The title of the post, inspired by a humorous but enlightening book "Managing the Educational Madhouse" by David Hellawell, may seem a bit out of place when talking about Islamic Education. However, in my opinion, managing an Islamic educational institution, just like any other educational institution, is like managing a madhouse. With the added complexity that by default every stakeholder believes himself/herself to be an expert whether they are or not.
Those of us who have been in this field for a decade or more, are humbled in the realization that there is so much to be done, and so much knowledge out there, that we would hardly ever be pompous enough to claim expertise. However, much to our dismay, the frequency with which we encounter people with fixed convictions which are far from being grounded in fact, is far too high.
If merely being a Muslim would make us an expert in Islam, then by the same logic living in a house would make us an expert civil engineer or an architect. Then there would be no point having institutes of higher learning in deeniyat.
In the same vein, having being educated in a school does not make one an expert in education, much the same way that having fallen sick doesn't make us qualified enough to be a doctor.
Each discipline, whether Islam, or education, and more so Islamic Education needs proper diligence, perhaps including jumping through hoops and burning midnight oil in order to even arrive at a basic understanding, let alone touch the realms of expertise.
Having said that, we come back to the conventional challenges of managing an educational institution.
First of all, the 21st Century populace is enamored by systems, having been the beneficiaries of latest developments in science and technology, driven by complex systems. Such people assume that every one is supposed to act as rational human beings, and that institutions/corporations/governments always work in the best interests of people, and are managed by high quality and well-thought of plans and blue-prints, that are executed seamlessly in harmony with other cogs of this mighty and well-oiled machine called a system. However, nothing can be further from the truth.
Such perfect systems do not exist even in imaginal realms, let alone utopian. In the real world, all institutions are full of imperfections in all processes in the Standard Operating Procedures of life, where emotions rule high, self-interest outweighs other considerations, and complex dynamics are at work that cannot be empirically explained even by the best proponents of chaos theories and the like. In the real world, rather than be dismayed by the effects of Murphy's law, when things go wrong, normal human beings get delighted, and take pride when things go as planned, or when a choreographed plan generally stays on course.
The problem of hyper-rationality is exacerbated in the world of teachers, because teachers are brought up believing that every problem is soluble. With the belief that for every question, there is an answer, and that the answer is at the back of the book (and in the words of Sir Ken Robinson "you cannot look, because that is cheating, even though in real world it is called collaboration"). And since principals are almost invariable cut from the same cloth, or have evolved climbing up the ladder of "teacherness", they hold fast to this conviction that every problem must have a solution, and when they cannot find one, they get stressed out and throw everyone else off track as well.
As far as problems having solutions is concerned, anyone who has spend a day living life as a mature individual would beg to differ. Puzzles have solutions, toy problems have answers, real world problems almost never have a clear-cut, black and white answer or solution. That is what makes life what it is, otherwise life could be taught in a class-room instead of being lived. Or there would be an online course for it.
The core challenge in an Islamic Education is to set the course, and then stay the course. Having specified the goals of an Islamic Education system, we should set the course, and get everyone involved on board, and spend the rest of the year steering to stay on track, and make sure everyone is rowing in the same direction, with the same understanding notwithstanding differences in convictions and strength.
Problems and challenges thrown your way are meant to be faced, just like we would face a storm mid-course. You can imagine if instead of carrying on our journey, we pause in our tracks, and channel our energies to stop the storm? Would that make more sense than carrying on braving the storm?
And any number of setbacks should not deter us from our goals. Allahu musta'an.
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