Document Type : پژوهشی
Author
Assistant Professor, Institute for Educational Studies and Research, Ministry of Education of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Tehran. Iran.
Abstract
Abstract
The concept of Fitrah (innate human nature) is one of the most significant and contested concepts in the philosophy of education, particularly within Islamic educational thought. It refers to the divinely entrusted and shared nature of human beings, characterized by inherent inclinations and forms of awareness concerning power, love, self-sufficiency, and knowledge. This study aims to derive the educational implications of Fitrah based on the anthropological foundations of Imam Khomeini’s theory of Fitrah and to explore their significance for early childhood curriculum. Employing a philosophical approach and an analytical-inferential method based on library research, this study examines the educational implications of Fitrah theory. The findings indicate that the child, as a being endowed with a monotheistic Fitrah, possesses an inherent orientation toward perfection and the development and transcendence of existential capacities through the manifestation of divine names and attributes. This orientation can be understood through four fundamental goods: ability, possession, knowledge, and beauty. In early childhood, the pursuit of these goods is expressed through characteristics such as self-love and self-awareness, the search for dignity and honor, rationality and the pursuit of truth, and the capacity for choice and willing. Reconceptualizing early childhood curriculum through the lens of Fitrah suggests that children’s inclinations, understandings, and actions should be oriented toward the pursuit of higher goods. Accordingly, the educational responsibility of those entrusted with children’s upbringing is to cultivate an orientation toward transcendent goods, facilitate their knowledge and appreciation, and support action consistent with them.
Synopsis
The realization of any educational philosophy requires its foundations and principles to flow into the fabric of the educational system and curriculum. One of these foundations in Islamic education is the belief in the existence of Fitrah (innate nature) in human beings. This research seeks to answer the question: based on Imam Khomeini's theory of Fitrah, what educational implications follow for compiling the elements of the early childhood curriculum? To derive these implications, library-based studies were used. To move toward producing Islamic educational knowledge, the researcher employed an implication-based analytical and inferential method, seeking to borrow guidelines or implications from the theory of Fitrah in Imam Khomeini's philosophical anthropology — as the source knowledge — for application in the knowledge of the Islamic early-childhood curriculum, as the target knowledge.
Fitrah refers to an authentic Knowledge and inclination with a monotheistic orientation, which God has instituted as the basis of human creation in a formative (takwini) sense and as a divine trust; it is an existential quality and an inherent attribute of the human being. In Imam Khomeini's view, Fitrah has two aspects: a main aspect and a secondary aspect. The main Fitrah is love for absolute perfection, and no one can be found who does not seek perfection and love goodness and felicity. The secondary aspect of Fitrah is the innate aversion to and avoidance of imperfection, ignorance, injustice, baseness, ugliness, limitation, and revulsion toward evil and wretchedness (Mousavi Khomeini, 2010d and 2012).
According to Imam Khomeini, even those who pursue material infinitude and mistaken manifestations of absolute power, absolute life, absolute will, absolute knowledge, and so on (Mousavi Khomeini, 1993 and 2012) are, in fact, seeking God — though they themselves are unaware of this divine inclination (Mousavi Khomeini, 2010c). This divine nature, from a cognitive standpoint, encompasses the human being's direct (huduri) knowledge of God, though it is not merely belief in God's oneness (Jafari Horestani, 2015). Rather, in its inclinational dimension, it gives rise to a desire for all absolute perfections — in short, the goods classifiable under the four general attributes of wisdom, possession, beauty, and ability, manifested through such things as knowledge, self-sufficiency, love, and power. Fitrah has the capacity to give a monotheistic direction to all of a person's inclinations, insights, attributes, and actions, guiding their life toward felicity.
Although all human beings possess a monotheistic Fitrah that — absent obstacles diverting them from the path of guidance — largely enables them to move toward seeking God without needing others' help, human beings nonetheless require education (tarbiyat); for "one's Fitrah flourishes through tarbiyat" (Mousavi Khomeini, 2010c). Fitrah is embedded by God in a potential form, capable of being actualized — or, conversely, due to external and internal obstacles, it may become exposed to misidentifying instances of perfection, gradually becoming obscured and forgotten — though it can never be eliminated.
According to Imam Khomeini, the human being's innate infinitude-seeking nature, if not properly guided through education, leads a person toward actualizing their animalistic aspect and satisfying carnal desires without limit (Mousavi Khomeini, 2010a). Whereas the essential foundation of Islamic education is to guide the human being to the straight path by creating awareness and bringing them to absolute perfection and Divine oneness through their own choice and will — since awareness is a prerequisite for movement and determination (Mousavi Khomeini, 1993).
The child's Fitrah during early childhood is more untouched and more receptive to flourishing, and since it is a divine trust inherent to human dignity (Supreme Council of Education, 2012; Nejat Raizan, Alah, Mansori and Bedashti, 2015), educational sensitivity regarding the child is extremely high. Another point is that the child has particular developmental needs. Furthermore, based on Islamic jurisprudential and educational foundations, religious obligation (taklif) is lifted from the child, meaning the child possesses a form of Siyadah and is granted the freedom to act as they see fit — to the fullest extent possible — except in cases where it would harm their own or others' safety and security (Mousavi, 2023). The sum of these characteristics leads curriculum planners to the conclusion that, in all domains of education — particularly in curriculum planning — special attention should be given to preparing a suitable environment for the flourishing of the child's Fitrah in all its dimensions.
The elements of the curriculum, according to the "National Curriculum Document of the Islamic Republic of Iran," consist of: the learner, the educator, content, teaching–learning processes, assessment, environment, and tools/equipment. Belief in the human being's monotheistic Fitrah has implications for these elements in education, making it necessary for them, collectively, to aim at strengthening the child's innate inclinations and their movement toward transcendent goods. The interaction of these implications with the child's characteristics will affect the early-childhood curriculum elements, as discussed below:
1. Belief in the inherent dignity derived from Fitrah and the child's sovereignty during early childhood requires that parents and educators view the child positively and as a divine trust, treating them with respect and dignity. They should trust the child's pure Fitrah and take its capacity into account at every stage of upbringing. In other words, the child's growth, upbringing, and learning should be directed toward monotheistic Fitrah. Parents and educators should safeguard the child's sovereignty and facilitate conditions for play, activity, and experiential engagement, expanding the child's freedom. Content should, as much as possible, be context-sensitive — suited to the child's particular time, place, and unique characteristics (Alamulhuda, 2006), compatible with the child's ecological and cultural diversity — and should be delivered indirectly, not through compulsion, coercion, punishment, or indoctrination.
Siyadah, together with the child's inclination toward choice and exercising will, requires that strict, instruction-centered, book-centered, and memory-centered teaching–learning processes be removed or minimized from the child's curriculum. Instead, processes should be motivating, play-centered, activity-centered, flexible, and context-sensitive; they should allow room for the child's movement and play while simultaneously strengthening their knowledge and skills. This is because, firstly, in this period, play is one of the primary developmental needs, essential to real life, rooted in the child's nature, and their principal occupation — not merely a teaching method or form of entertainment, but, more importantly, a source and substance of education itself. Secondly, excessive or overly rigid and dry content gradually dries up the child's spirit of exploration and discovery, weakens their capacity for choice, and reduces their interest and motivation for learning in later periods. Thirdly, in some cases, it violates the child's Siyadah.
It is likewise essential that the child's educational environment uphold their Siyadah and dignity. Assessment, too, should not be conducted with a negative, punitive, undignified approach stemming from suspicion or fault-finding, nor with one-dimensional, humiliating, or overly strict criteria that place the child under pressure. Assessment criteria should take into account each child's unique situation, comparing the child's own conditions and progress before and after, rather than comparing children to one another; they should be geared toward the child's natural life situations, allow the child's natural self to emerge in play and activities, and must not undermine the child's self-confidence or hinder capacity-building.
2. Since a child's self-knowledge begins with themselves, and their rational faculty has not yet blossomed, their awareness has not yet taken shape, and they cannot discern genuine instances of perfection beyond themselves or know how to attain them — within the bounds of their own understanding, the child is perfection-seeking. They therefore seek all goods and perfections within themselves, defining and willing them for themselves, exhibiting particular inclinations such as self-love and wanting more, and displaying a self-centered characteristic (Mousavi, 2023), pursuing self-interested wants and desiring to possess whatever they perceive as good. Parents and educators must therefore respond to the child's need for self-expression and special attention, treating them with abundant affection, and strengthen their emotional bond with the child by devoting sufficient time and engaging in play together (Mousavi, 2023). This lays the groundwork for the child's cooperation with the educational programs of those responsible for their upbringing. It is likewise essential that the child's educational environment be designed to be filled with affection, to strengthen family bonds, and to be safe, trust-building, and protective of the child's spiritual well-being.
3. Although monotheistic Fitrah has a background cognitive and perceptual dimension, its value dimension — that is, inclination and desire— is stronger. Hence, from early childhood, Fitrah carries an inclination and requirement for both outward and inward purity. Furthermore, compared with other developmental periods, the child is more impressionable and more receptive to upbringing, and possesses a strong capacity for modeling and imitation drawn from their educational milieu — including all human environmental factors and non-human factors such as toys, space, and media (Altınok, Over, and Carpenter, 2023). It is therefore essential that parents and educators pay special attention to the purity and enrichment of the environment, context, and factors influencing the child's upbringing, strengthening the child's will by creating educational situations and opportunities within a context rich in values geared toward choosing goods, and by familiarizing the child with moral virtues (Beheshti and Okhovvat, 2016), laying the groundwork for raising the child's awareness and strengthening their insight regarding them. Since the child's capacity for moral action is weak — owing to the underdeveloped state of the foundations of moral action, such as knowledge and will — parents and educators should not expect the child to independently generate moral action, and the role of external guidance/molding becomes more prominent (Movahediparsa et al., 2018). It is likewise necessary that content, teaching–learning processes, environment, and educational tools gradually prioritize an inclination-oriented approach — cultivating in the child a longing for true perfections (goods) and laying the groundwork for interest in and knowledge of wholesome things. In this same vein, none of these elements should run contrary to the flourishing of Fitrah, obscure it, shape negative inclinations, or transmit un-Islamic and harmful values to the child; nor is it acceptable for a sense of competition, jealousy, discrimination, or other moral vices.
4. The innate drive for perfection lays the groundwork for a loving, passionate movement toward attaining perfection and felicity (Mousavi Khomeini, 1993 and 2013; Tabatabaee, 2001) and enables an infinite, boundless seeking across all dimensions of existence. On the other hand, the flourishing of Fitrah requires a voluntary movement on the part of the individual to choose perfections for themselves (Mousavi Khomeini, 1993). It is therefore necessary that parents, educators, content, teaching–learning processes, and the educational environment gradually cultivate the child's spirit of choice in wanting more and better of possessions, abilities, beauties, and wisdoms, with a monotheistic orientation, keeping the child's striving active. That is, not only should they avoid diminishing the child's capacity to seek perfection or hindering their power of choice, but they should also give the child the opportunity to expand their choice-making and exercise their will, so that in the future they become strong in inner self-management and willpower, and the trait of determination (azm) emerges in them (Mousavi Khomeini, 1993). Assessment, too, should assign specific merit to expressions of this spirit in the child.
5. The perfection-seeking requirement of Fitrah entails truth-seeking and the pursuit of what is right (Mousavi Khomeini, 2010a). On the perceptual level, this characteristic makes the child curious, inquisitive, and interested in finding meaning and understanding various matters; on the behavioral level, it produces notable exploratory and experiential engagement in the child. It is therefore essential that all curriculum elements preserve these dispositions in the child, stimulate a spirit of inquiry, and be planned to activate the child's sensory attention toward the surrounding environment and the elements and phenomena of creation. Each child's unique characteristics in learning, thinking, and acting should also be considered individually, so that — alongside respecting the child's Siyadah — their affective and eager engagement in these three domains is strengthened. Content, teaching–learning processes, and the educational environment should be rich with opportunities for experiential engagement, providing grounds for the child to gain experience and make ample use of their senses to discover and examine things. By creating diverse and multiple life and learning situations, these elements can assist the child's inclinations in the path of discovering and understanding truths, and — by drawing on the reinforcers of reason ("Jonoude Aghl/ the soldiers of the intellect"), such as courage, generosity, good opinion and optimism, affirmation of truth, hope, justice, gratitude, trust in God, knowledge, loyalty, tenderness of heart, and gentleness (Mousavi Khomeini, 2012) — can help the child's rational faculty flourish in a manner suited to their developmental characteristics (Beheshti, 2016), so that in the future, in their evaluations, they turn to what is right and align their judgments with truth (Mirzaei, 2013). These gradual measures do not imply that the child can attain all truths at this age, or that their judgments will be fully aligned with truth; but instilling insight and creating momentum and grounds for the child's movement and effort toward discovering and seeking truths is part of the educational duty during early childhood.
6. Monotheistic Fitrah has an integrated, coherent structure; therefore, the content and processes meant to help Fitrah flourish must not be fragmented or disjointed (Maleki, 2020). Likewise, there should be no incoherence, contradiction, or inconsistency in foundation, goal, and approach between one element and the others. Attention to the principle of integration, as well as to the characteristics of the child in early childhood — particularly Siyadah— requires that educational content be presented to the child in an integrated (tal'fiqi) manner (Alamulhuda, 2006): a form of integration that entails unity of content and meaningful connection among all its components. For this reason, Assessment, too, must be holistic, maximally coherent with the content, and oriented toward the integrated cultivation and strengthening of all the child's developmental capacities and unique characteristics, in both its design and implementation.
7. Monotheistic Fitrah gives rise to a love of beauty in human beings, which requires that content, the educational environment, and teaching–learning processes be beautiful, motivating, hope-inspiring, joyful, and vibrant, and — as much as possible — free of anti-values, tedium, despair, and feelings of insufficiency or deficiency; and, in accordance with the principle of Siyadah, that they lay the groundwork for perceiving and becoming familiar with order as a path toward the value of beauty for the child.
Conclusion
One of the most fundamental principles in monotheistic education is that the components of education, including the curriculum, should be designed in such a way that the learner's innate (Fitrah-based) capacities are not only protected from deviation but actively flourish. During early childhood, because emotion dominates over the still-weak faculties of cognition and perception, the child mostly progresses toward identity formation through inclinations; thus, the child lacks a genuine understanding of true felicity and their own real interests, and — being perfection-seeking and infinitude-seeking by nature — perceives and seeks all perfections and goods with themselves at the center.
The child's innate perfection-seeking implies that all curriculum elements, collectively and synergistically, in an integrated manner, should aim at the flourishing of Fitrah and the development of the child's existential capacities, to the extent appropriate for their developmental stage. That is, they should protect the child's dignity and Siyadah, expand the child's perfection-seeking by attending to their desire for more and better in the goods of ability, possession, wisdom, and beauty; while facilitating the child's eager movement toward attaining perfections, familiarize the child with correct instances of absolute perfections, and strengthen their inclinations — and subsequently their knowledge — toward transcendent goods, in pursuit of true felicity.
Curriculum elements need to cultivate traits related to ability, the power of choice, and willpower in the child, and to provide grounds for diverse and varied skill-building and activity, especially play. They should develop the traits associated with the general attribute of possession by providing grounds for the child's experiential engagement with, and familiarity and acquaintance with, transcendent, interpersonal, and shared possessions. To respond to the child's thirst for knowledge and truth-seeking, they should keep the child's sensory attention active and cultivate their spirit of experiential engagement, exploration, curiosity, and inquiry, alongside cultivating traits that assist reason, so that their rational capacity is strengthened. They should provide grounds for discovering and understanding meaning, on one hand, and for insight and meaning-finding aligned with the realm of meaning, on the other. They should cultivate the child's love of beauty by creating an environment rich in emotion and tenderness of heart, familiarity with moral virtues, true beauties, and wholesome things within a context rich in values.
Attention to each of these considerations in the curriculum elements will transform the curriculum framework, as well as the early-childhood curriculum itself, and will influence the determination of the program's emotional, cognitive, and behavioral goals, performance expectations of the child, and the design of basic and specialized indicators and competencies for this period — matters that should necessarily be pursued in further research.
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