview of educational developments in the Muslim world, and because each chapter’s bibliography directs the reader to more detailed sources of information, it can, indeed, be called “essential reading” for scholars and policymakers who are interested in the multifaceted cultures and politics of Islam and the future of the Muslim world.

Dr. Jeannette Okur is the translator of Tales from Rumi, a selection of Mathnawi stories adapted for young readers. She is currently conducting research on the portrayal of Muslim-American teens’ lives in a new literary genre called Islamic youth fiction.

Although, there is a lack of theoretical and philosophical background to understand the homeschooling movement I would like to use some philosophy of

teaching theories to understand and analyze counter-culture and controversies in Mitchell L. Stevens’ book. The author tries to offer a broad understanding in the North Eastern American states in the homeschooling movement. The author focuses to answer why the homeschooling families walked away from one of the most central institutions of modern life and what do those families think about conventional schools. Stevens continues by saying that We inherit traditions of meaning that help define what we think and lend words to what we fell. I wanted to learn about the intellectual traditions from which home schooling had grown (Stevens, 2001, p.15). When I reviewed the book I wanted to discover what kind of inherited tradition and mentality he found or didn’t find in the book while I was writing this paper. The author’s perspective about the homeschooling movement seems to be more narrative and insightful than theoretical and philosophical, which a sociological study is supposed to rely on.

On the cover of the book Stevens talks about the great successes of home schooled children, their making headlines by winning national spelling bees and excelling at elite universities, but he does not extend the argument far enough. He does not talk about the experiences of these children, their feelings and ideas about being home schooled, or the structure of their educational curriculum. Although he mentions some studies about those children by saying that home schooled children are academically successful and remarkably well socialized he does not explain how and why homeschooling brings these results. This shows that Stevens is more concerned with the adult movement in homeschooling than with how it will affect the children’s world contrary to the title of the book.

While the book states that the vast majority of homeschooling parents were conservative Christian or evangelical Protestant there are some exceptions to that which make the movement harder to understand. These exceptions include families who are atheist, gay or single parent rather than all conservative Christian. I see a shift toward theories based on a postmodern approach because many parents have become skeptical about other types of modern schooling. Homeschooling families place great emphasis on their children’ showing initiative and being physically and psychologically healthy. For homeschooling families’ modernism does not have a capacity to fulfill the needs of young children because there is so much influence of commercial culture, including overly sexualized and secularized materials. While homeschooling families unmask the secular political ideology in regular public schooling, they come with their hidden agenda (religious or non-secular education) unlike in postmodernism. This is because postmodernism gives great emphasis on individual intention. Hlebowitsh says that postmodernists stress the value of individual initiative, the recognition of human intention, the unmasking of political ideology in knowledge, the taming of social control mechanism in the school, and the general idea that society is marked by conflicting interests of class, gender, and culture (Hlebowitsh, 2001, p. 119). Postmodernism is skeptical to see things as all good and perfect, but homeschooling families are pretty sure what they want out of home schooling. According to many homeschooling families, in this modern world individuals are not conscious about God and the importance of family ties, especially mother and child/children, are uniquely important. Consequently, the movement in the book seems to be not so new and very similar to early colonial New England School tradition in terms of its being exclusive and based on Bible lesson plans. In chapter three, entitled Natural Mothers and Godly Women, Stevens recalls Dame schooling that is based on women educators (widowed or unmarried) in the New England early colonial era. These women did not necessarily train to be a teacher but taught to read the Bible and lessons based on its Scriptures, which is very similar to the homeschooling movement today. Stevens book fails to do this, or describe some other types of historical ties behind the movement. I wonder if he intents to make this connection on page 15 by using the term inherit tradition in the homeschooling movement.

In the Homeschooling Journal, Debra Strayer (Stevens, 2001, p.66) says that:

As teaching parents, we are presented with a huge array of educationally important things to serve our children. Many things are considered essential, such as phonics and math. Many are deemed very important, such as writing and science, with our study of the Bible as the central diet. As we consider the many things our children simply must have, we tend to eliminate those things that are cumbersome and difficult to schedule

In this quote Strayer expresses the feelings of many homeschooling families by saying that other types of schooling are more heavily weighted on unnecessary courses and scheduling than core subjects’ courses. The homeschooling families like to eliminate those things from their children’s learning experience. While they make these arguments on the surface they tend to be subject-centered rather than child-centered. This is similar to one of the conservative philosophies of teaching theory, which is essentialism. In this type of teaching philosophy learning is primarily based on the transmission and protection of common core cultural knowledge. This common culture relies on the values of Western civilization and the ideal learning experience is strictly based on academic discipline. While those statements translate the homeschooling movement, the author does not tend to make any type of historical or philosophical connection to interpret and understand the movement. Because these parents do not count on their children’s ideas and feelings, they ignore the real view of their children and they only think of molding them into the shape that they want them to be. Thus, parents, not the children, have the authority to make the choices and offer selections.

According to Rousseau, who is the father of the child-centered approach, children are best educated in a free environment and schools tend to destroy the natural learning process. Having an educational agenda undermines the individual’s natural and spontaneous learning process. As is seen in this statement, what Rousseau proposed with child-centeredness was totally different than what homeschooling families intend to do. I think the author needs another term instead of child centered at page 88. I believe those children are successful because of subject or discipline centeredness of homeschooling movement but not because of the child-centeredness of the movement.

Although I find Stevens book very enlightening, I see some gaps in terms of its theoretical and philosophical background. The author perceives homeschooling as a new social movement, but the question about what type of new social movement stays unclear and/or unanswered. I also realize this gap comes from the nature of the homeschooling movement. Even though, I try to understand Stevens’ book based on some teaching theories, it is hard to frame the movement because of a wide range of homeschooling families’ backgrounds and their expectations from the movement. Stevens’ book offers a very insightful approach to understanding homeschooling families. One of the strongest sides of his book is its vast range of homeschooling designs and the richness of his survey sample distributions. In terms of his methodology, this increases the accuracy of the information he provides through surveying. This shows that the author reached out to many homeschooling families and learned a lot about their world. Finally, I find Stevens successful in his ability to reflect his experiences insightfully with homeschooling families behind the movement.

References

• Hlebowitsh, Peter S., (2001). Foundations of American education (3 ed.). Wadsworth T. Thomson Learning. Belmont, CA
• Stevens, Mitchell L., (2001). Kingdom of children: Culture and controversy in the homeschooling movement. Princeton University Press. Princeton, New Jersey