Bill Gates Applauds Khan Academy’s Ingenuity...
Weeks ago at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Bill Gates applauded the educational efforts of Salman Khan in front of a 2,000-man audience. Khan, the only teacher of the online Khan Academy, produces videos and tutorials that have made his website one of the most popular educational sites on the internet. Khan’s ten to fifteen minute free tutorials, on subjects including math and science, are now viewed almost 70,000 times a day. Commenting on the tutorials, which both Gates and his 11-year old son Rory consume, the second richest man in the world says, “I’d say we moved about 160 IQ points from the hedge fund category to the teaching-many-people-in-a-leveraged way category. It was a good day his wife...
Innovative Program Trains Pastors, Imams, Rabbis Together...
February 25, 2011 Monaliza Noormohammadi | Claremont, California There’s an ambitious effort under way, to change the way religious leaders in the United States are educated. It’s a new theological program which plans to train Muslim, Jewish, and Christian clergy together. In one southern California classroom, scholars and students from the three major Abrahamic faiths – Christianity, Islam, and Judaism – are examining sacred texts, focusing on their spiritual commonalities. This course on interreligious leadership is part of a new graduate program taking form at the Claremont School of Theology — an initiative that would train future pastors, rabbis and imams side-by-side, as they work toward their theological degrees. “We think it’s the world’s first shared curriculum in...
Greg Mortenson Fights Terror With Education...
September 13, 2010 Nancy Greenleese | Denver, Colorado Greg Mortenson looks like a typical climber. He’s a towering, boyish man in his fifties, wearing frayed khakis, a tan top and only socks on his feet – no pretensions whatsoever as he addresses about 400 people packed into a Denver area bookstore. Using slides, he tells the story detailed in Three Cups of Tea, his book about climbing K2, the world’s second tallest peak, which straddles the Pakistan-China border. In 1993, Mortenson came within hundreds of meters of the summit where he planned to honor his late sister. But an illness forced the California nurse and his climbing party to descend. A devastated Mortenson got lost on the way...
Ramadan Tests US Teen Athletes
September 01, 2010 Dora Hasan Mekouar | Washington, DC When the George C. Marshall High School cross country team assembles each day for practice in Falls Church, Virginia, Maha Hassan is not among the runners. Instead, the 16-year-old athlete walks around the school track on her own to try to keep her conditioning up. Hassan is not running this summer because she is observing the Ramadan fast, which means she abstains from all food and drink during the daylight hours. Added challenge The timing of the Muslim fast changes each year. It occurs during the ninth lunar month of the year and begins with the sighting of the new moon. This year the holiday began on August 11,...
Anti-Terrorism Summer Camp Held In Britain...
August 13, 2010 Henry Ridgwell | London What is being called the Western world’s first anti-terror camp for young Muslims is being held in Britain, with thousands of people attending from across Europe and North America. ‘Al-Hidayah 2010’ – as it is called – is being staged by the Pakistani Muslim scholar Muhammed ul-Qadri, who is giving workshops and lectures on how to recognize and counter extremism. At first, it looks like any other summer camp; young people are arriving with bulging suitcases, discovering their new surroundings, chatting awkwardly and making new friends. But al-Hidayah 2010 is a summer camp with a difference. About 1,300 young people from across Britain, Europe and even North America have gathered at...
Islamic Schools in US Raise Hopes, Fears...
July 12, 2010 Mohamed Elshinnawi | Dearborn, Michigan. As the population of Muslims in the United States continues to grow, so too does the number of Islamic schools serving Muslim families across the nation. American Muslims see these schools as a way to provide their children with a combination of good, mainstream education and training in the essentials of their faith. But critics fear some of these schools might expose Muslim children to radical Islamist views. Religious education Education has always been very important to the Muslim community in the United States. And like many other families, Muslim parents have educational options. They can send their children to secular, county-administered public schools or private academies while providing religious...
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