The First Pedagogical Principle: Clarify INTENTIONS for Study.
The most important distinction between Islamic and Western pedagogy lies in the starting point, where we must clarify our INTENTIONS for study. Before we can consider intentions for acquiring knowledge, we must have some clarity on the PURPOSE of life itself. It is only in the context of a purpose for living that we can consider what the purpose of our education should be -- since knowledge is useful only if it helps us to achieve our purpose of life.
For Muslims, we were created for worship, and as a test to see who is best in deeds. The most beloved people to Allah are those who are most beneficial to people. To make our study of Statistics the best of deeds, we need to set high goals, and target a big purpose. We should make the intention of using the knowledge we acquire to provide service to all the creation of God, for the sake of the love of God, and also ask our Muslim students to make the same intentions. For non-Muslim students, we should ask them to think about the purpose of life, and to make intentions of service to humanity, rather than selfish pursuit of individual pleasure advocated by economic theories. Western education dismisses this question without discussion, leading to our implicit acceptance of prevailing conceptions that life is all about pursuit of wealth, power, and luxury. It is worth noting that the intentions of the TEACHER regarding his/her own life goals have an impact on the students, because hearts communicate. So in the first place, the Muslim teachers should try to ensure that all actions are done with sincerety of purpose, out of the love of Allah, in obedience to the orders of Allah, and following the manner (sunnah) of the Prophet Mohammad SAW -- as these are the requirements for an act of worship.
In this connection, the lecture on "Learn Who You Are!" is very useful in thinking about our identities, and how these are shaped by our education. Our identity defines our purpose. If we think of ourselves as commodities for sale in the labor market, then our life purpose will become selling ourselves for the highest possible amount of money -- pursuit of wealth. If we think of ourselves as having the potential to be the best of the creations, then we will strive to achieve status higher than angels in the eyes of Allah. Obviously, our lives will be different, and the knowledge we need to achieve these two different goals is very different. The question of how statistics fits into achieving closeness to Allah will be a recurrent theme of this course.
ACTIVITY: REFLECT on the Lecture/Reading in the post "Learn Who You Are" and send some REFLECTIONS about this lecture in an email to your own subgroup of participants. Focus on just ONE thing which you considered as that most important lesson derived from this lecture. After an email discussion among the subgroup between all members, let the group leader POST a comment summarizing the discussion on the post itself in the Islamic WorldView Blog. This way the blog will have a manageable number of comments which synthesize collective wisdom of all the subgroups. Otherwise, if I ask 180 members to all post comments, this will create chaos on the blog; too much material to read and absorb.