Education of Gulen movement

Educational perspective and functions of the movement

The movement understands education broadly as a tool to bring a change for a peaceful coexistence. It regards ignorance, poverty, and internal schism as the greatest enemies of the human civilization and believes that only knowledge, work-capital and unification can help it overcome these. It acknowledges ignorance as the main source of all evils and uses education to struggle against it. The most visible manifestation of the struggle of the movement against ignorance are the schools being opened by the Gulen community across the globe .These schools which are in many forms, such educational dormitories, universities and conventional schools such Chartered schools in the United States, intends to pin down ignorance through education, poverty through work and internal schism and separatism through unity, dialogue, and tolerance. It regards education as the most effective tool for all kinds of paralyzed system whether social or political.
Gulen, as an educator believes that modern secular schools have been unsuccessful in freeing themselves from the pre- conceived notions and prejudices of the modern theology. He also believes that, the so called traditional schools have lacked the intellectual pace to cope up the ever increasing complicated concepts of science and technology and the challenges they pose. Both these institutions have therefore failed the test of changing times and developing the required flexibility with the new world’s vision.

The movement, therefore, believed in the integration of strengths of traditional education with modern educational system. For this , the movement believes, there is a need to mainstream the youth and help them rise above the present system of education, which only ‘informs’ them and keeps them devoid of absorbing the true education. The movement tries to establish a perfect balance. (Michel, T. 2003)
“With a balanced education learners can become agents of positive change; but if they do not have ideals, and are only taught marketable skills, they will add to the crises of the society. Intellectuals seem to prefer "the spiritually impoverished and technologically obsessed modern culture to a traditional cul tural foundation that grew in sophistication and subtlety over the centuries" (Michel, T. 2003).

Such a balance requires a holistic training, not only of the students in an educating atmosphere, but also of the teachers. But such trainings, movement believes, cannot be provided to nurture new learning environments unless there is new training environment.

According to Gulen, “Teacher training is essential; not only in methodology, but also in nurturing the whole person. Teachers should lead by example; otherwise they cannot hope to reform others. In order to bring others to the path of traveling to a better world, they must purify their inner worlds of hatred, rancor, and jealousy, and adorn their outer world with all kinds of virtues" (Michel, T. 2003)

Thus, teachers have to combine the study of science with character development. Success must be measured by scientific progress and moral progress. Material advancement without morality will destroy humanity.
It therefore proposes the following principles for all its educational institutions:

1) Dialogue and tolerance
2) Self-sacrifice
3) Avoidance of political and ideological conflict
4) Taking action on a positive and harmonious way
5) Taking responsibility
6) To give with no expectation of praise or reward. For example a person should be in the first line to give and the last row to receive any reward or thanks.
7) Humbleness.

Some of the basic educational pillars of the movement are the its emphasis of reading and listening ,which are extensively taught in all the institutions, relationships between the students and the teachers, which requires the presence of ethos such truth, respect and dignity, and highly ethical standards ,being attached with the schools working as well as the teachers employed.

The movement strictly differentiates between education and teaching. It holds that not all teachers are educators and therefore all teaching does not necessarily lead to education. It considers teaching as more superficial, and technical whereas education to be deeper, more meaningful and holistic activity.

In order to ensure true education, schools are defined as “a laboratory that offers an elixir that can prevent or heal the ills of life. Those who have the knowledge and wisdom to prepare and administer it are the teachers. A school is a place of learning about everything related to this life and the next. (Ibid, I. 2008). And that “a good school is not a building where only theoretical information is given but an institution or a laboratory where students are prepared for life. (Ibid, I. 2008).

The movement strongly believes that science and technology alone cannot explain the meaning and the purpose of human life. They are however facilitative the process of finding meanings and deveoping the broader purpose and aims of life. It also believes that science and technology must be used in the proper way to be beneficial for the humanity and if they are controlled by unjust and irresponsible people they a can in fact cause immense harm to the mankind. In the light of these believes, one can analyze the recent incidents of human miseries such as the Hiroshima –Nagasaki bombing, Worlds Wars, Worldwide conflict for resources such as oil and gas, abject poverty and inequality between communities, individuals and nations, and its ever increasing ills such as increasing suicide rates, diminishing heath care, rampant fatal dieses such as HIV/AIDs and cancer, human trafficking, child labor and many other avoidable human pains and suffering emanating from the vested interests of the few nations or individuals. Global problems such as environmental pollution and emergence of corruption and greed at local level further strengthen the above point.

In order to channelize all its energies to address the contemporary issues, through harmony and amicable ways rather than any confrontations’ with state or other interests groups, most of the Gulen schools follow national curriculum but what makes their education unique is the inclusion and rigorous emphasis on vales such as spirituality, idealism,good morals, scientific and technological progress as well as lessons on trades and crafts in the elementary level. Other vales such as reflection, thinking, active reading an listening skills, and mutual respect for the co fellows also remain at the very core of the conscious- teaching and learning processes.

These schools also take into account the specific qualities of teachers such as true dedication to education as tool for a social change and not just a mechanism to make a living, ability to inspire others with the conviction of this dedication. In most cases teachers are expected to be frugal; they are not permitted, or encouraged, to live in expensive apartments, drive expensive cars, and wear expensive clothes. It is believed that such extravagances could blemish the image of the school and damage the trust of the funders. However, teachers do not live in poverty; they earn a decent salary, receive hospital care and obtain a pension upon retirement. Also teachers are regularly transferred from one place to another place, with significantly different culture and sub-culture. This is expected to bring, the new inherent learning that comes to the new students with the new teacher, and hence more enriched learning atmosphere. It is also expected that with such practices the students will develop abilities to learn from different people while teachers will sharpen their abilities to absorb into a new teaching atmosphere and adapt to its intricacies. This practice however is practiced despite acknowledging its pitfalls such as the instability in the teaching structure that it brings along; the new teacher takes time to settle in a new place while new students take time to settle with new teacher and by the time both of them begin to understand each other’s attitudes and ways, which normally take 4 to 5 years, the teachers are transferred again. This instability, however, contains the potential to nurture, both in students and in teachers, the immunity to the fear of the ‘new’ and ‘unknown’. Thus, bringing along the experiential richness of the old, mingling with the new.
In the same context, movement believes that:

“For the ideal of love to live in schools, there must be a shift away from the school as a factory in which teachers view students as objectives rather than human beings, a factory in which knowledge is produced rather than character constructed. Instead, there must be a move toward schools and educators who not only have a mastery of their subjects but who also care for their students and seek their welfare past the ringing of the bell.” (Huebner, 1999)
With this belief the movement's activities within any community start by first making personal contacts with the individuals in that community. In other words, the movements’ vision enters the new community through an exiting human representation and shares that vision with the new individuals of the new community. Once this inter personal relationship is established between the party of the movement and the party of the community, the two become one and together they discuss the necessity of dialogue and the terms of education is then formed with mutual understanding. The resulting manifestation then takes the form of schools and educational institutions which carry the common vision, and act as the media of tolerance and dialogue to raise more people to join the movement.

In order to promote the holistic vision of education the movement also works on several fronts and with several communities, which it considers to be a part of its educational-family. It includes business networks and financial institutions that is it owns and that is backed by sixteen other partners, Its vast array of media outlets including a scientific monthly, an environment-related magazine, a theological journal, a weekly magazine, a daily newspaper, a TV station and an FM radio station. Besides the movement is supported by a powerful association of businessmen, which includes over 2000 businessmen and merchants, who support the educational activities by not only providing funding and logistical support but by also running the schools. The infrastructure support of the movement’s family includes universities and colleges, high schools, dormitories, summer camps, and over 100 foundations. All of these institutions are organized and are run by the people who are given roles on the basis of trust, obedience and duty to the community. These people are essentially businessmen, teachers, journalists, and students. Thus it is evident that the movement threads the member of the society as the member of a family. In such an environment the students are not only equipped with skills and knowledge necessary for their future careers but they also prepare them for the broader leadership roles that they may perform to construct a society that is expected to give importance to jobs, work, technology and consumerism while keeping the metaphysics of education above all.

The impact of this prioritization of worldly and spiritual values can be seen in the way the movement has played a key role in bringing or at least maintaining peace in conflict areas with a challenging and belligerent demography, such as Bosnia, Northern Iraq, Afghanistan and Philippines. In each of these areas the movement has established cordial relations with its tolerant, faith based, but not faith limited educational ways, to bring fighting communities together and build peace between them by emphasizing on their communities.

In Bosnia, the fighting communities were the Muslim Bosnians, Christian Serbs and Christian Croats. Despite their common ethic identity and culture coming from their common Yogoslovanin background, these communities have been involved, for over a decade in ethics conflicts. They differed on their nationalistic aspirations and religious differences.

The case of Northern Iraq was no different. The communities involved were Kurds, Sunni Arabs, Turcoman, Shiites and Assyrian Christians. They again engaged in violent conflicts resulting from the differences of their religious beliefs and practices. Similar is the case with Afghanistan with ethic groups such as Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek, Aimak, Baluchi, Kyrgyz, Turkmen, Nuristani and Pamiri who had different political affiliations and ideology despite sharing common religious beliefs. Due to their differences, they were unable to identify and acknowledge their common beliefs and thus were unable to come to common terns of mutual respect and reconciliation. Finally Philippines which offers a different case of different religious groups such as Muslims and Christians, who had different locations in terms of demography and who tried to control each other with their respective political structure and nationalist ideologies.

In all of the above theses cases, the result was the same; Wars, conflicts and clashes. Gulen community with their schools in all of these played a key role of bringing the Christian and Muslims student together in a peaceful atmosphere, thus demonstrating a and creating a platform for dialogue between communities. The result of the dialogue was the strengthened understanding between communities, mutual acknowledgment of differences and the newly inspired will to work on commonalities, to resolve existing issues. The Gulen community led to the decrease of violent conflicts and it was seen that the conflicting communities either refused to take part in new conflicts or continue the existing ones or both