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Step One
If those who taught me had charged me a fee, I would never have been able to pay it. That is why I don’t charge anyone a fee if they want my advice in learning to be trainers. Having said that, I have yet to find anyone who had the determination and willingness that I…
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Madrassa education – Crying need for change
The present syllabus is totally inadequate both theologically and in a worldly sense. Add to that the fact that graduates come out with the title of A’alim, and an inflated sense of their own importance combined with an inferiority complex. Sounds crazy but it’s their reality. This happens when their Madrassa-inflated egos meet the real…
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Hyderabad Public School and other matters
We were taught to distinguish fact from fiction and allegory and to draw lessons. We also learned to laugh at ourselves and to have a good sense of humor. This seems to be in short supply currently with people taking themselves far too seriously and carrying their sense of offence on a hair trigger. Such…
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Learning how to learn
Alvin Toffler, the author of ‘Future Shock’ said something very interesting. He said, “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” I want to begin with this quote as I consider it perhaps the most important for us to reflect…
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Literacy is to language what driving is to cars
When adults teach children to read and write, they are transferring their very humanity and empowering their students to access the collective wisdom and learning of the human race. There is no greater service that one human being can do for another than to teach him to read and write. Societies which are unable or…
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Two mysteries – Teaching and Parenting
Our present methods of teaching which are inflicted on by far the vast majority of children the world over are the single biggest cause for killing the imagination that every child is born with and making them into square blocks which fit our own frightened, constrained and slavish worldview. Those who comply we ‘pass’ and…
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Where do you stand?
http://www.dailysabah.com/columns/hatem-bazian/2015/08/17/books-and-reading-in-the-muslim-world-a-serious-crisis A friend sent me the article above underlining perhaps one of the most pernicious diseases of the Muslim world – a lack of concern for knowledge. Reading it I thought I would share some reflections. In my world of leadership training and development, in the institutions where I studied and teach, we have some…