Re: What the Hell?
dear hareem01,
it is so disappointing as you describe this incident.
the minds of these people are closed.
they have no sense of life and experiential learning by appreciating the forms and functions of the flora and fauna as some man made religious ditums have altered their own ability to be able to learn with an open mind.
young childrn wont learn about shapes and sizes, colors and numbers or letters now, then when?
you can do one thing: feel sorry for such a mind and creatively help change their minds, by holding on to your learning and teaching skill.
because if you will leave, it initself will be taken as a reason that you knew you were wrong in teaching by talking about shapes and sizes of paper plants and decorating with them.
as for learning surahs and their meanings, private Islamic schools can have one class, of Arabic or Quranic learning, but sciences, math, geography, language & social studies are important subjects. & especially school admin and teachers should not at all be like how you narrated here.
do what you have to do. and speak up. sometimes you have to shame the embarraser and i think this is what is needed here.
they can't reduce education to Islam of their own. if anything, Quran is all about science and logic from the geology of earth, presence of species, development of embryos, life and death cycles, and weather/climate to so much more on the processes of universe.
Dushwari