Abstract
Educational thought touches on one of the essential activities of human society, on ‘the process by which a community preserves and transmits its physical and intellectual character’.1 Since education as a ‘collective technique’ is a ‘secondary activity, subordinate to the life of the civilisation of which it forms a part, and normally appearing as its epitome’2, educational thinking which deals with the aims of education, its contents and methods also mirrors the fundamental concepts prevalent among the members of that civilisation in the fields of psychology, philosophical anthropology, ethics, epistemology and theology.
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Notes
W. Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture (Oxford, 1965), Vol. I, p. XIII.
H.I. Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity (London, 1965), p. XIII.
A.Gil’adi, ‘Renewal of religion by education: some educational aspects of al-Ghazālī’s Ihyā ‘ulūm al-dīn’, Ha-Mizrah He-Hadash 30(1986), pp. 13–15 (in Hebrew. English summary pp. V—VI).
A teleological concept is indicated here: things are created for a particular end, and they must be exploited for the sake of realising this end. See G.F. Hourani, ‘Ghazālī on the ethics of action’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 96(1976), pp. 69–87, esp. p. 79.
Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, p. XXIV (on the meaning of the Greek paidela).
F. Rosenthal, Knowledge Triumphant (Leiden, 1970), p. 284.
D.B. Macdonald, ‘The moral education of the young among the Muslims’, International Journal of Ethics 15 (1905), p. 290.
I. Goldziher, ‘Hadīth and Sunna’ in Muslim Studies, Vol. II (London, 1971), pp. 29–31.
Al-Ghazālī, Mīzānal-‘amal, p. 92 and cf. A.L. Tibawi, ‘Some educational terms in Rasā ‘il Ikhwān al-safā’,’ in Arabic and Islamic Themes (London, 1976), p. 181.
Abū Hāmid Muhammad al-Ghazālī, al-Mustasfā min ‘ilm al-usūl (Bulaq, 1322/1904–5), p. 84; id., Ihyā’ Vol. IV, p. 82.
Abū al-Hasan b. Muhammad al-Māwardī, Adab al-dunyā wa-al-dīn (Cairo, 1973), p. 57;
Yūsuf Ibn Abd al-Barr, Jāmî ayān al-‘ilm wa-fadlihi (Cairo, 1346/1927–8), Vol. I, p. 81.
Abū Hāmid Muhammad al-Ghazālī, Il jām al-‘awāmm ‘an ‘ilm al-kalām (Cairo, 1351/1932–3), pp. 55–6.
W.M. Watt, Bell’s Introduction to the Qur’ān (Edinburgh, 1970), pp. 47–50.
On the religious significance of memorising the Qur’ān see W.C. Smith, ‘Some similarities and differences between Christianity and Islam: an essay in comparative religion’, in J. Kritzeck and R. Bayly Winder (eds), The World of Islam: Studies in Honour of P.K. Hitti (London, 1960), p. 57.
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© 1992 Avner Gil‘adi
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Gil‘adi, A. (1992). Al-Ghazālī on Child Education. In: Children of Islam. St Antony’s Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230378476_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230378476_4
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