Don’t Let a Teddy Bear Mask the Horrors of Darfur
So the Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir has “pardoned” Gillian Gibbons after meeting with two Muslim members of the British House of Lords. Hold the applause, please.
Gibbons was the British teacher jailed in Sudan for allowing her 6- and 7-year-old students in Khartoum’s Unity High School to name a teddy bear “Muhammad”, a name chosen by the young learners themselves. While in custody for eight days, cruel clerics and assorted Sudanese “defenders of the faith” chanted for Gibbons’s execution.
That they were doing so under the patronage of a government desperate to deflect the world’s attention away from Darfur was plain for all to see.
But we must not allow Darfur to be eclipsed by the zany tale of a teddy bear.
The Janjaweed Arab militia, armed and recruited by the Sudanese government, has massacred over 200,000 tribal people in the Darfur region, and 2.5 million were forced to flee their homes, in four years of fighting.
Conspiracy theories cannot be admitted here: it is a case of Muslims killing mostly Muslims.
No private citizen has been more vocal, daring and persistent in opening our eyes to the genocide in Darfur than the actress Mia Farrow.
Farrow put the Gibbons episode in perspective: “One white woman in peril with a teddy bear has captured more media attention than the past three years of our brothers and sisters in the Darfur region. I look back at what we were doing during the Rwanda situation and in America we were watching the O. J. Simpson trial.”
A goodwill ambassador for UNICEF who visited Darfur seven times since 2004 and witnessed the effects of the carnage firsthand, Farrow launched a fund for the region and said: “This is the first genocide of the 21st century and the one genocide that is ongoing as we speak. We have a regime that launched a military campaign on an unarmed population for no other reason than that they are not Arab.”
Actors George Clooney, Don Cheadle, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon have also worked tirelessly to raise our awareness of the humanitarian crisis in Darfur. Their Not On Our Watch project seeks to "focus international attention on the continuing carnage in Darfur, encouraging governments and international organizations to take meaningful action to protect the vulnerable, marginalized, and displaced. Where governments have remained silent, we are committed to working to render otherwise invisible atrocities, visible."
Zealotry and illiteracy can be a potent mix. Spectacles like the Sudanese clerics making a mountain out of nothing, not even a molehill, can both enrage and demoralize Muslims.
Consider: In the six years since 9/11, public opinion in America has shifted significantly against Muslims. According to a survey by the Pew Research Center, 35 percent of Americans have an unfavorable opinion of Muslims, up from 29 percent in 2002. Whereas 27 percent of Americans in 2002 thought that Islam was more likely to encourage violence than any other religion, the figure in 2007 stands at a whopping 45 percent.
For Muslims fighting bigotry and distrust and striving to earn their rightful place in Western societies, incidents like the one in Khartoum can sap the energy and make us wonder if we will ever make any progress.
Yet, as grim as the situation looks, we must not forget Darfur. If we are to remain true to our faith, we must join hands with people of conscience around the world in forcing the Sudanese government to stop the genocide.
A group of retired statesmen, including South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former president Jimmy Carter, have issued a report this week for the Sudanese government to honor past peace treaties, for rebel groups to participate in peace talks and for the international community to support a peacekeeping force with money and manpower.
Muslims can be a catalyst for such efforts, at least at the grassroots level. We can be the largest donors to Farrow’s Darfur fund. And we can demand that our imams and leaders address the Darfur situation forthrightly and unsparingly in their sermons and lectures.
In the four years since the Darfur genocide began, I did not hear a single sermon on it in the mosques that I attended in the San Francisco Bay Area, nor come across a single conference organized around the atrocities of the Sudanese regime.
It may be that as a minority, we feel overwhelmed by a few hate-mongers in the media. It may be that we are frustrated by our inability to reach out to many of our fellow-Americans despite the open houses and the interfaith dialogues. It may be that some of us experience discrimination at work because of our faith. And it is a fact that more than any other group, we are singled out for scrutiny at airports.
But none of these indignities can ever justify our silence when Muslims kill and commit injustice. We must speak out unequivocally against the world’s current “heart of darkness” in Darfur.
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Sunday, December 02, 2007
Wanted: Teachers Who Can Make a Difference
Educational reports vary widely in the steps they recommend to improve or overhaul a nation’s school system. One common thread that runs through them, however, is the need for quality teachers in classrooms. While everyone recognizes the central role of teachers in raising the level of K-12 education in America, how to train, attract and retain teachers who can teach, motivate and inspire remain elusive.
A recent report by McKinsey & Co offers evidence that simply by increasing teacher salary and reducing class sizes will not improve student performance. Yet in the United States, Britain and several other Western countries, these are often the only “remedies” applied, with predictably depressing results year after year.
The McKinsey report was based on a study of twenty-five of the world’s school systems, including ten of the top performers. The data came from Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) directed by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), an organization of thirty countries that accept the principles of representative democracy and free market economy.
“We examined what these high-performing school systems have in common and what tools they use to improve student outcome,” states the report. “The experience of the top schools suggests that three things matter most: 1) getting the right people to become teachers, 2) developing them into effective instructors and, 3) ensuring that the system is able to deliver the best possible instruction for every child.”
These are not exactly breakthrough insights but where the report turns conventional wisdom on its head is the “how” part. How do you get the best teachers? How do you get the best out of teachers? And how do you take corrective actions when students fall behind?
As the Economist pointed out in a commentary on the report, you get the best teachers by hiring the best. In Finland (one of the top performing countries), teachers must have a master’s degree. South Korea recruits primary-school teachers from the top 5% of graduates, and Singapore and Hong Kong from the top 30% (also top performing countries). Do they do it with more money? No, these countries do not pay teachers more than average salaries. What’s the secret, then? Toughen the selection process for teacher training and only hire numbers to match vacancies. Once employed, as in Singapore and Finland where teaching is regarded as a high-status profession, teachers are more or less guaranteed a job for life if they continue to perform well.
Teaching is a high-status profession in these countries because it is competitive and training is well-funded because there are relatively few qualified candidates. In Singapore, new teachers get 100 hours of training a year. Seniors teachers monitor their progress and help them with their professional development. In Finland and Japan, groups of teachers visit each others’ classrooms to offer constructive criticism and plan lessons together. Every week, Finnish teachers get an afternoon off for this purpose.
The result is that there is a continuity of best practices and enlightened, self-correcting teaching methodologies that nourish the school systems in countries like Canada, Finland, Japan, Singapore and South Korea. As one educator put it, “when a brilliant American teacher retires, almost all of the lesson plans and practices that she has developed also retire. When a Japanese teacher retires, she leaves a legacy.”
Yet all the best practices and institutional support cannot guarantee that things will not go wrong. Inevitably they do, and this is again where top performers differentiate themselves from the bottom dwellers. When students and schools show symptoms of failing (defined not by results of standardized tests but deeper and more meaningful educational needs and aspirations), these countries intervene early and often. They have more special-education teachers per student than in lagging countries. In any given year in Finland, for instance, 30% of students get one-on-one remedial lessons. In Singapore, there are extra classes for the bottom 20% of students and teachers are expected to stay after hours to help them come up to speed and excel.
“The quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers,” states the McKinsey report. Educators and concerned Americans have echoed the sentiment again and again. Educational spending in America, by way of school funding, school administration, teacher salary, standardized testing, federal policies such as the No Child Left Behind, and an endless array of other panaceas, has almost doubled since 1980. Class sizes have never been smaller. Everything has been tried and retried, yet the only constant in the equation, as the Economist wryly notes, is the poor outcome.
That is not to say there aren’t success stories. Some private organizations in the United States are flourishing and point the way toward progress. One such is Teach for America (TFA). Founded in 1990, TFA has stringent requirements for recruiting young teachers (the rejection rate of applicants is over 80 percent!) from the nation’s top schools to teach in inner-city schools and low income areas. Applicants are driven by a fierce sense of service and a desire to end the nation’s educational inequity. It is telling that for rejected TFA applicants, second career choices include top law and business schools and high-paying Wall Street jobs. Currently TFA has over 4,400 teachers working with almost 400,000 students. By any definition, TFA’s success continues to be astounding.
Another is the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP). Brainchild of two TFA alumni, KIPP began in 1994 and now has about 60 charter schools nationwide serving 14,000 kids. More than 80% of KIPP students are low income and 95% are black or Latino, yet they regularly outperform their public school counterparts in math and reading tests. Like TFA, KIPP selects its teachers carefully and trains them rigorously before allowing them to practice their profession.
Both TFA and KIPP are transforming not just students but entire communities by promoting the values of hard work, good behavior, discipline, transparency and accountability. The McKinsey report states that “Across the globe – whether it is Canada in North America, Finland in Europe or Japan and Korea in Asia – some education systems demonstrate that excellence in education is an attainable goal and at reasonable cost. They also show that the challenge of achieving a high and socially equitable distribution of learning outcomes can be successfully addressed and that excellence can be achieved throughout the education systems, with very few students and schools left behind.”
If TFA and KIPP can achieve the kind of excellence that the report lauds, there is no reason why such schools cannot be replicated on a mass scale and why America’s public school system cannot also be among the top-performing school systems in the world.
Educational reports vary widely in the steps they recommend to improve or overhaul a nation’s school system. One common thread that runs through them, however, is the need for quality teachers in classrooms. While everyone recognizes the central role of teachers in raising the level of K-12 education in America, how to train, attract and retain teachers who can teach, motivate and inspire remain elusive.
A recent report by McKinsey & Co offers evidence that simply by increasing teacher salary and reducing class sizes will not improve student performance. Yet in the United States, Britain and several other Western countries, these are often the only “remedies” applied, with predictably depressing results year after year.
The McKinsey report was based on a study of twenty-five of the world’s school systems, including ten of the top performers. The data came from Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) directed by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), an organization of thirty countries that accept the principles of representative democracy and free market economy.
“We examined what these high-performing school systems have in common and what tools they use to improve student outcome,” states the report. “The experience of the top schools suggests that three things matter most: 1) getting the right people to become teachers, 2) developing them into effective instructors and, 3) ensuring that the system is able to deliver the best possible instruction for every child.”
These are not exactly breakthrough insights but where the report turns conventional wisdom on its head is the “how” part. How do you get the best teachers? How do you get the best out of teachers? And how do you take corrective actions when students fall behind?
As the Economist pointed out in a commentary on the report, you get the best teachers by hiring the best. In Finland (one of the top performing countries), teachers must have a master’s degree. South Korea recruits primary-school teachers from the top 5% of graduates, and Singapore and Hong Kong from the top 30% (also top performing countries). Do they do it with more money? No, these countries do not pay teachers more than average salaries. What’s the secret, then? Toughen the selection process for teacher training and only hire numbers to match vacancies. Once employed, as in Singapore and Finland where teaching is regarded as a high-status profession, teachers are more or less guaranteed a job for life if they continue to perform well.
Teaching is a high-status profession in these countries because it is competitive and training is well-funded because there are relatively few qualified candidates. In Singapore, new teachers get 100 hours of training a year. Seniors teachers monitor their progress and help them with their professional development. In Finland and Japan, groups of teachers visit each others’ classrooms to offer constructive criticism and plan lessons together. Every week, Finnish teachers get an afternoon off for this purpose.
The result is that there is a continuity of best practices and enlightened, self-correcting teaching methodologies that nourish the school systems in countries like Canada, Finland, Japan, Singapore and South Korea. As one educator put it, “when a brilliant American teacher retires, almost all of the lesson plans and practices that she has developed also retire. When a Japanese teacher retires, she leaves a legacy.”
Yet all the best practices and institutional support cannot guarantee that things will not go wrong. Inevitably they do, and this is again where top performers differentiate themselves from the bottom dwellers. When students and schools show symptoms of failing (defined not by results of standardized tests but deeper and more meaningful educational needs and aspirations), these countries intervene early and often. They have more special-education teachers per student than in lagging countries. In any given year in Finland, for instance, 30% of students get one-on-one remedial lessons. In Singapore, there are extra classes for the bottom 20% of students and teachers are expected to stay after hours to help them come up to speed and excel.
“The quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers,” states the McKinsey report. Educators and concerned Americans have echoed the sentiment again and again. Educational spending in America, by way of school funding, school administration, teacher salary, standardized testing, federal policies such as the No Child Left Behind, and an endless array of other panaceas, has almost doubled since 1980. Class sizes have never been smaller. Everything has been tried and retried, yet the only constant in the equation, as the Economist wryly notes, is the poor outcome.
That is not to say there aren’t success stories. Some private organizations in the United States are flourishing and point the way toward progress. One such is Teach for America (TFA). Founded in 1990, TFA has stringent requirements for recruiting young teachers (the rejection rate of applicants is over 80 percent!) from the nation’s top schools to teach in inner-city schools and low income areas. Applicants are driven by a fierce sense of service and a desire to end the nation’s educational inequity. It is telling that for rejected TFA applicants, second career choices include top law and business schools and high-paying Wall Street jobs. Currently TFA has over 4,400 teachers working with almost 400,000 students. By any definition, TFA’s success continues to be astounding.
Another is the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP). Brainchild of two TFA alumni, KIPP began in 1994 and now has about 60 charter schools nationwide serving 14,000 kids. More than 80% of KIPP students are low income and 95% are black or Latino, yet they regularly outperform their public school counterparts in math and reading tests. Like TFA, KIPP selects its teachers carefully and trains them rigorously before allowing them to practice their profession.
Both TFA and KIPP are transforming not just students but entire communities by promoting the values of hard work, good behavior, discipline, transparency and accountability. The McKinsey report states that “Across the globe – whether it is Canada in North America, Finland in Europe or Japan and Korea in Asia – some education systems demonstrate that excellence in education is an attainable goal and at reasonable cost. They also show that the challenge of achieving a high and socially equitable distribution of learning outcomes can be successfully addressed and that excellence can be achieved throughout the education systems, with very few students and schools left behind.”
If TFA and KIPP can achieve the kind of excellence that the report lauds, there is no reason why such schools cannot be replicated on a mass scale and why America’s public school system cannot also be among the top-performing school systems in the world.
Reviving Science in Muslim Countries
I have been an admirer of Dr. Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy’s writings on bringing about a scientific renaissance among modern-day Muslims. His 1991 book, Islam and Science – Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality, was an eye-opener for me. The Quran is a book of moral guidance and not a book of science, he wrote. In one clear sentence, he exposed the inadequacy of Muslims who would do away with the scientific method and install revelation (as they understood it) as the source of scientific progress and discovery. His subsequent writings on the topic only deepened my admiration.
Which was why, in an otherwise incisive article in Physics Today, I was disappointed by a solution he proposed for Muslim renaissance in science. Dr. Hoodbhoy recommends behavioral changes among Muslims to excel in a ruthlessly global marketplace dominated by science and technology. Such changes would allow Muslims to develop intense “social work habits” that “are not easily reconcilable with religious demands made on a fully observant Muslim’s time, energy, and mental concentrations. The faithful must participate in five daily congregational prayers, endure a month of fasting that taxes the body, recite daily from the Quran, and more. Although such duties orient believers admirably well toward success in the life hereafter, they make worldly success less likely. A more balanced approach will be needed.”
Is Dr. Hoodbhoy suggesting that daily prayers, recitation of the Quran and month-long Ramadan fasting are hindrances to a Muslim’s attaining scientific excellence, since they disrupt sustained concentration? Although he does not spell out the details of “a more balanced approach,” the implication is clear: Do away with these religious demands, or, at the very least, reduce their frequency.
I am surprised by the obvious errors Dr. Hoodbhoy has made in his argument. While it is commendable for Muslims to offer the five daily prayers in congregations, it is not a must. The prayers (with the exception of the Friday noon prayer) can be offered in private, taking no more than a few minutes and very little space. In fact, that is how most observant Muslims meet the requirements of their faith during workdays in their professional lives. If, for some reason, they cannot offer the daily prayers on time, they can make them up later.
His use of the word “endure” for the month of fasting is also perplexing. Most Muslims do not “endure” fasting but look forward to it as a time of physical cleansing and heightened spirituality.
The major flaw in Dr. Hoodbhoy’s suggestion is that religious practices prevent observant Muslims from focusing and maintaining the continuity of their thoughts, particularly in science. In fact, the opposite is true. Properly practiced (a challenge for many Muslims for whom religious observances have become rituals without meaning), prayers and fasting instill discipline, a prerequisite for concentration. His mentor, Nobel physicist Abdus Salam, was an obvious example. Salam was one of the great theoretical physicists of the twentieth century but he was also a devout Muslim, punctilious about the demands of his faith. In numerous essays and articles, Salam explained how his faith inspired his science and vice-versa. While most Muslim scientists of our times can hardly match Salam’s achievement, the science of many of them is also informed by the awe and wonder inspired by their faith.
So why are Muslim nations so far behind in science compared to the West? Why does the observation of Turkish-American physicist Taner Edis that “if all Muslim scientists working in basic science vanished from the face of the earth, the rest of the scientific community would barely notice” ring so true? Why is creationist literature unleashed by a Turkish clergy named Harun Yahya sweeping the Muslim world?
One reason is the lack of separation of mosque and state, and consequently, separation of mosque and science, in many Muslim countries. Science thrives on unfettered inquiry. If the clergy can impose religious limits on free inquiry and threaten dire consequences if the limits are transgressed, science can never advance.
Another related reason is the lack of quality education. Take the case of Dr. Hoodbhoy’s own country, Pakistan. As William Dalrymple observed (The 'poor neighbor, The Guardian UK, August 14, 2007) on the occasion of Pakistan’s 60th independence anniversary, only 1.8% of Pakistan's GDP is spent on government schools. 15% of these government schools are without a proper building; 52% without a boundary wall; 71% without electricity. Many of the barely functioning schools cram children of all grades into a single room, often sitting on the floor because of lack of desks. While 65% of India’s population is literate and rising, the figure for Pakistan is 49% and falling. Out of a population of 162 million, 83 million adults of 15 years and above are illiterate. It is worse for women: 65% of all female adults are illiterate. The absence of quality government schooling has compelled the poorest Pakistanis to place their vulnerable children in the madrasa system. Madrasas offer free education but can turn their young wards into ideologues under the tutelage of fiery preachers, as the recent red mosque showdown in Islamabad demonstrated.
When one adds to this grim status quo the general lack of accountability and respect for law by the leaders of many Muslim countries, it is easy to see why engaging in genuine scientific research can become hazardous to one’s health.
Yet there is hope. Even diehard conservative Muslims are becoming aware of the central role of science in defining the destiny of modern nations. Slowly but surely, they are beginning to see that science does not undermine religion but enriches it. The wind of change is blowing and it can be stopped or reversed.
I have been an admirer of Dr. Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy’s writings on bringing about a scientific renaissance among modern-day Muslims. His 1991 book, Islam and Science – Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality, was an eye-opener for me. The Quran is a book of moral guidance and not a book of science, he wrote. In one clear sentence, he exposed the inadequacy of Muslims who would do away with the scientific method and install revelation (as they understood it) as the source of scientific progress and discovery. His subsequent writings on the topic only deepened my admiration.
Which was why, in an otherwise incisive article in Physics Today, I was disappointed by a solution he proposed for Muslim renaissance in science. Dr. Hoodbhoy recommends behavioral changes among Muslims to excel in a ruthlessly global marketplace dominated by science and technology. Such changes would allow Muslims to develop intense “social work habits” that “are not easily reconcilable with religious demands made on a fully observant Muslim’s time, energy, and mental concentrations. The faithful must participate in five daily congregational prayers, endure a month of fasting that taxes the body, recite daily from the Quran, and more. Although such duties orient believers admirably well toward success in the life hereafter, they make worldly success less likely. A more balanced approach will be needed.”
Is Dr. Hoodbhoy suggesting that daily prayers, recitation of the Quran and month-long Ramadan fasting are hindrances to a Muslim’s attaining scientific excellence, since they disrupt sustained concentration? Although he does not spell out the details of “a more balanced approach,” the implication is clear: Do away with these religious demands, or, at the very least, reduce their frequency.
I am surprised by the obvious errors Dr. Hoodbhoy has made in his argument. While it is commendable for Muslims to offer the five daily prayers in congregations, it is not a must. The prayers (with the exception of the Friday noon prayer) can be offered in private, taking no more than a few minutes and very little space. In fact, that is how most observant Muslims meet the requirements of their faith during workdays in their professional lives. If, for some reason, they cannot offer the daily prayers on time, they can make them up later.
His use of the word “endure” for the month of fasting is also perplexing. Most Muslims do not “endure” fasting but look forward to it as a time of physical cleansing and heightened spirituality.
The major flaw in Dr. Hoodbhoy’s suggestion is that religious practices prevent observant Muslims from focusing and maintaining the continuity of their thoughts, particularly in science. In fact, the opposite is true. Properly practiced (a challenge for many Muslims for whom religious observances have become rituals without meaning), prayers and fasting instill discipline, a prerequisite for concentration. His mentor, Nobel physicist Abdus Salam, was an obvious example. Salam was one of the great theoretical physicists of the twentieth century but he was also a devout Muslim, punctilious about the demands of his faith. In numerous essays and articles, Salam explained how his faith inspired his science and vice-versa. While most Muslim scientists of our times can hardly match Salam’s achievement, the science of many of them is also informed by the awe and wonder inspired by their faith.
So why are Muslim nations so far behind in science compared to the West? Why does the observation of Turkish-American physicist Taner Edis that “if all Muslim scientists working in basic science vanished from the face of the earth, the rest of the scientific community would barely notice” ring so true? Why is creationist literature unleashed by a Turkish clergy named Harun Yahya sweeping the Muslim world?
One reason is the lack of separation of mosque and state, and consequently, separation of mosque and science, in many Muslim countries. Science thrives on unfettered inquiry. If the clergy can impose religious limits on free inquiry and threaten dire consequences if the limits are transgressed, science can never advance.
Another related reason is the lack of quality education. Take the case of Dr. Hoodbhoy’s own country, Pakistan. As William Dalrymple observed (The 'poor neighbor, The Guardian UK, August 14, 2007) on the occasion of Pakistan’s 60th independence anniversary, only 1.8% of Pakistan's GDP is spent on government schools. 15% of these government schools are without a proper building; 52% without a boundary wall; 71% without electricity. Many of the barely functioning schools cram children of all grades into a single room, often sitting on the floor because of lack of desks. While 65% of India’s population is literate and rising, the figure for Pakistan is 49% and falling. Out of a population of 162 million, 83 million adults of 15 years and above are illiterate. It is worse for women: 65% of all female adults are illiterate. The absence of quality government schooling has compelled the poorest Pakistanis to place their vulnerable children in the madrasa system. Madrasas offer free education but can turn their young wards into ideologues under the tutelage of fiery preachers, as the recent red mosque showdown in Islamabad demonstrated.
When one adds to this grim status quo the general lack of accountability and respect for law by the leaders of many Muslim countries, it is easy to see why engaging in genuine scientific research can become hazardous to one’s health.
Yet there is hope. Even diehard conservative Muslims are becoming aware of the central role of science in defining the destiny of modern nations. Slowly but surely, they are beginning to see that science does not undermine religion but enriches it. The wind of change is blowing and it can be stopped or reversed.
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