Reflections on the Maldivian education system

Written by Ahmed Maajid

Without trying to be politically correct, and being honest and very, very frank, one can say that the education system in this country—the whole system—is one large mess.

Every year we hear about how our students who sit the Cambridge Ordinary Level Examinations are placed first, second or third in the world. Do those “successes” really reflect the reality? Do they really mean that our students are the best in the world? Or, are they just superficial, meaningless decorations which do not take into account some real factors that matter? What would you say if you knew that the supposed “first, second or third places in the world” are the top of a ranking in which only third-world countries, which are too lazy and ignorant to conduct their own examination systems, feature?

The simple truth is this: our education system has failed, and miserably so. Those who are in-charge of it as education planners and policy-makers, curriculum developers, principals and teachers need to think deeply about the matter.

Not a single aspect of our education system is commendable at the present; whether it is about the curriculum, or the school-hours, or the school-environment, or the standard of teachers, or the school uniform system, or anything else, the situation calls for urgent and large-scale changes for improvement and reform.

SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT THE SUBJECTS AND CURRICULUM

As of now, Arts stream is considered as one “for the weak-minded, low-grade students”, and two streams—Science and Commerce—are encouraged at almost all levels. In fact, it appears that half of the Maldivian students study commerce stream subjects, while the other half go for science stream. Only a handful of students are interested in arts stream—no wonder, as they are usually brainwashed to think that arts stream is somewhat “inferior”. I do not know where that thinking came, but I do know that schools throughout the Maldives consciously ran a program at one time to brainwash children into this thinking.

Why should our young ones learn subjects such as Commerce, Accounting, and Travel and Tourism? These subjects are, without doubt, designed and developed for specialized areas of vocational skills or professional development. While they are very important for those who choose to go for these areas in life, I am at a total loss as to why they should be included in the basic education scheme. Shouldn’t we take these out from the secondary education curriculum, and leave them as optional subjects at higher secondary level, for students who wish to pursue careers in those areas?

Our society is facing a disastrous situation as far as morality is concerned. The society seems to be morally bankrupt, and its consequences are felt by all, with the exception of none. However, rarely do we think about the real cause of the problem. For decades, there has not been a system in schools which would nurture the children in ethical values and standards. In fact, a pretentious group of pseudo-children’s-rights-advocates have sprung up among us, claiming that the children should never be criticized in any manner for ill-behavior at school. They think that any kind of punishment for moral or ethical failures to be archaic, while in reality, only their attitude is archaic and very, very unwise. Our schools need to install a strong system for nurturing children into ethical and moral living, and one of the first steps into such a system is, perhaps, the introduction of a subject covering morality and ethics. To my mind, such a subject, developed on an Islamic line with lessons based on life-examples of the Messengers of God and their immediate followers, would do much to bring a change in the moral development of our children, and subsequently our society.

Another serious issue with our society is our inability to think critically. I am not condemning my people, but what I have in mind is merely a lamentation. From the common man to the graduate who leaves the thresholds of our colleges, the Maldivian is usually shockingly weak in his critical reasoning ability. The reason is clear: our education system is not at all designed to harness the children’s ability to reason. This is the reason why we should reform our education system by including subjects such as critical thinking in the curriculum.

There has been a recent effort to exclude the subjects ‘Islam’ and ‘Divehi Language’ from our education system. To many people, these subjects are “useless”. However, while Islam is the true religion of God, and as such every child has a right to know it fully and completely, Divehi language is part of our national identity, and it is our mother-tongue. I do agree that English language has penetrated into Maldivian life in such a way that it has become mother-tongue for hundreds of our children—because their parents speak to them in English and their environment, starting from the TV set to the classroom, talks to them in English. However, the truth is that the large majority of our children get Divehi language as mother-tongue. Hence, an education package delivered through a foreign language scarcely benefits them. As Rabindranath Tagore, one of the greatest thinkers of South Asia, emphatically stated, the education system must be in the local language, or the mother-tongue, and for almost all Maldivian students, that language is still Divehi. The importance of re-building our curriculum with Divehi as a medium of instruction cannot be overstated.

Speaking about Divehi and Islam as subjects taught in our primary, secondary and higher secondary education system, there are other issues as well. Here I would like to say a few words about their contents.

Islam, as it is now in our curriculum, is a hopelessly summarized, unintellectual, dogmatic, and weakly presented subject. The overall approach to teaching Islam is an heir to that of colonial rule among Muslim nations, when Islam-hating colonialists and their doggy followers among Muslims tried to keep Muslim children as far away from Islamic teachings as possible. We need to change this approach completely, and curriculum for the subject needs to be rewritten in whole. Textbooks of Islam need to be revised thoroughly as well.

Divehi curriculum and textbooks are no better. Are they trying to teach the children grammar of Divehi language? Are they trying to teach the history of Divehi writing? Are they trying to teach the children Divehi literature? Are they trying to teach the children Divehi vocabulary and usage? Anything else? Not clear, and whatever the curriculum of this subject aims at, and whatever the textbooks try to teach, it is a total failure.

When I was in Malaysia, I came across a book entitled ‘Malaysian Studies’, and when I asked about the book, I was told that it was a textbook for a subject so named. It was taught in all higher-education schools in Malaysia. It was also taught at some college-programs, even for foreign students. The book deals comprehensively and meaningfully, though briefly, about Malaysian history, independence and political structure, constitution and law, demography, identity and national ideology, among many such issues. In short, it is an excellent subject designed to build a true Malaysian citizen who is aware of his country, and thinks for the sake of the country. Our students do not have any subject as this, and they are surprisingly ignorant about even basic facts about the Maldives. I have recently met a young man, who was placed first place in the O’Levels Top Ten, who did not know that Naifaru is an island of the Maldives that belongs to Lh. Atoll.

When we speak about the curriculum, it is also important to stress the importance of throwing away textbooks of science which advocate pseudo-scientific tales such as that of evolution—the speculative, unscientific folktale which claims that man descended from monkeys! Also, books that hide the truth that it was Muslims who founded modern science, invented the scientific method, and lead humanity to the era of reason, knowledge and books must be at once discarded.

THE ROLE MODELS

Teachers are the role models who are entrusted with the important job of guiding the children in their path to become knowledgeable, responsible, and morally and spiritually upright adults. However, the sad truth is that teachers in this country are mostly unfit and unqualified to accomplish this crucial task.

Teacher-training institutes have failed to produce teachers good enough for the job.

Peanut-sized Salaries given to teachers mean that the job is very unattractive, and statistics show us that the least-accomplished school-leavers choose teaching as a profession.

Teachers rarely have true Islamic character which is a necessity in a person who stands in front of children as a guide and a model.

Most female teachers enter classes dressed as glamour models, looking like ‘sex symbols’, and without a shred of modesty. How this would damage any hope of children growing up as modest, moral human beings is a long and sad story, and I will not start talking through that topic here.

Many cases of teachers committing acts of sexual abuse and harassment against children have surfaced, but they have never been handled well.

In short, those who should be role-models for the children are far away from being so.

TIME

School time is another issue over which we need to think again. While Islam teaches us to wake up with early in the morning and read the dawn prayers, our school system, for all purposes, teaches them against this. We know that even medical experts advise us to sleep early and wake up early. However, we have designed our social life mechanism in such a way that everyone does, and sort of should, keep away until midnight or even later than that. Waking up dawn prayer is something that only one in hundreds of people do, and school-goers are, as I said earlier, discouraged from doing it by all means other than pronounced word.

It is my view that schools should start sessions at 6 in the morning. Also, sessions must break at the time of noon prayer, and all children should pray during the break. For this purposes, masjid needs to be made a central part of every school infrastructure in the country. Such a system would contribute a lot to implant love of God, and thus love of moral, decent and responsible living, in the hearts of young children. It would stop, or at least minimize many social evils that are currently devouring the whole Maldivian society.

There are many other issues that we need to consider.

For example, by introducing an efficient transportation system for school-children, we can save parents a lot of trouble going two or three or four times every day to school, to take and fetch children from and to school. It can also ensure that children’s exposal to undesirable experiences on the road are minimized. It can enhance security of the students as well.

The uniforms pose another problem. Being a Muslim country that acknowledges the TRUTH of God, we cannot follow non-Muslim peoples in designing our dresses, be it for school children or not. Malaysia, yet again, may be taken as a good example. Malaysian Muslim schools are stringent in adhering to Islamic guidelines for dresses, and the result is great. Those who advocate for ‘nakedness’ among us seem to think that a nation can only ‘develop’ by throwing away modesty and becoming sex symbols. However, Malaysian Muslims are much more advanced in every way compared with the Maldivians, and they did it by adhering to Islam much more than we do. Indeed, that the Islamic dress code protects a person’s humanity is a point that can be illustrated and proved easily. This is not the place to go into details of the point, and so I will just say that school uniforms in our country need to be reformed on an Islamic line, and move on to the next point.

It is time for us to start thinking seriously about developing our own examinations and curriculum for all subjects taught at primary, secondary and higher-secondary levels. We have, since a long ago, subscribed to O’Levels and GCSE examinations from the UK. However, the harms of this far outweigh the benefits, and I think that we should immediately start making plans for bringing an end to this tradition. While not having a national system of examination for these levels suggests our intellectual immaturity and incapability, there are many other reasons which call for saying goodbye to UK examinations. How about the point that we need to walk towards intellectual and ideological independence? How about the fact that this tradition costs us heavily in terms of economics? How about the fact that UK is, now, not even the best education system in the world?

Speaking of bringing an end to subscribing to UK examinations and the fact that the UK is not one of the top education system in the world, we need to remember that PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) done by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) ranked the UK 25th, in its 2010 ranking of world education systems, South Korea being the first. Why did South Korea reach that place? Precisely because they never became slaves of the English by fashioning their education system on the basis of English language and English system, but strived hard to stand on their own feet. Also, the Universities 21 Rankings of education systems in the world placed the UK at the 10th position.

We may take the necessary steps to protect the future of this nation by thoroughly reforming our education system, or we may just sit back and do nothing, in which case, our country and its future generations will pay a huge price for our failure. Plus, there is definitely the day when we all must stand together and be accountable for what we did in life. “Did you do the right thing in the world?” would be the question asked on the Day. Today is our fast-passing chance to ask ourselves—am I doing the right thing for my people, my nation, and the whole world?