Contribution of Madrasah System to the Development of Human Resource in Uganda and its Neighbouring Countries

Abstract

Generally speaking, Muslims of Eastern Africa in general, and of Uganda in particular, lagged behind in education for a long period of time. This fact goes back to the time when Islam penetrated the East African coast. The interest of Arabs who introduced and taught Islam to the people of the coast was trade and many of them were neither trained nor did they possess any professional skills to propagate Islam. They did this job on a voluntary basis in anticipation of God’s reward. On the contrary, the Christian missionaries who came to the region were skilled, equipped and had been officially sent by various authorities to do the job of spreading Christianity. Therefore, when they arrived in the region, they embarked on building well equipped schools and all their activities were geared towards promoting Christianity among the whole population which scared Muslim parents from taking their children to these schools. Consequently, Muslim schools – mainly madrasah pl. madaris, were built to counter the force of missionary schools. These madaris, however, were not by any standards, comparable with the missionary schools. Unfortunately, this situation has continued to this day in some of the madaris due to numerous reasons, some of which are of the Muslims’ own making and which I believe could be avoided provided that the Muslims put their heads together. In spite of this fact, these schools have contributed highly to the development of human resource in Uganda and elsewhere, as highlighted in this paper. May Allah help me. Amiin.

Factors Affecting the Teaching and Learning of Agriculture in Secondary Schools in Bushenyi District Bitooma Sub-County

“…While in the field, the researcher found out that problems encountered in teaching and learning agriculture included a lack of industrial materials, such as text books, for both the learners and teachers. Therefore, the learners are not able to revise on their own and do homework [13][14][15][16]. This was revealed by Table 2, which shows that 14.2% had agriculture textbooks, 9.5% had pamphlets, and 6.0% had guiding revision questions.…”

“…It is therefore true to say that many problems encountered in the teaching and learning of agriculture originate from traditional beliefs and biases. According to [15], in the government white paper on education policy review (1992:19), agriculture is an important subject in Uganda that needs support. The Open Access ©NIJCRHSS Print ISSN: 2992-6106 Publications Online ISSN: 2992-5789 white paper further suggests that agriculture should be taught to all schoolchildren as a compulsory subject through the secondary school levels in both rural and urban areas.…”