Individualism and Conformity in Medieval Islamic Educational Thought: Some Notes with Special Reference to Elementary Education

Abstract

In medieval Islamic societies, cultural conventions and social rules played a significant role in education, but Muslim thinkers also paid attention to the differences between individual pupils and students and to the need to adjust teaching contents as well as educational methods to their backgrounds and personal abilities, their inclinations and aspirations. This may well have been not only because of heritage of the "pre-Islamic and early Islamic Arabs" as suggested by S. D. Goitein, but also because of the foreign (Greek, for example) cultural influences, particularly in the context of educational thought. The kuttāb was less likely than other early Islamic institutions of leaming to supply its young pupils with individual attention. Nevertheless, 'ulamà' on the whole, had the individual pupil in mind when they discussed questions of elementary education, such as the curriculum, the child age of admission, selecting appropriate educational methods, children's games, the company of other children, selecting a profession for the child and the father's involvement in the formal education within the kuttāb.