From the New Zealand Herald, with thanks to Stuart:
The country's only co-educational Islamic school has been put under direct Government control amid concerns that its cultural environment is clashing with its education obligations.Al-Madinah School in Mangere, Manukau City, has been under fire for several years for prioritising religion at the expense of the curriculum and segregating staff and students according to gender.
Successive Education Review Office reports have drawn attention to problems of "governance and segregation", and a limited statutory manager was installed in 2002.
But the Ministry of Education has now drafted in Dennis Finn - the man who took over at troubled Cambridge High School last year - to haul the 360-student school into line.
Melissa O'Carroll, the acting northern region manager for schools, said Mr Finn's appointment as commissioner was "to support the school and enable it to strengthen educational outcomes for all its students".
The school has made concessions to the review office. It reversed a 2003 decision to cease education for girls beyond Year 8 and last year extended the length of the school day to accommodate prayer and lessons.
But a new ERO report has sparked the overhaul, with Education Minister
Trevor Mallard dissolving the board of trustees after seeing the
report...
It reversed a 2003 decision to cease education for girls beyond Year 8
I always follow the link and read the whole story in the local press. The New Zealand herald runs an advert for the Manakua Institute of technology just below this item.
"Fortune favours the brave.
And heavily favours the educated"
So much for the hibaj empowering girls to be achieve and be valued solely for their minds.
I have missed Morgane these last few months. If you are still reading what is the local reaction?
The education of girls is perhaps more important than the education of boys. As mothers they become the first educators of the next generation. Literate mothers will teach their children to read. Illiterate mothers will breed more illiterate children.
I'm not clear, from the story, if the school is a taxpayer funded public school.
It seems to be.
If so, why did the staff allow themselves, or the students, to be segregated according to gender?
How long ago did Dr. Saad Al-Harran take his six year old son out of that school? To whom did he complain? The Dr. stated that the school had a "narrow interpretation" of the Islamic faith. What does that mean?
Hulegu Khan could not be more right. I can say so from experience, having had the privilege of being the son of a highly intelligent and intellectually curious woman. Whom I will never thank enough as long as she lives.
This is one thing in which the West has been ahead of Islam from the beginning. Right from the upper Middle Ages, women were educated at least as well as their families could afford, and in the upper classes, where good education could be afforded, highly literate and learned ladies were hardly infrequent. Another source of female learning was the nunnery. Roswitha of Gandersheim was the first writer of theatre in Germany, setting Christian subjects in forms imitated (extremely well) from the Roman playwrights; and even in the Carolingian age there is a very thoughtful and intelligent letter written by a lady named Dhouda to her two sons, great lords at the Carolingian court, advising them in excellent Latin about conduct of life. Except for the cloister, women were never confined in harems or zenanas in Europe; they took part in politics and in public life side by side with their men, and not infrequently became in fact or even by right heads of the household. Women were queens, regents, ambassadors, plenipotentiaries signing peace treaties between great powers (the Peace of the Ladies between Spain and France in the 1550s). All of this would have been simply unimaginable in Islam at any time. Feminists may say what they like, but the education of daughters was one of the favourite status symbols of European aristocracy, and spread from the aristocracy (and from the cloister) to all rising classes. Learned ladies were a major part of the Renaissance and of the French golden age that followed, and played no minor part in the Enlightenment. And it is a little-known fact that dgrees were first awarded to a woman in 1750, and that the first woman to hold a university chair did so in 1758 - both of them in the University of Bologna, which can thus boast both of being the most ancient University in Europe and the first to admit women.
Too right Paolo!!! One only has to look at how the West has produced leading women, be it in Science, literature, or political leadership, or Mother Theresa in terms of serving others.
Muslim women, what do those poor souls produce? Suicide bombers, for which many are proud when they kill innocents.
Islam is definitely a sad, sorry state of mind.
But in reference to the article, isn't this a clear case of the NZ government being "Islamophobic"? Is it not "vilifying" Islam to say it cannot teach curriculum? I truly hope some “do gooder” takes the NZ government to the “International” Court of Justice over this outrage!! I can see the rank and file Kiwi’s accepting some stuck up Eurocrat telling them what to do.
Why is it alright for government to be a "vilifier" but not the average Joe in the street????
Very hypocritical, but very poetic, in that the policy of indiscriminate multiculturalism is now showing its fruit - divisiveness and kaos. It seems not all is equal in our politically correct socialist Utopia.
All is equal so long as it doesn't disagree with the State.
Unfortunately Australia gets a lot of backdoor Muslim immigration from this 2nd rate sister country. Any New Zealand citizen can live & work here, and New Zealand has quite a liberal refugee immigration policy and as soon as these refugees get their NZ passport they are on the first Qantas flight to Sydney, where they can get a 50% upgrade in social security money.
New Zealand should either become an 8th state of the Australian Commonwealth or be treated as any other country methinks.
Meanwhile the Muslim Lebanese in Sydney are up to their old antics again, another gang rape in the news this week --- sigh.
I know this school well. It is out near Auckland airport where I used to work. Every day I would see this van full of children being taken to school by one of their fathers. They were of middle eastern background and the little boys sat next to the little girls. (Must not have been convenient for them to be segregated I guess). But a couple of things stand out in my mind about this van. I never saw any of the kids talking, laughing, or even smiling on their journey to school. They just sat and stared out the windows. And the other thing was that all the little girls were wearing the hijab. Now I realize they were mobots in training. Sad, very sad.