JEDDAH, 2 June 2007 — Humanization of education was the focus of a seminar organized by the Al-Hayat International School here recently. Speakers emphasized the need to introduce value-based education in order to protect nations and societies from crimes and destructive wars.
“Education must be a process of making a person a perfect human being,” said T.P.M. Ibrahim Khan, an advocate at the Kerala High Court and secretary of the Bangalore-based All-India Muslim Educational Coordination Committee, at the seminar. “We have achieved tremendous progress in education but have failed to make good men,” he said.
Khan called for the introduction of morality-based education. “Now teachers and parents are giving priority to marks and grades ignoring the importance of moral qualities such as truthfulness, justice and compassion. It’s high time that we changed this approach toward education in order to save mankind from falling further deep into moral decadence,” he said.
Mohammed Ali Kootil, principal of the Higher Secondary School in Chennamangallur, Kerala, was the keynote speaker. He called for a total change in the education system in order to raise a new generation of students who can respect their parents, teachers and elders and have moral values. “We teach students about the history of the world wars but we don’t teach them how we can prevent a World War III,” said Kootil, a former president of the Solidarity Youth Movement.
He opposed separating moral education from material education. “Morality must be part and parcel of education like salt in food. We are not teaching moral values such as truth, justice and compassion in schools,” he said. He further blamed the present materialistic education system for social and moral decadence. “Education must answer the basic questions such as who are you? What is life? What is its objective? Prophets came to teach these basic lessons,” he pointed out. Kootil also said there is lack of good thinkers and writers in our modern age.
In his welcome address, Abdul Aziz V.K., vice principal of Al-Hayat, said the main objective of the event was to enlighten the public on the need to change the whole education process in order to create good people, who will work for the welfare of humanity, instead of working for the destruction of fellow beings.
He also thanked Dr. Hamad Saif Al-Battal, principal of the school for his support to the seminar. “A civilized person need not be educated but an educated person should be civilized,” he said. He further urged school authorities to provide integrated education to their students. V.A.M. Faisal presented a research paper on the topic, which was read out by Abdussubhan.
Mammuni Moulavi, director of a number of educational institutions in Kerala, presided over the function. V.K. Jaleel, a well-known thinker, Rahmathunnisa of Italian International School, and Kala Venugopal also spoke.
