Project aim: AN will draft a chapter titled “The prayer economy and situated perceptions of economic utility: understanding preference for Qur’anic schools” as part of a monograph titled “Decolonising education in Islamic West Africa: Cultural politics of religion, gender, and school preference”.
Research questions: According to development actors in Senegal, versus parents and youth, what is the economic utility of secular education compared to that of Qur’anic schooling? What factors explain the differences in perceptions between these two groups? What are the implications of these divergent logics for theories of school preference and education policy?
Need for the project: This chapter responds to calls from postcolonial scholars that we uncover and challenge Euro/American-centric biases in scientific models of religious behaviour. This chapter addresses this in relation to preference for religious education, using the example of Islamic schools in Senegal. Throughout the Islamic world, Qur’anic schools – teaching memorization of the Qur’an and moral education – were seen by colonial administrators as obstacles to European languages, culture and worldviews, and failed to teach ‘marketable skills’ defined narrowly as skills for the capitalist extraction economy. These negative stereotypes were reproduced within international development and among Western-educated elites after independence. Their arguments often draw from neoclassical economics which claims to be an objective ‘science’ and thus has an inordinate influence over policy-making. Yet, this chapter shows how the logics of Senegalese parents and youth who opt for Qur’anic schools (the latter account for most of the 20% of children not in government-accredited schools) expose the biases underpinning neoclassical theories of religious behaviour and flaws in education policies informed by them.
Relevance to grant scheme: The international ERC mentorship scheme is appropriate as AN was awarded her PhD in 2016, and will be mentored by Professor Vivian Dzokoto, Associate Professor in the Department of African American Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Project activities: The grant will contribute to the payment of AN’s salary over two months (March and April 2022) while she drafts the chapter. Data has already been collected during fieldwork trips to Senegal in 2011-12 and 2018-19.
Output: The project output is one single-authored book chapter.
Impact: AN intends to shift perceptions among scholars and practitioners working in comparative and international education regarding the economic utility of Qur’anic schools in Muslim majority contexts, West Africa specifically. The eventual impact sought is policy which embraces the coexistence of multiple knowledge repertoires and educational paradigms.
