Key Periods in Educational History

Primitive Societies – Arabic

This report is all about Key Periods in Educational History from 7000B.C to A.D 1350 that
discusses the Primitive Societies, Greek , Roman , and Arabic. It discusses the history of
education, tracing the evolution of the formal teaching of knowledge and skills from prehistoric
and ancient times to the present, and make you see that education and school are a function of
society and schools reflect the nature and character of society itself.

Primitive Societies (7000 B.C – 5000 B.C)

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primitive/amp/
Our educational system is a result of thousands of years of predominantly patriarchal
societies that had adopted logic, rationality, dogma and science but condemned the senses,
practicality, spirituality, and art! We live in a world where we are constantly in a struggle for
survival rather than in an effort for continuity and progression. As a result, we are constantly
being conditioned and reconditioned into liking things we naturally dislike. When did this all
start?
 Primitive is a word not used by anthropologists today. It was a word used to replace
negative terms like ‘savage’ and ‘barbarian’ (barbarian originally meant people that don’t speak
Greek, because to them foreign languages sounded like ‘bababa). But primitive now a days
means people who are like our ancestors, which can mean dumber or more violent or dirty etc.
The purpose of primitive education is thus to guide children to becoming good members of
their tribe or band. There is a marked emphasis upon training for citizenship, because primitive
people are highly concerned with the growth of individuals as tribal members and the thorough
comprehension of their way of life during passage from prepuberty to postpuberty. The aims of
education is to survive and to conform, and preservation and transmission of tradition.
EDUCATION IN PRIMITIVE SOCIETIES
In its long march to the present, humankind developed skills of creating, sustaining, and
transmitting culture. These cultural survival skills, which have persisted from prehistoric times
to the present, became the basis of formal schooling. Preliterate persons faced the problem of
survival in an environment that pitted them against natural forces, animals, and other hostile
human beings. To survive, human beings needed food, shelter, warmth, and clothing. In order
to transform a frequently hostile environment into a lifesustaining one, humankind developed
life skills that eventually became cultural patterns.

For the culture of a particular group to continue, that culture must be transmitted from the
group’s adults to its children. As the children learn the language, skills, knowledge, and values
of their society, they inherit the culture. The earliest patterns of education involved (1) tool or
instrument making, (2) the mores of group life, (3) and language learning.

As toolmakers, humans created instruments for their protection and for food gathering. Clubs,
spears, bows and arrows, pottery, sleds and other instruments were means of gaining control
over the environment. Whenever and wherever parents taught their offspring to make and use
spears to catch fish or kill animals, informal educational forces were operating.

Primitive humans found scurity in group life, based on kinship and tribal patterns. Group life
provided greater efficiency in gathering or growing food, in building shelters, and in protecting
group members against enemies. Life in the human group was educational as children observed
and learned from the older members of the group. Children were deliberately instructed in
specialized tasks and roles by their parents, tribal storytellers, and priests. Over time, many of
the patterns of group life became moral behavioral codes that were ritualized ways of dealing
with the environment.
Important among the human being’s powers was the ability to use abstract thought. As
toolmakers, human beings could fashion and manipulate instruments; as abstract thinkers, they
could create, use, and manipulate symbols. Through gestures, sounds, and words, they could
communicate symbols. Through gestures, sounds, and words, they could communicate with
each other. When these symbols were expressed in signs, pictographs, and letters, human
beings created a written language and made the great leap to literacy. Humanity’s powers to
abstract, conceptualize, and communicate in oral and written language had tremendous
educational consequences. Education involved an emphasis on language learning as children
participated, in the songs, stories, and ritual that formed the group’s cultural inheritance.

Ancient Greek (1600 B.C – 300 B.C)

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/magazine/2019/07-08/education-in-ancient-greece/

Did sons and daughters get the same education in ancient Greece?
Taught in schools outside the home, boys prepared for lives as citizens and soldiers, while girls
were lucky if they received an education at all.

Childhood education in ancient Greece was highly dependent on one’s gender. Preparing for
life in the public sphere, wealthy boys during the classical period went to schools where they
faced both physical and mental challenges. Relegated to the private sphere, girls’ educations
were typically haphazard, often occurring at home, if they occurred at all.

In the fifth century B.C., Greece’s greatest minds were preoccupied with the most effective
ways to raise children. Isocrates, a Greek rhetorician and contemporary of Plato, boldly
proclaimed what he saw as Greece’s leadership in education: “So far has Athens left the rest of
mankind behind in thought and expression that her pupils have become the teachers of the
world.” (See also: Wine, women, and wisdom: The symposia of ancient Greece.)

The teaching that Isocrates praised was known by Greeks as paideia, a term derived from pais,
the Greek word for child. In ideal terms, paideia was intended to allow male children to purge
the baser parts of human nature so they could achieve the highest moral state. On a pragmatic
level, it also provided society with well-prepared men to take on the political and military
burdens of citizenship as adults.

Parthenon-The Acropolis of Athens is dominated by the Parthenon. At its foot stands the
second-century Odeon theater of Herodes Atticus, an aristocrat and philosopher.
Paideia, however, was not intended for female children. Generally, only wealthy families could
afford the full range of educational opportunities, and in nearly all cases, those children were
boys. Most daughters, even well-off ones, received an informal education at home. In classical
Greece, women were not educated for service in public life, as only men could be citizens.
Although evidence has come down of some important exceptions, in general the role in life
allotted to girls was in the home. (See also: Once sacred, the Oracle at Delphi was lost for a
millennium. See how it was found.)

From heroes to thinkers

The notion of paideia did not suddenly emerge in the time of Isocrates, but developed slowly
over time. Child-rearing customs that developed in Greece’s Archaic period, from the eighth
century B.C. onward, were restricted to a tiny elite of young male aristocrats. They centered on
rules and moral dictums—the respect that one owed to parents, the gods, and strangers, for
example.
As the literature of Homer spread through the Greek world, the heroes of the Odyssey and the
Iliad were held up as examples to inspire young men. A prized quality in the Homeric hero was
arete, a blend of military skill and moral integrity.
With the Homeric foundation, scholars began to develop more complex ideas around
education. In the fifth century B.C., around the time of Socrates, a new kind of professional
teacher, the Sophist, became popular in Athens. Teaching their students rhetoric and
philosophy, Sophists infused the traditional values of arete with a new spirit of intellectual
inquiry. It is during this period that the word paideia is first found. The movement advocated
higher education for young Athenian men starting around the age of 16.

There were notable exceptions to this new emphasis on the life of the mind. In neighboring
Sparta, harsh child-rearing customs placed an almost exclusive emphasis on physical prowess to
prepare for a soldier’s life. Even so, the development of paideia was not restricted to Athens,
and formed part of a pan-Greek culture. (See also: Ancient Spartans were bred for battle.)Basic
education for boys ended between the ages of 14 and 16. By 480 B.C., Athenians had the option
of enrolling their sons in secondary schooling. For older students rhetoric was a central area of
study, especially for those eyeing a career in public life. Those who could afford it also took
private lessons from the Sophists, who were far more expensive than conventional teachers.

Intense relationships between an adult male teacher and an adolescent pupil could often
develop. At times such relationships could turn sexual. Although such interactions were socially
accepted, the practice was officially frowned on in Athenian democracy.

Most wealthy Athenians’ education terminated with an obligatory period of military service,
which began when a young man entered the ephebos social class at age 18. In the fourth
century B.C., the intellectual elite might hope to go on to study at one of the new centers of
philosophy: the Academy, established by Plato circa 387 B.C. , and the school established at the
Lyceum by Aristotle around 335 B.C.
In all the Greek city-states, except for Sparta,

 The purpose of education was to produce good citizens. Children were trained in music, art,
literature, science, math, and politics. In Athens, for example, boys were taught at home until
they were about six years old. Then boys went to school, where they learned to read and
write. They learned to play a musical instrument, usually the flute or the lyre. They learned
the poetry of Homer. They learned how to debate and how to give a persuasive speech. They
studied science and math. After high school, they attended military school, where they
learned to be good warriors. Boys did not graduate from all the schooling they were required
to take until they were about 20 years old. Except for the city-state of Sparta, Greek girls did
not go to school. They were taught at home by their mothers. If their mother could read and
write, they taught their girls how to do the same, as well as teaching them how to cook and
 sew and run a household.

Education in Sparta was completely different.

 The purpose of education in Sparta was to produce and maintain a powerful army. Sparta
boys entered military school when they were about six years old. They learned how to read and
write, but those skills were not considered very important except for messages. Military school
was tough, on purpose. The boys were often hungry. They were often beaten. They slept away
from home, in the barracks, with the men. If they cried, they were beaten, sometimes by their
own parents. They were taught how to steal and lie and get away with it. These skills could save
their life someday. Nearly everything in the Spartan educational system was about war and
battle.
Spartan girls went to school to learn to be warriors. Their school was not as brutal,
but all girls in ancient Sparta could wrestle and fist fight and handle a weapon. They were
taught how to kill. The Spartans believed that strong women produced strong babies. Besides,
the women might have to defend the city if the men were away at war. No great works of art
came out of Sparta. But most of the other Greek city-states wanted Sparta on their side. The
Spartans were great friends to have in times of war.
 A fourth-century B.C. Greek funerary stele depicting a mother (seated) and another woman,
perhaps a slave, holding a baby.
 If Greek education centered on refining the baser elements of human nature, babyhood was
a process of becoming human in the first place: “They are born in a more imperfected condition
than any other animal,“ Aristotle wrote of newborns, noting that babies cannot even nurse with
their heads unsupported. As well as weakness, Greek infants were associated with an animal
wildness that needed to be tamed: Aristotle likened a crawling baby to a four-footed animal.
Infanticide was not uncommon in Athens. Babies (especially girls) were left to die if they were
seen as an unwanted financial burden.
 “To rear children is a hazardous undertaking and success is won through struggle,” wrote the
fifth-century B.C. thinker Democritus. Other sources take a more joyful view. In Euripides’ play
Ion, for example, children are lauded for lighting up the “old dark house” of life.
In reality, these subject areas are wider in scope than their English translations suggest.
“Grammar” consisted of arithmetic, literature, and ethics. “Music” centered on the playing of
instruments such as the lyre and pipes. Reflecting the wider sense of the word “music,” related
to the Muses, it was also a vehicle for imparting broader knowledge about history and ethics.
Physical games included gymnastics and field sports. Wrestling contests were held in the
building known as the Palaestra.

Going global
Many of the principles of paideia have been handed down through time and incorporated into
learning institutions, a process that was largely enabled by the spread of Christianity. The fifth-
century Christian thinker St. Augustine argued for the continued study of classical texts and the
importance of rhetoric in education.

Augustine believed eloquence and argument could help win souls for the church. His inclusive
approach shaped medieval and Renaissance learning, which in turn has hugely influenced
modern ideas about education. Despite the gulf of time and values that separate the world of
classical Athens from schools in the 21st century, these debates still influence the way people
think about education in the United States, Europe, and many other parts of the world today

Ancient Roman (750 B.C – A.D 450)

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Education in ancient Rome progressed from an informal, familial system of education in the
early Republic to a tuition-based system during the late Republic and the Empire. The Roman
education system was based on the Greek system – and many of the private tutors in the
Roman system were Greek slaves or freedmen. The educational methodology and curriculum
used in Rome was copied in its provinces, and provided a basis for education systems
throughout later Western civilization. Organized education remained relatively rare, and there
are few primary sources or accounts of the Roman educational process until the 2nd century
AD. Due to the extensive power wielded by the paterfamilias over Roman families, the level and
quality of education provided to Roman children varied drastically from family to family;
nevertheless, Roman popular morality came eventually to expect fathers to have their children
educated to some extent, and a complete advanced education was expected of any Roman who
wished to enter politics.
At the height of the Roman Republic and later the Roman Empire, the Roman system of
education gradually found its final form. Formal schools were established, which served paying
students; very little that could be described as free public education existed. Both boys and girls
were educated, though not necessarily together.
Prior to the 3rd century BC. the Roman system of education was closely bound to the Roman
social institution of patria potestas, in which the father acted as head of the household
(paterfamilias), and had, according to law, absolute right of control over his children. It was the
father's duty to educate his children and should he be unable to fulfill this duty, the task was
assumed by other family members. It was not until 272 BC with the capture of Tarentum, the
annexation of Sicily in 241 BC, and the period following the First Punic War that Romans were
exposed to a strong influence of Greek thought and lifestyle and found leisure to study the arts.

In the 3rd century B.C., a Greek captive from Tarentum named Livius Andronicus was sold as a
slave and employed as a tutor for his master's children. After obtaining his freedom, he
continued to live in Rome and became the first schoolmaster (private tutor) to follow Greek
methods of education and would translate Homer's Odyssey into Latin verse in Saturnian
meter.

As Rome grew in size and in power, following the Punic Wars, the importance of the family as
the central unit within Roman society began to deteriorate, and with this decline, the old
Roman system of education carried out by the paterfamilias deteriorated as well. The new
educational system began to center more on the one encountered by the Romans with the
prominent Greek and Hellenistic centers of learning such as Alexandria later on. It was
becoming a literary educational system.

The situation of the Greeks was ideal for the foundation of literary education as they were the
possessors of the great works of Homer, Hesiod and the Lyric poets of Archaic Greece. The
absence of a literary method of education from Roman life was due to the fact that Rome was
bereft of any national literature. The military arts were all that Rome could afford to spend time
studying. When not waging war, the Romans devoted what time remained to agriculture. The
concern of Rome was that of survival, whether through defense or dominion. It was not until
the appearance of Ennius (239–169 BC), the father of Roman poetry, that any sort of national
literature surfaced.
While the Romans adopted many aspects of Greek education, two areas in particular were
viewed as trifle: music and athletics. Music to the Greeks was fundamental to their educational
system and tied directly to the Greek paideia. Mousike encompassed all those areas supervised
by the Muses, comparable to today's liberal arts. The area that many Romans considered
unimportant equates to our modern definition of music. To the Greeks, the ability to play an
instrument was the mark of a civilized, educated man, and through an education in all areas of
mousike it was thought that the soul could become more moderate and cultivated. The Romans
did not share this view and considered the study of music as a path to moral corruption.
However, they did adopt one area of mousike: Greek literature.

Athletics, to the Greeks, was the means to obtaining a healthy and beautiful body, which was
an end in and of itself and further promoted their love of competition. The Romans, though, did
not share this stance either, believing that athletics was only the means to maintaining good
soldiers.

This illustrates one of the central differences between the two cultures and their view on
education: that to the Greeks beauty or an activity could be an end in itself, and the practice of
that activity was beneficial accordingly. The Romans, on the other hand, tended to be more
practically minded when it came to what they taught their children. To them, it would appear,
an area of study was good only as far as it served a better purpose or end determined outside
of itself. Also, prior to the war, they had focused more on government and politics rather than
army and military.
In a system much like the one that predominates in the modern world, the Roman education
system that developed arranged schools in tiers. The educator Quintilian recognized the
importance of starting education as early as possible, noting that "memory ... not only exists
even in small children, but is specially retentive at that age". A Roman student would progress
through schools just as a student today might go from primary school to secondary school and
then to college. They were generally exempted from studies during the market days which
formed a kind of weekend on every eighth day of the year. Progression depended more on
ability than age with great emphasis being placed upon a student's ingenium or inborn "gift" for
learning, and a more tacit emphasis on a student's ability to afford high-level education.
At the foundation of ancient Greek education was an effective system of formal education, but
in contrast, the Romans lacked such a system until the 3rd century BC. Instead, at the
foundation of ancient Roman education was, above all else, the home and family, from which
children derived their so-called "moral education".
Whereas Greek boys primarily received their education from the community, a Roman child's
first and most important educators were almost always his or her parents. Parents taught their
children the skills necessary for living in the early republic, which included agricultural,
domestic and military skills as well as the moral and civil responsibilities that would be expected
from them as citizens. Roman education was carried on almost exclusively in the household
under the direction of the paterfamilias. From the paterfamilias, or highest ranking male of the
family, one usually learned "just enough reading, writing, and Arithmetic to enable them to
understand simple business transactions and to count, weigh, and measure.

Men like Cato the Elder adhered to this Roman tradition and took their roles as teachers very
seriously. Cato the Elder not only made his children hardworking, good citizens and responsible
Romans, but "he was his (son's) reading teacher, his law professor, his athletic coach. He taught
his son not only to hurl a javelin, to fight in armor, and to ride a horse, but also to box, to
endure both heat and cold, and to swim well".

Job training was also emphasized, and boys gained valuable experience through
apprenticeships. Mothers, though, cannot be overlooked for their roles as moral educators and
character builders of their children. Cornelia Africana, the mother of the Gracchi, is even
credited as a major cause of her sons' renowned eloquence.

Perhaps the most important role of the parents in their children's education was to instill in
them a respect for tradition and a firm comprehension of pietas, or devotion to duty. For a boy,
this meant devotion to the state, and for a girl, devotion to her husband and family. As the
Roman Republic transitioned into a more formal education beyond the 3 R's, parents began to
hire teachers for this level of advanced academic training. For this, "the Romans began to bring
Greek slaves to Rome" to further enrich their children's knowledge and potential; yet, Romans
still always cherished the tradition of pietas and the ideal of the father as his child's teacher.

Ludus
Rome as a republic or an empire never formally instituted a state-sponsored form of
elementary education. In no stage of its history did Rome ever legally require its people to be
educated on any level.

It was typical for Roman children of wealthy families to receive their early education from
private tutors. However, it was common for children of more humble means to be instructed in
a primary school, traditionally known as a ludus litterarius.:47 An instructor in such a school
was often known as a litterator or litteratus, which was seen as a more respectable title. There
was nothing stopping a litterator from setting up his own school, aside from his meager wages.
There were never any established locations for a ludus litterarius. They could be found in a
variety of places, anywhere from a private residence to a gymnasium, or even in the street.

Typically, elementary education in the Roman world focused on the requirements of everyday
life, reading, and writing. The students would progress up from reading and writing letters, to
syllables, to word lists, eventually memorizing and dictating texts. The majority of the texts
used in early Roman education were literature, predominantly poetry. Greek poets, such as
Homer and Hesiod, were frequently used as classroom examples due to the lack of Roman
literature. Roman students were expected to work on their own. There was little sense of a
class as a cohesive unit, exemplified by students coming and going at different times
throughout the day. Young Roman students faced no formal examinations or tests. Their
performance was measured through exercises that were either corrected or applauded based
on performance. This created an unavoidable sense of competition amongst students.

Using a competitive educational system, Romans developed a form of social control that
allowed elites to maintain class stability. This, along with the obvious monetary expenses,
prevented the majority of Roman students from advancing to higher levels of education.

The Romans education was based on the classical Greek tradition but infused with Roman
politics, cosmology, and religious beliefs. The only children to receive a formal education were
the children of the rich. The very rich families employed a private tutor to teach their children.
Those that could not afford to do this used either slaves or sent their children to a private
school. Children of poor families, those living in the country or those whose parents were slaves
were not educated at all. In Ancient Rome, most children received their first education at home
by their parents. Because families needed to work and farm to eat, most Roman children
worked in the fields as soon as they were old enough and capable enough to help their families.
So, many Roman kids didn't go to school, so they didn't learn how to read, write, or do math.
Primary goals in Roman Education is to provide children with a sense of tradition, Encourage
them to think as continuators of the family and the state,and for children to become an
effective speaker.

Arabic (A.D 700 – A.D 1350)

 https://astronomy.com/news/2017/02/muslim-contributions-to-astronomy

Islam has,
from its

inception, placed a high premium on education and has enjoyed a long and rich intellectual
tradition. Knowledge ('ilm) occupies a significant position within Islam, as evidenced by the
more than 800 references to it in Islam's most revered book, the Koran. The importance of
education is repeatedly emphasized in the Koran with frequent injunctions, such as "God will
exalt those of you who believe and those who have knowledge to high degrees" (58:11), "O my
Lord! Increase me in knowledge" (20:114), and "As God has taught him, so let him write"
(2:282). Such verses provide a forceful stimulus for the Islamic community to strive for
education and learning.
Islamic education is uniquely different from other types of educational theory and practice
largely because of the all-encompassing influence of the Koran. The Koran serves as a
comprehensive blueprint for both the individual and society and as the primary source of
knowledge. The advent of the Koran in the seventh century was quite revolutionary for the
predominantly illiterate Arabian society. Arab society had enjoyed a rich oral tradition, but the
Koran was considered the word of God and needed to be organically interacted with by means
of reading and reciting its words. Hence, reading and writing for the purpose of accessing the
full blessings of the Koran was an aspiration for most Muslims. Thus, education in Islam
unequivocally derived its origins from a symbiotic relationship with religious instruction.

History of Islamic Education

Thus, in this way, Islamic education began. Pious and learned Muslims (mu' allim or mudarris),
dedicated to making the teachings of the Koran more accessible to the Islamic community,
taught the faithful in what came to be known as the kuttāb (plural, katātīb). The kuttāb could
be located in a variety of venues: mosques, private homes, shops, tents, or even out in the
open. Historians are uncertain as to when the katātīb were first established, but with the
widespread desire of the faithful to study the Koran, katātīb could be found in virtually every
part of the Islamic empire by the middle of the eighth century. The kuttāb served a vital social
function as the only vehicle for formal public instruction for primary-age children and continued
so until Western models of education were introduced in the modern period. Even at present, it
has exhibited remarkable durability and continues to be an important means of religious
instruction in many Islamic countries.

The curriculum of the kuttāb was primarily directed to young male children, beginning as early
as age four, and was centered on Koranic studies and on religious obligations such as ritual
ablutions, fasting, and prayer. The focus during the early history of Islam on the education of
youth reflected the belief that raising children with correct principles was a holy obligation for
parents and society. As Abdul Tibawi wrote in 1972, the mind of the child was believed to be
"like a white clean paper, once anything is written on it, right or wrong, it will be difficult to
erase it or superimpose new writing upon it" (p. 38). The approach to teaching children was
strict, and the conditions in which young students learned could be quite harsh. Corporal
punishment was often used to correct laziness or imprecision. Memorization of the Koran was
central to the curriculum of the kuttāb, but little or no attempt was made to analyze and
discuss the meaning of the text. Once students had memorized the greater part of the Koran,
they could advance to higher stages of education, with increased complexity of instruction.
Western analysts of the kuttāb system usually criticize two areas of its pedagogy: the limited
range of subjects taught and the exclusive reliance on memorization. The contemporary kuttāb
system still emphasizes memorization and recitation as important means of learning. The value
placed on memorization during students' early religious training directly influences their
approaches to learning when they enter formal education offered by the modern state. A
common frustration of modern educators in the Islamic world is that while their students can
memorize copious volumes of notes and textbook pages, they often lack competence in critical
analysis and independent thinking.

During the golden age of the Islamic empire (usually defined as a period between the tenth and
thirteenth centuries), when western Europe was intellectually backward and stagnant, Islamic
scholarship flourished with an impressive openness to the rational sciences, art, and even
literature. It was during this period that the Islamic world made most of its contributions to the
scientific and artistic world. Ironically, Islamic scholars preserved much of the knowledge of the
Greeks that had been prohibited by the Christian world. Other outstanding contributions were
made in areas of chemistry, botany, physics, mineralogy, mathematics, and astronomy, as many
Muslim thinkers regarded scientific truths as tools for accessing religious truth.

Gradually the open and vigorous spirit of enquiry and individual judgment (ijtihād) that
characterized the golden age gave way to a more insular, unquestioning acceptance (taqlīd) of
the traditional corpus of authoritative knowledge. By the thirteenth century, according to Aziz
Talbani, the 'ulama' (religious scholars) had become "self-appointed interpreters and guardians
of religious knowledge.… learning was confined to the transmission of traditions and dogma,
and [was] hostile to research and scientific inquiry" (p. 70). The mentality of taqlīd reigned
supreme in all matters, and religious scholars condemned all other forms of inquiry and
research. Exemplifying the taqlīd mentality, Burhän al-Din al-Zarnüji wrote during the thirteenth
century, "Stick to ancient things while avoiding new things" and "Beware of becoming
engrossed in those disputes which come about after one has cut loose from the ancient
authorities" (pp. 28, 58). Much of what was written after the thirteenth century lacked
originality, and it consisted mostly of commentaries on existing canonical works without adding
any substantive new ideas. The lethal combination of taqlīd and foreign invasion beginning in
the thirteenth century served to dim Islam's preeminence in both the artistic and scientific
worlds.
Despite its glorious legacy of earlier periods, the Islamic world seemed unable to respond either
culturally or educationally to the onslaught of Western advancement by the eighteenth
century. One of the most damaging aspects of European colonialism was the deterioration of
indigenous cultural norms through secularism. With its veneration of human reason over divine
revelation and its insistence on separation of religion and state, secularism is anathema to
Islam, in which all aspects of life, spiritual or temporal, are interrelated as a harmonious whole.
At the same time, Western institutions of education, with their pronounced secular/religious
dichotomy, were infused into Islamic countries in order to produce functionaries to feed the
bureaucratic and administrative needs of the state. The early modernizers did not fully realize
the extent to which secularized education fundamentally conflicted with Islamic thought and
traditional lifestyle. Religious education was to remain a separate and personal responsibility,
having no place in public education. If Muslim students desired religious training, they could
supplement their existing education with moral instruction in traditional religious schools–the
kuttāb. As a consequence, the two differing education systems evolved independently with
little or no official interface.

Aims and Objectives of Islamic Education

The Arabic language has three terms for education, representing the various dimensions of the
educational process as perceived by Islam. The most widely used word for education in a formal
sense is ta'līm, from the root 'alima (to know, to be aware, to perceive, to learn), which is used
to denote knowledge being sought or imparted through instruction and teaching. Tarbiyah,
from the root raba (to increase, to grow, to rear), implies a state of spiritual and ethical
nurturing in accordance with the will of God. Ta'dīb, from the root aduba (to be cultured,
refined, well-mannered), suggests a person's development of sound social behavior. What is
meant by sound requires a deeper understanding of the Islamic conception of the human being.
Education in the context of Islam is regarded as a process that involves the complete person,
including the rational, spiritual, and social dimensions. As noted by Syed Muhammad al-Naquib
al-Attas in 1979, the comprehensive and integrated approach to education in Islam is directed
toward the "balanced growth of the total personality…through training Man's spirit, intellect,
rational self, feelings and bodily senses…such that faith is infused into the whole of his
personality" (p. 158). In Islamic educational theory knowledge is gained in order to actualize
and perfect all dimensions of the human being. From an Islamic perspective the highest and
most useful model of perfection is the prophet Muhammad, and the goal of Islamic education is
that people be able to live as he lived. Seyyed Hossein Nasr wrote in 1984 that while education
does prepare humankind for happiness in this life, "its ultimate goal is the abode of
permanence and all education points to the permanent world of eternity" (p. 7). To ascertain
truth by reason alone is restrictive, according to Islam, because spiritual and temporal reality
are two sides of the same sphere. Many Muslim educationists argue that favoring reason at the
expense of spirituality interferes with balanced growth. Exclusive training of the intellect, for
example, is inadequate in developing and refining elements of love, kindness, compassion, and
selflessness, which have an altogether spiritual ambiance and can be engaged only by processes
of spiritual training.

Education in Islam is twofold: acquiring intellectual knowledge (through the application of

reason and logic) and developing spiritual knowledge (derived from divine revelation and
spiritual experience). According to the worldview of Islam, provision in education must be made
equally for both. Acquiring knowledge in Islam is not intended as an end but as a means to
stimulate a more elevated moral and spiritual consciousness, leading to faith and righteous
action.
Education in Islam is acquiring intellectual knowledge (through the application of reason and
logic) and developing spiritual knowledge (derived from divine revelation and spiritual
experience). According to the worldview of Islam, provision in education must be made equally
for both. Acquiring knowledge in Islam is not intended as an end but as a means to stimulate a
more elevated moral and spiritual consciousness, leading to faith and righteous action.
Education in the context of Islam is regarded as a process that involves the complete person,
including the rational, spiritual, and social dimensions. While the primary focus of this concept
is the nurturing of religious belief in the individual, its scope broadened to incorporate various
secular disciplines, literary and scientific, as it aimed at developing within the community fully
integrated personalities, grounded in the virtues of Islam.

Comments:

 Education plays an important role in developing a good personality. Education is simply not
studying something, it is actually a process of gaining knowledge and skill. It gives us a knowledge
of the world around us and helps us build opinions on things in life. It completely changes our
mind, personality and helps us to attain the positive attitudes.
 Learning the history of education will help you to understand the strengths and weaknesses
of previous endeavors and various educational philosophies. Education is evolving. In ancient
times, the total education was concentrated on the establishment of the existence of God,
heaven and hell; and also to assure its survival,stability and convenience.