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Theory of Knowledge
Reconstruction of Qur’anic Thoughts with an Attempt to Unify Rationalism and Empiricism
By S.M. Zakir Hussain (Bangladesh)
(Author’s e-mail: smzhussains@yahoo.com)
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The Ten-Commandments
of Knowledge Farming
Here is a symbolic model that depicts the process of Learning and the development of the Tree of Knowledge as a sequence of 10 steps of activities/events. In this model, the teacher or instructor has been referred to as the Knowledge Farmer. In conformity to this analogy, knowledge ¾ the result of learning and experience ¾ has been symbolized by a tree and even a garden. The Knowledge Farmer, certainly more than what is usually understood by the term "teacher", must do the following to ensure the healthy growth and full-fledged development of the Tree or Garden of Knowledge. We define Learning as the process in which the Tree or Garden ¾ the student or the system – takes in nutrition from the external environment and the process in which the Tree internalizes the nutrition.
Farming activity |
Paraphrase |
1. Discover good soil. |
1. Screen and select potential students/learners. |
2. Till the soil. |
2. Orient the student or learner to the method, subject, etc and motivate them. |
3. Sow the seed. |
3. Expose the Learner to the knowledge they are looking for. That is, train them. |
4. Water if there’s no rain. |
4. Build emotional and intellectual strength in the learner if there’s any observed paucity thereof. |
5. Do the care taking. |
5. Ensure regular monitoring, evaluation, correction, and recycling of the learning process and knowledge. |
6. Weed out. |
Remove identified vague links and redundant, non-value-adding concepts, ideas, information, and any negative notion about the topic being learned |
7. Use manure. |
7. Ensure re-orientation, reward, recognition, success, competition, better method |
8. Protect. |
8. Do the needful to ensure conceptual clarity, remove vagueness, encourage comparative study, motivate to attack assumptions, encourage identity building, assign importance to the knowledge earned, make the knowledge result-orientated, relate knowledge to learners’ goals of life |
9. Rearrange the plants. |
9. Do the necessary analysis, synthesis, antithesis, summarizing, pattern-finding, review |
10. Harvest and Recycle. |
10. Prompt them to apply the knowledge for real results, accumulate experience, save for future use, go through the process of meta-learning, and gather knowledge of how people learn effectively |
Obviously, each of the above-mentioned steps needs to be properly translated into specific action programs to have a bumper harvest.
Author of:
Secret Knowledge of the Qur'an
