Comparative Analysis of Al-Ghazali and Montessori’s Principles of Child Education

Childhood education goes with a lot of innocence, searching and exploring the environment that surrounds the young learners. The amount of energy and inquisitiveness displayed by children at this tender age is a marvel to many parents and teachers alike. This small-scale research represents a sincere attempt to contrastively analyze Montessori and Al-Ghazali’s ideas on child education. The ideas of the two scholars, one from the West and the other from the East, till these days have great significance to their respective communities. In a way, this study should be seen as an initiative undertaken in the absence of a study discussing the differences and commonalities found in the ideas of the two scholars pertaining to child education. By employing the textual analysis method and using Montessori’s principles of child education as the framework, the researchers conducted a comparative analysis. In the course of analyzing the data, the researchers had identified six emerging themes in the ideas of Montessori and Al- Ghazali. The findings have also indicated that the principles of these two prominent scholars either intersect with each other or stand in total isolation.