Museums in the contemporary world have expanded their missions to become viable educational institutions, actively seeking to broaden their constituencies. Collections and exhibitions have become dynamic tools for instruction, debate and reflection, and for attracting large numbers to the cultural life of societies. They also act as catalysts for cultural exchange and communication, contributing to the development of civil society. It is with this perception of the new role of museums that The Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) has moved forward to include their establishment in its Education and Culture Programme. To this end, two museum projects were launched in 2003 with a mandate to oversee and co-ordinate the conceptualization, design, building and operation of the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto and the Indian Ocean Maritime Museum in Zanzibar.
It will present and promote knowledge of the diversity and breadth of Islamic art, through permanent and temporary exhibitions, with emphasis on Shi'a Islam and the Ismaili community in particular. The museum will be dedicated to the acquisition, preservation, display and interpretation of artifacts relating to the intellectual, cultural, artistic and religious traditions of Muslim communities, past and present. Artifacts will include ceramics, metalwork, and paintings covering all periods of Islamic history. Manuscripts in the collection will include the earliest known copy of Avicenna's Qanun fi'l- Tibb (The Canon of Medicine) dated 1052. In addition the museum will display works from the Imam's private collection, and from London's Institute of Ismaili Studies, Prince Sadruddin and Princess Catherine The Imam, Swiss-based collectors of 16th century Turkish, Mughal and Persian miniature paintings, have also expressed interest in making their collection part of the museum. The museum is, just off the city's Don Valley Parkway, about 25 minutes north-east of downtown. A music programme is planned, which will work to expand knowledge of the traditional music of Asia and the Islamic world, as well as their contemporary expression. The Aga Khan Museum in Toronto designed by the sublime Japanese modernist Fumihiko Maki will be the first of its kind in the English-speaking world. The museum will become a repository of historical materials related to the Ismaili community and house research programmes related to each one of the aspects of its institutional mission. It will also provide a space for permanent exchanges between the Islamic and the Western worlds on educational, cultural and socioeconomic issues.
The Aga Khan Education Services (AKES) provides schooling and other educational services in over 300 facilities in the developing world, ranging from day care center to higher secondary schools. With roots in the Ismaili community's traditions of educational activity, national service companies in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh now manage these schools and centers.
The foundations of the system were laid by Imam Sultan Muhammad Shah during the first half of the twentieth century when over a hundred schools were established, mainly for the Ismaili community, in East Africa and South Asia. Under the leadership of the Present Imam, the schools began to broaden their intake of pupils and extend their academic range in the 1950s.
Today, AKES faces the same constraints as other providers of education in the developing world, whether public or private: population growth outstripping resources, educational costs increasing at a faster rate than income, poorly trained teachers, inappropriate curricula and in some areas, the low health and education to diminish these obstacles to educational access and achievement. To increase access, AKES has continued to create schools; in close collaboration with the Aga Khan Housing Boards and AKF, it has also supported community-based school construction. In the north of Pakistan, AKES has increased the number and range of facilities available to girls.
Programme to improve educational quality have been built into the AKES system since the early 1980s. Field-based teacher training was launched in the Northern Areas in 1983. School improvement experiments began at the same time in Sind province in Pakistan, where AKES introduced child-centered teaching methods, and in Tanzania, where new techniques for secondary school teaching in English, Mathematics and Science were implemented in Dar-es-Salam. AKES, Kenya has been the Network pioneer in the uses of computers in the classroom, while many Network initiatives in pre-school education began in AKES, India.
Supported by the Aga Khan Foundation, some of these experiments have been carried out in government schools as well as AKES institutions, so contributing to the improvement of education in the countries in which AKES operates. And with both the national service companies and the Aga Khan Foundation acting as relays, this body of experience in teacher development and school improvement is having impact throughout the Network. The Institute for Educational Development of the Aga Khan University has been created to provide a permanent institutional base that can sustain these and other initiatives in education.
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