All we have to do each day is read the newspapers to see how bad things have become in today’s society. Malaysia is one of the best and safest countries to live in, but even here we have severe social problems. Reports of murder, rape, incest and drugs have now become weekly, if not daily, events. As our Prime Minister, Dr. Mahathir recently said, “Right now the world isn’t a very nice place to live”.

While it is our intention at the Model School to give our children a good academic and good traditional Islamic education, we also feel it is our responsibility to send our students out into the world with a burning desire to right all that is wrong. We also attempt to provide our students with powerful ‘tools’ of knowledge concerning the mechanisms of human development and social change technology which will enable them to succeed in this grand task of positive social transformation, essentially to help make the whole world a nice place to live.

Last year the directors of Model School became aware that the Women’s Club at UKM had learned some important new skills in raising and teaching children based on new knowledge of psychology and child development, but consistent with traditional Islamic beliefs and practices. One of the UKM Keleb Wanita members, who is also a parent of several children attending Model School, suggested the possibility of implementing these techniques for developing children of excellent character in the Model School School. This year the values education program, now called the Khalifah Project, has been implemented at the Model School under the direction of UKM Keleb Wanita with the goal of instilling many wonderful positive social values in the students with the support of our excellent teaching staff and a large number of highly motivated parent volunteers.

The focus of the program is to teach the children to fully understand their role as khalifah of Allah. To help the children understand their responsibilities as khalifah of Allah. And, create an environment where the children gain a great love in their hearts for all that is good and a reasoned dislike of all that is wrong. The children are taught that is it their responsibility as khalifah of Allah to make themselves good, to help others (society) become good, and to make the physical world good (as a clean and beautiful garden pleasing to Allah).

We are calling the method we use the Khalifah method. The Khalifah method is quite simple really. We bring the children’s attention constantly to the fact that they are acting as khalifah of Allah in every action the take, every word they speak or even every thought they think – so they must know and love what Allah wants and take precautions to stay away from the bad influences of shaitan. We then try to notice every small step, in all parts of their life and studies, that the children take which is in a positive direction and be sure that positive step is followed by some sort of reward, usually praise or acknowledgement from teachers, parents or peers for what the child has done right. And we attempt to set very firm guidelines to make clear to the children where the line is between acceptable behaviour and unacceptable behaviour. We then try to notice every time a child crosses the line into the range of unacceptable behaviour and give immediate guidance, in a kind and loving manner, to encourage the child correct their wrong behaviour.

Even though the Khalifah Project has only been fully underway for a few months numerous positive changes, both small and large, have been noticed by the directors, the teachers, the parents, and by the children themselves. Our students are coming to truly believe the world does not have to continue having so many terrible social problems, and that they can be a generation that helps to turn the worldwide, increasingly negative social trends around and start on the path to a future for themselves and their children that allows them to live in a world that is kind, loving tolerant, prosperous, and safe.

To the degree that we succeed in these wonderful plans to help our students develop excellent character and have a much better future we will be offering these ideas, this knowledge, the program, and whatever instructional materials we develop to other Islamic schools throughout Malaysia and hopefully across the world. Although this program was developed by Muslims under the Islamic tradition for Muslim schools and parents, we feel that since all of the worlds religions hold to basically the same set of positive values, that these ideas and methods could be easily incorporated without their Islamic concepts and terminology into schools and homes of those who follow any of the other major religions of the world, and that the same positive goals for the development of excellent character in their children would be obtained.

This is our humble attempt do try to do something positive to help make Malaysia an example to the world of what a good and right society should be doing to help the world become a much better place for children to grow up in.