Mesures de percepció del Personal d'Administració i Servicis (PAS)

There were five participants who although not adherents of the Muslim faith, were employed in the Muslim participating schools. Three of these participants were followers of the Hindu-faith, while two participants were adherents of the Christian faith. Mr Pondo stated:

I follow the Christian faith and my belief is that environment was created and [that] men, the inhabitants of the environment, are tasked with taking care of it;

so, it is the responsibility of those who inhabit the environment to take good care of it.

From this statement, two issues can be drawn. Firstly, the participant’s beliefs about the relationship that should exist between people and the environment are associated with religion. Secondly, people have a responsibility to care for the environment regardless of their religious beliefs and values. Based on this finding, it can be suggested that generally a teacher’s belief and value system may have a positive influence on the way in which the teacher implements EE.

All of the Non-Muslim participants stated that, their respective faiths all advocate responsibility and care towards the environment. This attitude, according to them, corresponds in many respects to the teachings of Islam about the care and awareness of natural environment. The teachings of Islam, according to many Non-Muslim participants, are also very much similar to their own religious values. One such example cited by a Hindu participant, Mr Sono, was the fact that Muslims as well as Hindus have

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to ensure the cleanliness of the environment in which they wish to pray, prior to the performance of their prayers. Mr Sono therefore stated:

I mean our religious beliefs tell us- and it would be any religion- that you cleanse yourself first, you cleanse your surroundings, you cleanse your environment, before you actually do the prayer. When we pray… [we pray] without shoes and that is one of most religious beliefs, I mean you pray without shoes and there again you are keeping yourself [and] your environment clean.

This response relates to the aspect of environmental cleanliness and care, both of which are essential features of EE in Islam. The Qur’aan (05:07) also lays emphasis on this aspect related to EE in the following verse:

O you who believe! When you prepare for prayer, wash your faces and your hands [and arms] to the elbows; rub your heads [with water]; and [wash] your feet to the ankles.

The examples given above are regarded in this study as the religious beliefs that may possibly enable the implementation of EE in Muslim schools even though teachers are not Muslims. However, there were some issues that were cited by some of the Non-Muslim participants which were interpreted as constraining the implementation of EE in the schools. For example, Mr Pondo stated that on a few occasions, he had to consult with the Islamic Science teachers when teaching certain topics (related to EE) such as family-planning and contraception, during his Natural Sciences lessons. Hence he said:

[The grade nine learners] were learning about contraception. Now there [are]

various contraceptive methods and the condom is one of them; so, I wanted to bring the pills and the condoms to show them…not to demonstrate what to use…just to show them…but I had to be stopped. So, those are some of the things…. you don’t know the extent to which you can go… if you are from a different faith.

It is known that family planning has an indirect effect in reducing overpopulation and over-utilisation of environmental resources. However, the comment above suggests that

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schools’ religious values may constrain a teacher in making decision regarding the topics related to EE. Although the participant understood that he had to abide by the school’s religious norms, there was a particular method that he had initially thought would be suitable for clarifying some EE concepts which he could not follow because of the school’s religious values.

Mrs Faria also stated that in Muslim schools, the curriculum is especially designed to include Islamic subjects such as Qur’aanic Studies. This specialised structure creates time constraints that impede upon the implementation of EE in some instances. In this regard, she commented:

At Islamic schools, many of our periods are being taken away and we put Islamic subjects in there, so as it is our time you know becomes much less to teach certain topics [related to EE].

In another example, Mr Pondo was also prevented from the usage of the lungs of a pig, for conducting a scientific experiment during a Natural Sciences lesson. The usage of any organ of a pig is a prohibition in Islam as stated in Qur’aan (02:173). Mr Pondo was unaware of this fact. Hence he stated:

I wanted to perform an experiment and I had wanted to bring lungs, and the easiest I had at my disposal, were lungs of a pig, [but] I had to be stopped [by the School Management].

However, Mr Pondo attributed these incidents mentioned above, to his own lack of understanding of the Muslim faith. These incidents demonstrated a clash of his own religious beliefs and values, which would not prevent the use of such items to demonstrate social issue related to EE, with those Islamic beliefs.

Mr Pondo, on the other hand, also felt that, generally to implement EE to learners in a Muslim school is not a difficult task. When he was asked whether he felt offended by these above-mentioned incidents, Mr Pondo stated that he did not feel offended at all and viewed these incidents as learning experiences about the Muslim faith. However,

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as indicated, they inhibit the teachers’ freedom to teach freely according to their own belief systems.