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"Some say the Present Age is not the Time for Meditation:" Thoughts on Things Left Unsaid in Contemporary Invocations of Traditional Education

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In this paper, we contend that the term traditional education has come to be identified, for the most part, with the worst that traditions have to offer (rote memorization, authoritarianism, etc.) and that this (mis-) identification has ignored another, more thoughtful, meditative and intellectually vigorous thread that forms part of most traditions. We explore a small part of the history of this mis-identification and some of its consequences. In particular, we consider the situation of Moslems in contemporary Canadian school settings and how this weak and intellectually impoverished understanding of traditional education has become part of a cultural debate.
... That traditional education and traditional schooling are consistently and inter-culturally identified with rote memorization, not raising questions, and unthinkingly doing what you are told, is telling. It is telling that, inter-culturally, we have lost memory of how each tradition also has threads of scholarly, intellectually challenging, exploratory, questioning, collaborative, generous, and open-hearted work, work that embraces the complexities of co-existence as its heritage and task (see Naqvi & Jardine, 2007). ...
... & Jardine, 2007; Jardine & Naqvi, in press): asked to give an account of themselves, while living in the midst of a culture that, because of its ...
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This paper examines the media coverage of the murder of a young Muslim girl in Mississauga, Ontario in December 2007. We examine how that coverage moved from concerns for a terrible family event to the use of the language of Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations.” We explore the nature of this exaggeration that occurs in times of threat and the “hardening” and eventual clashing of identities that can follow. We interweave with these matters considerations of the pedagogical and familial consequences of such identity-exaggeration under threat. We propose that the provisional, negotiated, and casual conviviality of identities that precedes times of threat are cast into what Ivan Illich called “a zone of deep shadow.” We propose, also, that it is this locale of an interdependent, co-determining conviviality of identities that can profitably be the locus of rich and intellectually vital classroom conversations. KeywordsIdentity-Muslim-Huntington-conviviality-education-clash of civilizations-cultural difference-multiculturalism
... We recognize that the inclusion conversation about place is more complex than a debate between arbitrary binaries of specialized and congregated educational spaces. However, the continuing and unquestioned use of segregated classrooms for some students with disabilities within many schools -as these three statements seem to describe -is emblematic of the failures on the part of Alberta Education, many schools, and many educators, to acknowledge and begin to address the many barriers to inclusion that, as scholars and critics have pointed out, continue to haunt the system (Gilham, 2012;Naqvi & Jardine, 2008;Williamson, 2016a;Williamson & Paul, 2012). ...
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Alberta Education has been engaged in reviews and reforms of special education, and attempting to describe and move toward more inclusive ways of supporting students with disabilities since 2008. These efforts have, at times, resulted in more progressive and inclusive education policies and, at times, seemed somewhat halting. The obstacle to realizing policies that are more consistently inclusive, the authors believe, has been a continuing tendency toward deficit under-standings of disability. In this paper, the authors critique recent inclusive education reform and current policy documents in light of ongoing barriers to inclusion, both in practices in schools and in continuing deficit-based tendencies in some current policy statements and resource manuals. The authors conclude by making a series of recommendations, including a consideration of the activist discipline of Disability Studies in Education, to guide continuing reform efforts along more genuinely inclusive lines.
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We explore the nature of knowledge and education and how Islamic traditions have shaped understanding of these matters. We contrast this with contemporary images of "Taliban-like" schools full of rote repetition and harsh, authoritarian literalism. Some of the history of Islamic scholarship venerates a much more generous relationship to knowing. We link these explorations to a recently published children's picture book, a true story about a librarian in Basra, Iraq, during the recent American invasion. Even if it is a "true story," we consider what its truth is and whether educators might or should or could stand by this truth. /// Nous explorons ici la nature du savoir et de l'éducation et comment la tradition islamique a modelé leur compréhension. Nous comparons les images contemporaines des écoles "style Taliban" qui sont faites de "par coeur" et de litéralité dure et autoritaire avec certaines écoles dans l'histoire de l'Islam qui affichent une plus grande générosité face au savoir. Nous établissons un lien entre ces notions et un livre illustré pour enfants récemment publié, une histoire vécue d'un libraire de Basra, en Iraq, pendant la récente invasion américaine. Même si cette histoire est une "histoire vraie", nous considérons sa valeur et nous pensons que les éducateurs pourraient accepter cette vérité ou même qu'ils devraient l'accepter.
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