Madrassah education: Reforms, upgrade, uniformity!

The four-pronged education has given birth to wide gaps between the students educated in different systems, especially between the students of the general and the madrassah system

MIDDLE or secondary schools shape up the education system of a nation. Primary education is important as it creates the base of the literate population. The curriculum that involves primary education requires a thorough, in-depth research as the level of education deals with the whole of the population. The tertiary or university education is specialised and is already based on research and methods in practice across the world.

What remains the most troublesome area in any education system is the secondary and higher secondary education, imparted in middle schools and colleges in Bangladesh as it relates mainly to the use and efficacy of knowledge on local affairs and creates the base for higher education.

The system of education in Bangladesh has four tracks: general education which imparted in middle schools is governed by the general education boards and the curriculum is set by a national textbook board; madrassah education, which up to the tertiary level is governed by a madrassah education board, which has a curriculum and textbook wing that looks after the reading and teaching materials; there is English-medium education which is offered by private educational institutions as laid out in the UK-based GCE and GCSE O- and A-level syllabuses; and there is vocational education which offers diploma courses of a technical education board.

The four-pronged education has given birth to wide gaps between the students educated in different systems, especially between the students of the general and the madrassah system.

Madrassahs are simply traditional Islamic schools of learning. Until the 18th century, when western education system, which gradually led to the general system of education, was introduced, such madrassahs for the Muslims, and gurukuls for the Hindus, were the only formal way of education in the mediaeval sub-continent.

Maktabs, which impart ibtedayi education, were primary schools in the system, first formally approved by former president Ziaur Rahman in 1978, and madrassahs were seats of secondary and higher secondary education. They offered studies of Islam, and learning of Persian. Both the royalty and the commoners were educated in madrassahs. Bangladesh has madrassahs of two types: qoumi madrassahs, which are private and teach the standard dars-i-nizami prevalent in all South Asian madrassahs; and the aliya madrassahs, a new scheme of the system, which receive financial support from the government.

The dars-i-nizami was first introduced by an Islamic scholar in Lucknow. The curriculum consists of about 20 subjects in two categories. The subjects are grammar, rhetoric, prosody, logic, philosophy, Arabic literature, dialectal theology, the life of the prophet, medicine, mathematics, polemics, Islamic law, jurisprudence, and hadith (Muhammad’s sayings) and tafsir (exegesis of the Qur’an).

The aliya madrassahs have five levels, parallel to those of the general education system: ibtedayi, which is elementary, dakhil, secondary, alim, higher secondary, fazil, bachelor’s course, and kamil, master’s course. They teach modern subjects such as Bangla, English, science, social studies, mathematics, geography, history and others. They also teach a revised version of dars-i-nizami. They are registered with and controlled by the madrassah education board, which prescribes syllabuses and conducts examinations. But the government has approved the equivalence of only dakhil to secondary and kamil to higher secondary education. Efforts or agitation programmes for equivalence of alim to bachelor’s degree and fazil to master’s degree are under way.

The secondary level in general education system in Bangladesh offers compulsory subjects such as Bangla, English, mathematics, and religious instruction, and social science in science group and basic science in humanities and commerce groups. There are three elective subjects in each of the groups — physics, chemistry and biology or higher mathematics in science; history, geography and economics or civics in humanities; and marketing, accounting and business management or commercial geography. There is another elective subject in all the groups. All the subjects, with two papers in English and Bangla each, account for 1100 marks.

Dakhil offers education in four groups: general group, which teaches the Qur’an and tajweed (proper articulation of Arabic phonetic elements), hadith, Arabic literature and grammar, fiqh (Islamic law and jurisprudence) and usulul fiqh (principles of jurisprudence), Bangla, English, mathematics, history of Islam and social science; science group, which offers courses in the Qur’an and tajweed, hadith, Arabic literature and grammar, fiqh, Bangla, English, mathematics, physics and chemistry; the muzabbid group, which offers courses in the Qur’an and tajweed, hadith, Arabic literature and grammar, fiqh, English, Bangla, history of Islam, tajweed and qirat (recitation from the Qur’an); and the fourth group, hifzul qur’an, teaches the Qur’an and tajweed (oral), hadith, Arabic literature and grammar, fiqh, English, Bangla, history of Islam, tajweed (written) and hifzul qur’an (memorisation of the Qur’an).

The first group is focused on general subjects, religious and social studies with an addition of Arabic; the second group is the first group subjects with an addition of science, physics, and chemistry. The third group is focused primarily on religious studies such as the Qur’an and hadith; the hifzul qur’an group emphasises memorisation of the Qur’an and qur’anic sciences in addition to religious studies and Arabic. All the groups offer studies in an elective subject, from a range that includes civics, higher English or Bangla, Urdu, Persian, home economics, agriculture, higher mathematics, computer science, basic trade, logic and biology.

The course outlines in several subjects are the same in both the systems of education; the syllabuses of English and mathematics are identical. The course outlines of physics and chemistry may be different as the general education outline details the teaching scope whereas the madrassah education outline just gives out the mark distribution scheme.

In many courses, where the subjects are the same in both the systems, the distribution of marks and the types of questions — essay-type or short answers — are different.

A marked difference exists between the course outlines for Bangla. The general education outline features 15 poems and 15 essays; the madrassah course outline has 10 poems and 10 essays. The outlines have only three poems in common. What the titles suggest is that the syllabus of the madrassah education is more focused on teaching a version of Bangla larded with Perso-Arabic words. The titles in the general education system stand to offer a broader view on life because of a varied selection.

All the three groups of general education have five subjects, accounting for 700 marks, in common; three subjects are focused on the group contents. In the madrassah education system, all the four groups have only two subjects in common — Bangla and English; and the curriculum layout shows that the curriculum and textbook wing of the madrassah education board has given more preference to English than Bangla after Arabic. And the students of madrassah education are obviously in a disadvantageous position because of the additional burden of learning the Arabic language; but surveys show that less meritorious students, in most cases, pursue or are made to pursue madrassah education, which results in a poor performance in public examinations.

Although outlines of both the courses are almost the same in some cases, the madrassah education imparts half the view on life and society compared with the outline of the general education system as the general and science groups of the madrassah education have five Islamic subjects and the remaining groups are predominantly focused on Islamic instructions. But even then, such a revised curriculum for dakhil level in madrassah education has been around for few years.

Whatever be the standards of the curriculum of the education systems, the teaching method and the quality of the people on the teaching staff remain crucial. The English course outline, which is the same in both the systems, hints at ‘communicative language teaching and learning… in the classroom.’ The course outline in its preamble also says that a syllabus cannot ensure such a provision. If this is so, then teaching in such a method is solely dependent on the training and competence of the teachers, which is almost absent in even most general educational institutions. If the situation in most middle school is bad, the situation in most madrassahs is worse, as reflected in the outcome in public examinations. This explains the poor situation of teachers’ training and quality, leading to a poorer quality education imparted on the students. Only the case in general education system is probably a bit better than the condition in madrassahs.

Apart from teachers’ training, another factor that contributes to poor show in madrassahs is the quality of students and the group they take up. This also plays a role in creating a divide with the students of general education system. The madrassah students pursuing the groups primarily focused on Islamic instructions would, in the process of learning, distance themselves from the students taking up the courses of other groups; this means that the course outlines have more flaws in themselves than the course outlines in general education. Lack of uniformity is more pronounced in madrassah education course outlines. And all the madrassah students together distance themselves from the students of general education because of a starkly varying outlook on life and society the system tries to imbue them with.

Madrassah education system has been updated to this level in about three decades. But uniformity with the general education system remains distant. For a uniform, secondary, education system, policies need to stress access and equity, which means the whole population should have access to education and guardians should have the ability to pay for it. Surveys show that most madrassah students are children of farmers of rural areas. People having more children usually send some of the younger to madrassahs as education in the institutions is less expensive.

The policies also need to look into the quality of education, which might be achieved with need-based syllabus, adequacy of resources consistent with objectives, management and governance and the quality of teachers. This is a factor which has already made public university education different from that in private universities. The students in private universities, who go through a syllabus the same as followed in public universities, become more competent for job market, because of the sheer training they receive in the system, although they might not be of the similar calibre.

The management and governance of schools should be streamlined; the perception of government role in the functioning of schools should be redefined; excessive centralisation should be removed and intrusion of partisan policies should be checked.

The fourth factor the policies should stress is adequacy and use of resources; only increased allocation in budget will fail to yield better results; the weaknesses in the use of resources should also be addressed.

And all this should be done along with reforms in and upgrade to the course curriculum. Secondary curriculum should focus on the contents and objectives that would be relevant to a larger portion of the population. A poem written in the 13th century Bangla or studies of poems in English with prosody, or Arabic prosody as in the madrassah curriculum, will do little good to students in their practical life. Education in madrassahs also narrows down the scope of work for the students in life as it involves knowledge of some things which are hardly required for jobs of many types.

Akkas, Abu Jar M (2005 June 28) Madrassah education: Reforms, upgrade, uniformity! New Age anniversary secial S1(2).

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