Share

Abdikadir Ibrahim

Introduction

It is a cliché to say that education is imperative, because everyone knows that education is a key for our survival in this life. It is a fact that education provides for its individual a sense of stability, financially, security and most importantly direction and freedom.  We all know that educated person will be placed a higher position than uneducated person in this life and next life as well. We also know that when literacy is low in a country that country will never make same progress than a country, which its citizens have high literacy rate. However, in this short note, I am not talking about literate versus illiterate. I am talking about the hardship and confusion for Muslim families in the U.S. especially immigrants who do not have financial capability to send their children in Islamic schools regarding their children’s religious education. I have been teaching Salahudin weekend Islamic school for the past 10 years. The school comes under the Islamic Civic Society of America, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Based on my experience and knowledge on weekend schools in the twin cities and in the state, Salahudin School is one of the most successful weekend schools without doubt. During its existence, more than 50 students finished Quran, in addition to high rich Islamic education. Not only many students become successful in terms of Quran, but many of them become presidents of their college MSAs’ and student organizations in various higher institutions because of the knowledge and guidance they received while they were in Salahudin. It was part of the organization and school’s identity and purpose to educate students in a religiously but also to educate them so that they become a conscious, successful, and productive citizens who possess the leadership skills to face future challenges.  It is true that a good guided religious person acquires the preceding adjectives and even more.

Students’ Attitude towards Weekend Islamic Schools vs. Academic Schools

In addition to all the above achievements, there are enormous challenges facing weekend Islamic schools, finishing Quran, and comprehending the reading and writing of Arabic language take students longer than usual. In addition, the hesitance and the lack of students’ interest to learn and eagerness to take more classes as well as the gap between the students and parents are all undeniable.  However, when it comes to academic schools, students are opposite of what is described above in most cases, students love and they are enthusiastic about the school. They are interested about the school and are ready to challenge themselves to enroll higher and harder classes.

Causes

Students face multiple challenges that cause and trigger their low successes in Islamic field such as lack of tools for learning, activities, unappealing spaces in Islamic schools, inability and lack of parents’ guidance and involvement on their children’s education, lack of knowledge, experience and training from the teachers themselves. Those are common noticeable elements, but there is one that sums up all these where many people do not pay attention to (the time). Despite that schools provide buses, full meals throughout the day, trained teachers, full parental involvement, great spaces and activities, while Weekend Islamic schools provide none of these. The schools are packed by powerful government while weekend Islamic schools are owned nobody except the poor community who do not even know if they are the owners or not.

Time they spend on school and related work vs. Time they spend on weekend Islamic schools

The time that students spend on Islamic weekend schools is really short comparing to hours they spend on academic schools.  Most weekend schools are either go afternoons or mornings of Saturdays & Sundays. In the morning, they usually come 8:00-8:30 am and finish at 12:00pm, and after group come 1:30-2:00pm and finish at 5:00pm. Therefore, most weekend schools spend 3-3:30 hours in school. Since, this is two days, Saturday and Sunday only, students spend 7 ½ hours a week in weekend schools. On the other hand, students spend in school on average of 8 hours in class for five days; they also go to library, to do homework and other extra curricula outside the classrooms, where they usually spend no time outside the class for weekend Islamic schools.

Since they go five days a week for eight hours a day and 2 hours related school work per day. They spend 8×5, which is 40 hours in class and 10 hours of outside of class in related school work per week.  Therefore, they spend 50 hours a week in school, whereas, they spend 7 hours on weekend Islamic schools a week. If we further calculate, we know that most schools start on first week of September and go until June of the following year. It is about 9 months; however, we will calculate how many days and hours in school years and to be fair, we subtract the days and hours that students are not in school including weekends and holidays. Minneapolis public schools, the 8^th of June is the last day of school year. The days of these 9 months in the school year are 304 days. We subtract 23 days of June, since, school ends 8^th day of June, 10 days of winter break, five days of spring break and other 14 days of professional conference, holidays and record keeping days.

The total days of 9 months are 304 days minus 51 days of none- school days equal to 253 days. We subtract 80 days of (weekends) from these days (253), it comes on 173 days. We know that students spend in school each one of these days 8 hours in class and two hours outside the class in school related work. This comes to 10 hours a day. The Total days of 173x 10 of total hours a day, this is equal to 1,730 hours for the school year.  The weekend days for the school year is 80 days, we know that student spend in weekend Islamic school 3 ½ hours a day, this is equal to 280 hours for the school year.  The difference is 1,450 hours.

Share