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Live Quran Lessons

What an Online Islamic School Cannot Do

What are the limits of an online Islamic school?

The short answer

An online Islamic school cannot give a child Muslim friends, congregational prayer, a teacher who notices them in a corridor, or the ordinary social proof of being around other Muslim children. It can give them an hour of undivided attention a week, which a classroom cannot.

By Nauman Ahmed, Founder of Live Quran LessonsUpdated 2 min read

The five things it cannot do

  1. Friends

    A child in a weekend madrasah makes friends who are also fasting in Ramadan. A one-to-one lesson, however good, does not do this, and for some children it is the most important thing of all.

  2. Praying together

    Jamaah is something a child learns by standing in a line, not by being told about it.

  3. Being noticed in passing

    A teacher who sees a child in a corridor and asks if they are alright. Online, if the child does not say it in the lesson, nobody knows.

  4. The ordinary majority

    In a Muslim school a child is not the only one. For a child growing up as the only Muslim in their year, that experience is worth something no video call delivers.

  5. A full curriculum

    We are not a school. We do not teach Maths, we do not issue reports to an education authority, and we are not an alternative to schooling.

What it does that a classroom cannot

Attention

One child, one teacher, for the whole lesson. In a class of twenty a child recites for perhaps a minute. Here they recite for most of the half hour, and every mistake is caught the moment it is made.

Pace

A child who is behind is not left behind, and a child who is ahead is not held back. Neither is possible in a group.

Reach

A family with no local madrasah, or no local madrasah they trust, or a child whose only free hour is seven in the morning. The alternative is often not a classroom -- it is nothing.

Visibility

A parent can watch any lesson from the same link the child uses, without asking first. Very few in-person classes allow that.

How to decide

  • If there is a good local madrasah and your child is happy there, keep it. Online is for what it does not cover.
  • Many of our families do both -- madrasah for the community, one to one for the reading.
  • If the choice is online or nothing, the comparison is not with an ideal classroom.
  • If your child reads poorly after years of group classes, the problem is reciting time, and that is exactly what one to one fixes.
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What can it genuinely not give my child?

Muslim friends, congregational prayer, a teacher who notices them in a corridor, and the ordinary proof that other children do this too. Those are real and no amount of good teaching replaces them.

So should we use a local class as well?

Where there is one that suits, yes. The two do different jobs: the local class for company, the one-to-one lesson for the reading.

What does it do that a classroom cannot?

Give one child the whole half hour. In a class of twenty, a child reads aloud for a couple of minutes; here they read for most of the lesson and are corrected every time.

Is online a second-best option?

For community, yes, and we say so. For learning to read correctly, no, and the arithmetic of attention is why.

How do families fill the social gap?

A weekend class, a masjid circle, or simply other families doing the same thing. It is worth planning for rather than hoping it happens.

When is online clearly the right choice?

When the nearest class is far, too large, or taught in a language your child does not follow, and when the drive itself is what would make the family give up by November.

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