Iqra International School

we have many places of worship, value based schools and organizations. Yet many people today do not live in accordance with the principles and values of their faith. Value related instruction, in the recent centuries, has been taught primarily as a body of information, rather than as a body of experiences. For many children today, religion does not inspire, and seems meaningless and irrelevant to their personal lives and experiences. The value based education curriculum called for at Iqra International School focuses on personality and character development of children, close attention to the real needs and concerns of students, and preparation of students with the critical thinking and problem solving skills needed to function successfully as good human in a society. If we hope to succeed in our goal to raise our children the ideal way, educators and parents must develop a better understanding of how children grow and learn; we must understand the processes of moral development and the methods of effective teaching and learning. Our children will not become moral individuals simply because we want or tell them to do so. They will become moral individuals by cultivating their minds and hearts, and by having opportunities to actually see and apply values in practice. The pervasive influence of secular materialism and its value system seriously challenges religious-minded individuals and communities. To a large extent, the future will depend on how well we educate our children today and to what extent we are successful in transferring to them the sacred vision of life that we have. What is at stake is nothing less than the moral and spiritual survival of our children and our communities. Without a proper understanding of the value system, there is little hope that the true goals, of value education can be achieved. These schools have a crucial role to play in providing concrete solutions and programs that will foster this understanding among students and in promoting the role and responsibility of the family in the process of righteous upbringing. Fortunately, a sense of renewal is in the air today and enlightened people are eager to find real solutions to the problems and challenges being faced, including re-examination of both how and what we teach our children about the religion. At Iqra International School, we restructure the Moral studies curriculum—both what is taught and how it is taught— for our children to develop the spiritual survival skills needed to survive as human being in the twenty-first century. We began with a new vision of value based education which is capable of producing youth with a level of understanding, commitment and social responsibility that will both motivate and enable them to serve society and humanity effectively, Insha-Allah. Value based education must be able to produce youth who are able to identify, understand and then work cooperatively to solve the problems that face their community and the world in which they live and for which they are responsible. In the lifetime of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and give him peace, Islamic education was both practical and relevant. The Prophetic model of Islamic education, that taught values drew its substance from the everyday experiences and day-today problems of the community. Although value education will undoubtedly draw much of its content from the foundational disciplines of moral Studies , it must be done in a way that links this content to the natural concerns of students as well as the larger issues facing the world in which they live. We at Iqra have taken on this challenge of modern-day value based education.