Behaviour and Tarbiya Policy

Background: Behaviour, tarbiya, and the school

Behaviour and the Whole Person

Behaviour is part of the whole person[1]. This means in dealing with behaviour we are dealing with the whole person. One way of describing the whole person is the emotions, thoughts, and bodies and feelings that make each of us up. The technical word for the mental area is the cognitive area. The technical word for emotions is the affective area. And the technical word for the body and its habits and feelings and movements and mannerisms is the behavioural area. We do not need to know these technical terms to understand how the three work together, but it may help.

Tarbiya

Tarbiya can be translated many ways. It could mean upbringing, spiritual training, or simply teaching. It is more than teaching, though, because it includes the pastoral side. Pastoral care is helping the child socially, morally, and spiritually. In an Islamic school, we try not to let behaviour be treated from pastoral care. The responsibility for dealing with the whole person falls on the teacher (even though we may work in cooperation with pastoral carers, headteachers, and parents); their responsibility does not end with their subject. They are responsible for the tarbiya of the child. So the teacher must know how to be a murabbi.

Cognitive (Perception, Understanding, Predicted Consequences)

Affective (Feelings, Moods, Motivation, Identity)

[Above: The A (affective) B (behavioural) C’s (cognitive) of students psychology.]

Approach:

Thus teachers need a different type of the relationship where they understand the student’s point of view in order to know how to teach them and motivate them. This rules out a distant or harsh authoritarianism where the teacher sets rules and punishes and rewards with little or know consideration for the individual student. This does not mean that there are no shared, objective class or school rules, but that a compromise is struck and the effects of implementing rules on the individual and group are taken into consideration.

Behaviour is addressed as the whole person and motivation must come from within. Therefore punishments and rewards are not really the means of tarbiya because the person has to take on their own desire and responsibility for their own tarbiya. But students are at different levels of taking responsibility for their behaviour and improving it, so punishments and rewards may have to be used as a temporary measure if students are not allowing the school to achieve its goals. The reward would be a token or a punishment a reminder that they have done something wrong.

Support at School:

Teachers will need to work with two other elements at school:

1)  School-wide teaching of virtues and ‘virtue of week’

2)  Pastoral Liaison Officer

Tarbiya must be individualised, though this is difficult in a class of thirty. There should be a school-wide programme, perhaps in the PSHE or Religious Studies programme where a hierarchy of virtues are taught in the year group that suites their developmental stage. This way the whole school is going forward.

Students which fall off the ladder and don’t move forward because of lack of support or love at home may need support of Pastoral Liaison Person and a personalised plan. This person’s job could be to assist teachers in assessing character of students and in making a plan for improvement. This may include keeping a file with a student profile and the creative process of proposing how to provide the environment and support for that individual student to improve.

The Virtues and Their Types
Spiritual Virtues:
Love
Gratitude and Patience
Fear and hope
Zuhud
Tawakkul
Tawhid
Preliminaries: Working towards Spiritual Virtues and Ihsan:
Niyya, Ikhlas, Sidq, Moracoba, Muhasaba, Tafakkur
Religious Virtues:
Sunnah:
Adah
Individual
Eating
Clothing
Social
Keeping up social relations
Keeping up family relations
Ibada
Dhikr
Quran
Sunnah and Nafila Salat
Sadaqa
Fard:
Adah
Contracts
Court Rulings
Support and Enforcement of Shariah
Ibadah
Tahara
Salat
Sawm
Zakat
Hajj
Preliminaries: Working towards Religious Virtues:
Guidance
Tawfiq
A person can seek guidance and tawfiq, but ultimately Allah decides who He will guide. At the same time, seeking His help is a form of guidance and there are many things in one’s control which are very likely to turn Allah’s eyes towards one.
One gains Allah’s special concern and guidance through admitting that He controls more than we do and knows more, so we should be humble enough to ask His help and obey Him. The deeply one admits one’s need, asks for help, and obeys Allah’s Shariah in keeping tahara, avoiding haram, and performing one’s obligations, the more one moves from human virtues to making a relationship with Allah where He takes care of one’s life events and guides our heart and also we become acceptable for the greatest goods (which are closed to those of only human virtues) of Al-Jannah and seeing/beholding Allah.
Human Virtues:
Courage
Moderation/ Temperance
Practical Wisdom
Justice
Minor Moralities:
Paying attention
Tidiness
Cleanliness
Turn-taking
Sharing
Waiting to be called on to speak
Not hurting other’s feelings

Teachers can use this hierarchy to understand the student and for to show the student what kind of action they’re doing, what’s going on inside of them at times. The students can become aware and change.

Methods of Tarbiya:

Tarbiya is a combination of:

  1. knowing where the student is and where they’re going (using chart above) and
  2. how to move or change (see below).

Methods of Change:

Note: These methods are in a hierarchy from most favourable methods to least and from self-regulating to externally regulated. The student should be addressed according to their level of understanding. If they are not taking responsibility for their acts, we use some of the lower methods and also establish the lower virtues first. But, if they are self-regulating or working towards this, we should encourage intrinsic motivation and refrain from rewards and punishments and the like.

  1. Changing Characteristics: Identify one’s virtues and vices looking at what good actions entail and doing it till a habit is formed and looking at what vices entail and doing the opposite till a habit is formed and the heart is moulded along virtuous lines.
  1. Building Habits: Hadiths: When students have faith and know where they want to go (they have a the model of the pious person in front of their eyes) then techniques for improving themselves in an effective and efficient way are sought.
  2. Focus on one thing at a time.
  3. Stick with and focus on it until it becomes easier to perform than to leave the good habit.
  4. Do little with consistency rather than great efforts for short, inconsistent periods. Read a little Quran each day rather than reading 60 pages on Jum’ah. Having a daily wird is essential.
  1. Understanding: Targhib and Tarhib: Enticing and Warning: (Based on already accepting Iman). Generating self-motivation through making them understand how what they’re doing wrong hurts others and how they are really hurting themselves, how disadvantaged they are. They can also understand, from an Adamic point of view, how they are letting their animal or clay nature prevail over their angelic nature, they are becoming the lowest of low or more misguided than pack animals.

Identifying Level:

This is for students who more or less accept Islam and believe in Allah’s wisdom in His creation and His Shari’ah. Thus, they do not resent (at times) being told the rewards and punishments related to acts and beliefs and they can be motivated by being informed.

There is an individual and fluid aspect: Murabbis have to be able to discern thinking of student and cater to where they are coming from. Teachers need to know how to identify and address various problems. You may have to show the student where they are. For example, if the student has a gangster mentality but does have some faith, they can be made aware of this mentality and then the flaws in this thinking can be elucidated in a way the student can clearly understand. For example, gangsters define good as being tough: not letting anyone take advantage of you. Does the gangster really benefit from living like an animal? What it means in reality is that they are ruled by their ego and their desire to have a good image in the eyes of their mates. They are always doing things so others will think they are tough. This is not manliness; manliness is to have the courage to do what is right and stand up to others even if you lose out because of this. It is to help others even if you are in difficulty yourself. It is to control you anger if a person who doesn’t know any better does something rude. They must see that manliness (or humanity) is about virtue and selflessness.

  1. Internalisation of Values: This is a step between 3 and 5. Many of the other steps are related to this one.

Identifying Level:

This level is for students who have shown a willingness to take on Islamic values when coming from a certain person or when explained in a way they understand.

It is to make student reflect on and believe how Allah is so great and does so many favours and shows so much generosity across the universe. At the same time, we have so many useless thoughts and harmful actions and go about heedless fulfilling our desires. This is often the step to shukr and tawbah, but also fear and hope.

Alternatively, this step could be seen as Islamic instruction as a whole. It’s purpose is not to enable students to reel off the facts we just told them, but for them to change their outlook. There is no reason why in our day and age that Islamic instruction should not construct activities for students to practise Islam in various ways which give the experience that la ilaha illa Llah and other parts of faith are built on. This step must be built around what works for students and may, in some cases, take searching out those who are successful and learning their methods.

  1. Role Models: The focus should be on living role models, though there is a sure place for stories of the prophets (AS) and the pious. Parents and teachers should model good character and piety as students will absorb and internalise the words, actions, and reactions they see. This is perhaps the basis that a child’s behaviour is first built on. Before they even make rational choices, they imitate what they have seen and their affective, behavioural, and cognitive habits become rooted and make up the child. The fitra can easily be overcome by these habits, especially if not nurtured through a contact with nature, physical exercise, and a developing curiosity about the world.
  1. Attachment to Murabbi: By refraining from being harsh to students (which is internalised as you not loving them) and making students understand that you care about them and are willing to sacrifice for them, you keep the door open for them to love you and wish to please you and show you that they are good. Their love of respect need not even be based on Islam: they may think you are cool, clever, you really understand them, are good at snookers, or whatever the case may be. Once you are harsh or discipline or reprimand them in front of others, they can loose the desire to please you or show that they are good and actually with to displease you. Thus, the murabbi must be very careful for their charge as they control a great door to good or evil.

{Wa law kunta fadhdhan, ghalidha l-qalbi lanfaddu min hawlik}

(And if you were harsh and hard-hearted they would disperse from around you)

  1. Rationalising: Clarifying benefit and harm from a point of view that does not yet take faith a basis for action and control of the ego. A clear example from the Sunnah was a youth who asked the Prophet (alayhi s-Salam) to permit him to fornicate. The Prophet did not get angry (though he would have right to) but asked the youth if he would want someone to fornicate with his own female relatives including his mother and sisters. The youth said he would not want someone to fornicate with them and realised that (from a rational point of view) there was no way to fornicate without contradicting himself and being unjust.

If a student has a gangster mentality with little iman, you may have to show them that by rejecting authority, school, and qualifications, they are doing exactly what the upper class would like by keeping themselves as a source of cheap labour. Remind them that one day they will have children to feed who will want to respect them. How if they can find only unfit work for those without even GCSE’s.

  1. External rewards and punishments: For those who don’t use their mind in their actions (behaving to be cool, etc) or are very young in age or mental development, stars, golden time, threats and punishments such as detention, and other means may be used temporarily and perhaps also for the good of class or school if such a student is preventing learning for others and attracting them to blameworthy behaviour and harmful ways of thinking (such as gangsterism, self-harm, etc.)

Regarding step 8, a consistent list of steps should be understood by students. These steps are:

[1] The whole person being composed of the affective (emotional), behavioural, and cognitive (intellectual). This is the ABC’s. The spiritual is part of the emotional if understood to include the states of the heart between us and Allah.