Knowledge & Community Development

Knowledge

&

Community Developmeht

Asif Moinul Islam

Contents

Introduction 1

Knowledge 2

The impact of KNOWLEDGE SET FREE 4

Knowledge is not static 5

Knowledge consists of different types 6

Many faces exploring knowledge 7

Reliable knowledge 9

Communicating knowledge 11

Situated knowledge 11

Partial knowledge 12

Knowledge management 12

Community 14

Types of community 14

Identity 15

Community building and organizing 15

Development 17

Human development 19

Community development 19

Education 20

CEFAD - A concept of a new system of 22

Education for Human Development

Conclusion 24

Introduction

Man is the greatest creation of Almighty. Man is the greatest of all the creations because of the knowledge the lord has given to him. One of the distinctive features of Islam is its emphasis on knowledge. The Quran and the Islamic tradition (sunnah) invite Muslims to seek and acquire knowledge and wisdom and to hold men of knowledge in high esteem.

In the Holy Quran the word al-Ilm, knowledge, and its derivatives are used more than 780 times. The first few verses that were revealed to our Holy Prophet (SAW) mention the importance of reading, pen, and teaching for human beings:

Read: in the name of your Lord who created. He created man from something which clings. Read and your Lord is the most generous. Who taught with pen. Taught man what he knew not..." (96:1-5)

"Say [unto them, O Muhammad]: Are those who know equal to those who know not? But only men of understanding will pay heed" (39: 9)

In the Islamic traditions, too, there are many words of praise for knowledge and the learned.

The prophet Muhammad (SAW) has said, "It is an obligation for every Muslim to seek knowledge." "Acquire knowledge, it enables its possessor to distinguish right from wrong; it lights the way to heaven."

Not only the religion Islam has given the importance of acquiring knowledge, the other religions also given the importance to it.

Man can become perfect by getting proper education. Therefore a community can be perfectly developed only by those who have got proper education. Only the properly educated persons can lead a community to the ideal way. True social movements can be lead only by the wise persons. Ignorance leads to chaos. Cultivation of proper knowledge can save human civilization from chaos and disaster.

Knowledge

Knowledge is defined (Oxford English Dictionary) variously as (i) facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject, (ii) what is known in a particular field or in total; facts and information or (iii) awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation. Philosophical debates in general start with Plato's formulation of knowledge as "justified true belief". There is however no single agreed definition of knowledge presently, nor any prospect of one, and there remain numerous competing theories.

Knowledge acquisition involves complex cognitive processes: perception, learning, communication, association and reasoning. The term knowledge is also used to mean the confident understanding of a subject with the ability to use it for a specific purpose.

"We suppose ourselves to possess unqualified scientific knowledge of a thing, as opposed to knowing it in the accidental way in which the sophist knows, when we think that we know the cause on which the fact depends, as the cause of that fact and of no other, and, further, that the fact could not be other than it is. Now that scientific knowing is something of this sort is evident -- witness both those who falsely claim it and those who actually possess it, since the former merely imagine themselves to be, while the latter are also actually, in the condition described. Consequently the proper object of unqualified scientific knowledge is something which cannot be other than it is."

--- Aristotle, Posterior Analytics (Book 1 Part 2)

The definition of knowledge is a matter of on-going debate among philosophers. The classical definition is found in, but not ultimately endorsed by, Plato., has it that in order for there to be knowledge at least three criteria must be fulfilled; that in order to count as knowledge, a statement must be justified, true, and believed. Some claim that these conditions are not sufficient, as Gettier case examples allegedly demonstrate. There are a number of alternatives proposed, including Robert Nozick's arguments for a requirement that knowledge 'tracks the truth' and Simon Blackburn's additional requirement that we do not want to say that those who meet any of these conditions 'through a defect, flaw, or failure' have knowledge. Richard Kirkham suggests that our definition of knowledge requires that the believer's evidence is such that it logically necessitates the truth of the belief.

In contrast to this approach, Wittgenstein observed, following Moore's paradox, that one can say "He believes it, but it isn't so", but not "He knows it, but it isn't so". He goes on to argue that these do not correspond to distinct mental states, but rather to distinct ways of talking about conviction. What is different here is not the mental state of the speaker, but the activity in which they are engaged. For example, on this account, to know that the kettle