I began my studies in Arabic in my early 20’s. Before that, I took Arabic classes at my local university, some seminars offered at our local mosque, and relied on Shaykh Youtube and Mufti Google. I always found it difficult. Memorizing vocabulary words and being thrown into sentences was not the way I learned, and as I found out later, not the way Arabic was originally taught. The issue was that attaining proper Arabic education not only required someone who was knowledgeable of the language, but someone who also knew how to teach. Unfortunately, this combination proves to be more difficult to find than the average person would think. By the time someone has found that teacher or program they have already entered the trenches of battle with Arabic and leave with wounds. These wounds come in the form of: “I tried but it was too difficult”, “Arabic is taught too fast”, “I won’t ever be able to learn, this is my last chance.”
As we began teaching students at Arabic Daily, we felt that we had a strong curriculum and were able to help students reach their goals. However, we were still missing a professional element to our program. We didn’t rely on statistics to help improve the program, we didn’t provide certain technical support, we didn’t have policies and procedures, and we didn’t have a 10-year plan on how to improve. We knew we had to be better.
Additionally, we identified a problem with Arabic education taught in the United States. Arabic taught at the university level is Modern Standard Arabic aimed at helping students read the likes of Al-Jazeera, becoming diplomats, and communicating with people around the world. However, Classical Arabic is rarely taught as a separate language at the University level. As one of our advisors brilliantly mentioned, Classical Arabic is more akin to Latin as a dead language than with Modern Standard Arabic. Billions of Muslims aspire to learn Classical Arabic with the goal of understanding the Quran and Hadith, and a myriad of young academics and explorers aspire to learn it for research purposes. Yet, it is coupled with Modern Standard Arabic despite the goals differing. Lastly, we noticed that if someone who had interest at a young age wanted to learn Classical Arabic they had to travel to another program, take private classes online, or rely on their local education.
With all of this in mind, accreditation with Cognia was a no-brainer. Cognia, formerly Advanced-Ed, is a well-known accrediting body that oversees the accreditation of schools around the world. Schools that reach this level of accreditation have met the level of requirements to be deemed a trustworthy school. Schools with this accreditation work together other schools accredited by Cognia and gain a high level of trust from communities.
By becoming accredited we can insert ourselves into the educational system that is severely lacking in teaching young talented people Classical Arabic. Students in high school (and in the future universities) will be able to take our classes and use it for foreign language credit. Thus, the average age of entering the study of Classical Arabic will have decreased, the demand of learning it will have increased, and most importantly it will become more accessible.
Our timeline: InshAllah we will be having our initial assessment late April, and based on our educational consult, we plan to be accredited sometimes between July and November. Once we become accredited we will be offering a separate track for accreditation.
