This poor neglected blog has been sitting idle for so long that it is growing cobwebs… and my dashboard tells me that the maximum viewers I have had in a day for more than a year is about 6. Today i posted a link to the home schooling network I have just joined here in Pakistan, and my stats have shot up to over 80 views in a day!!! MashAllah! What that tells me is that perhaps there is a good reason to start writing again, since home schooling is my new passion and is clearly the passion of plenty of other people around.
So here I go…. back to the blog inshAllah!!
We have been back in Pakistan for almost 4 years now, and that has involved 3.5 years of screaming at the Pakistani schooling system that says that the best way for kids to learn is to cram information down their throats and see how well they can regurgitate it. After 3.5 years of this torture (I am a bit slow really) I finally and very suddenly decided that enough was enough, and i was going to yank my kids out of school and start home schooling. While I was screaming all those years, my kids were crying with frustration at the same school system – the 10kg bags they had to lug to school every day, the 30 minutes drive to and from which in summer was nigh on unbearable, the insensitivity of the teachers, the stupidity of many of the kids, the massive waste of time that went on nearly every day when teachers were absent or busy etc etc etc. Not to mention the inordinate amount of stress heaped on the kids to do exams every 2 months, maintain their performance, come first in the class blah blah blah.
I am sorry, but this is not MY philosophy of education.
I have long held a private dream to start a school called ‘Love of Learning’…. but i never realised it was going to be with my own kids! I believe that school should teach children to learn rather than shove information down their throats. I believe that if kids learn at their own pace and the things that they want to learn, then there will not be a dread associated with it, but rather a love. I also believe that the basis of all learning for Muslim kids should be Islamic character. What does it really mean to be a Muslim… how to behave, how to treat others, how to think and how to relate to Allah, because as we all know, Islam is a complete way of life. Why is it then that in school it is just one tiny subject, and taught in such a boring way that everyone dreads it from the earliest days of school until the end?
So we are home schooling, and of course it is not as easy as it looks!! In fact the first month was filled almost entirely with horseriding (which we now finally have time to do). The second month is so far about me getting my act together as a teacher and deciding how much of the school curriculum we should be doing, and how much of our own projects. Does it matter that the kids are getting behind their school friends? Are we doing enough? Should we be working towards the O level exams or just doing our own thing? Should I stop them playing on their computers?
So far the biggest sign of success is that the kids don’t complain about school in the mornings. I wouldnt say we are ‘loving learning’ just yet… give us another few months for that!! But we are certainly ‘liking’ it a whole lot more, and that is a significant victory. Al Hamdulillah!!!
