Islamic Versus Modern Western Education Prospect for the Future By Tetsuya Kitaji. Niigata-ken, Japan: Institute of Middle Eastern Studies, International University of Japan, 1990, 127 pp.

Abstract

The Islamization of education, which is part of the more overarching
discussion of Islamizing knowledge, has activated Muslim social and natural
scientists as well as scholars in the humanities. The wide extension
of scholarly fields involved has colored the discussion and multiplied its
views. For a reader in the subject of Islamic education, this multiplex
picture can be confusing and make it hard to distinguish petween the different
components.
In his research, Kitaji has attempted to compare the modem western
and Islamic educational systems. He has divided his research into four
main parts. First he gives an outline of national education. In this part, he
departs from the problems faced by the Japanese educational system,
where the drop-out rates have nearly doubled in the last ten years. In the
case of Japan, he finds that the curriculum is rigid and does not take into
account individual differences in the ability to absorb information. He
further argues that the psychological atmosphere discourages pupils, for
the system tries to control them by regulating their attitudes and psychical
appearance (i.e., hair-style and clothes).
From the particularity of Japanese schooling, he turns to a description
of the western educational system in general. What Kitaji does is to generalize
the western educational system in terms of Japanese actual experiences,
western educational philosophy (mostly French), and western
domestic critics. This results in a generalization that is far too broad, and
I, who live in Sweden, tecognize only a few of the author’s characteristics
of the western educational system. However, Kitaji makes an important
point, which I assume pertains nearly to all western countries’
national educational system: neglecting the pupils’ identity formation, particularly
the spiritual part. He also emphasizes the fact that national
education is based upon the state’s demands rather than the pupils’ individual
needs. Although Kitaji stresses the state’s role in the development
of structure and of curriculum, his recurrent emphasis of the state’s role
in curriculum development makes it difficult to grasp whose conscious or
unconscious forces are actually working. The research would maybe be
more substantial if some comments had been made on this subject ...