home schooling?

[drjash]

Assalamu 'Alaikum,

Is there anyone in the UK who uses the Kinza Academy Syllabus for homeschooling?

http://kinzaacademy.com/curriculum.html

Would be interested to know how that has worked for you.

Ws

[mercyofAllah]

May be see if this link helps
http://www.muslimhomeschool.net/forums/index.php

[تفويض]

Jazakallah, I hope people take advantage. School system was designed to turn people into sheeple.

السلام عليكم

I completely and whole heartedly agree with this statement. I'm 19 years old and am attending university in the UK. I must say, everything prior to university in terms of education is quite disappointing.

Primary school and secondary/high school (secondary is 11-16, I think across the pond in America high schools are 11-18?) are shocking in terms of teaching and progress. The six years in primary and 5 years in high school could be condensed into half the time, really that is not an exaggeration. For example, in high school, take the core subjects: English, Math and Science. For the first three years, you are taught the core subjects at a very slow pace. The same goes for other subjects like History, Geography etc. Your 4th and 5th years are the two crucial years which contribute to your GCSE's and it's in the 4th year you choose which subjects you take forward along with your core subjects. Once that's done and decided, in the 4th year you seem to go backwards in your education and start from the beginning. 6 months of our Maths in the 4th year was recapping what we had done for the first 3 years of high school, and given the slow pace we were going at that was already pretty solid. The same went for the other subjects.

I truly feel that because state schools teach in large classes, they have a wide range of students with mixed abilities. Therefore they need to cater to as many of the students as possible, quite often this is done by catering for the less able students resulting in a slow pace. Consequently, those of higher ability cruise through their education with minimal work or moderate work depending on the student instead of being tested and pushed to their limit like the students of lower ability are. This system destroys valuable time which students could be utilising to further educate themselves.

This issue has tried to be addressed by the school systems by implementing the idea of 'sets', or classes of low, intermediate and advanced students. Unfortunately this is solely based on exam results and nothing else. This is a bad system because you could have someone in the intermediate set really work themselves to the ground and get moved to the higher set where there are other students like them who need to work a lot to keep up along with students who are still not being tested. In other words, even in sets of different ability, abilities vary quite a bit.

What I'm trying to get at here is an individualised learning system which caters to the specific student, their unique abilities and methods of learning (kinesthetic, visual, audial etc) is far superior to a system where they are thrown in with other students each with their own unique abilities and modes of learning and taught in a universal manner which may/may not complement their style of learning or ability. Home schooling allows this versatility as the parents can pinpoint the best way their child learns. Schools can also do this but they cannot implement it any way as they are essentially teaching a large number at the same time and they do not have the resources to cater to everyones individual needs.

I hope I've made myself clear there, I might have waffled here a little bit, it's something I feel quite passionate about and I could add a few more points from an educational standpoint why I do not like primary schools, high schools or even sixth forms for that matter (sixth forms are the UK's 16-18 education institutions, similar to colleges but much more heavily academic based).

From an Islamic point of view, schools are not the best place for your child. Having just come out of sixth form myself and prior to that high school, I can tell you the modern day schools are the worst place to send your children. For me it started in high school when all the hormones started kicking in, guys started chasing the girls who were all wearing skirts or tight pants. Mixed classes, you could be sitting near the middle or the back and be constantly tempted by the pretty girls in front (it's still quite common, at least it was in my schools, for you to be alphabetically seated which removed any choice whatsoever of sitting at the front for many). On top of that, as students are just discovering the ideas of sex, you can imagine that during break times and lunch times much of the gossip is "Oh so and so lost their virginity" etc etc and you will hear many filthy things and even see them. I don't care how religious you were prior to this, or you think your child is, when you're in that situation with your body changing it's not easy not to look, or join in on the gossip, at the very least you will pretend to not be paying attention but actually you're straining your ears to catch the conversation.

Sixth form evolved a little bit more in that it's not as bad as high school. Non-muslims evolved a little bit more to become more mature and had less desire to express themselves in that manner, and muslims devolved in that they started to do what the non-muslims did in high school in sixth form. Kissing in public etc etc. Even the sisters who wore there headscarves so well and tight to their face that not even one strand of hair was visible (alhamdulillah) would unfortunately cancel that by wearing tight jeans and outfits which revealed their figure and even in some cases their cleavage. The sixth form I attended it was the Muslims which were much worse and the non-Muslims seemed to have a bit more dignity.

Say what you want but religious or not, your child will be sorely tempted in these institutions. I have blabbered I know on both the education and the Islamic harms but before I go naudhubillah one last thing, I remember near the time I left if turned out the student who used to lead the jummah prayers every friday, beard and jubbah and all was caught making out with a girl late after school in an empty classroom.

As we progress these ills travel further down the system, for example things I learned in high school I now hear primary school children talking about. Things I heard people doing at the end of high school kids leaving primary or just starting high school are now doing. So it's not like it's getting any better.

Just my thoughts on the subject. I apologise if I've ranted a little bit, I just feel strongly on this issue.