Reforming Educational Programs

Urfan Nizamuldin     Al-Hayat     2003/06/16

We in the Arab world are facing many major issues, most important of which are the cases of Iraq and Palestine. But we cannot go on dwelling on these two issues, and ignore equally important issues such as education and the need to modernize the educational curricula.

While this matter was strongly raised by the U.S. following 9/11, the fact is that it has been given considerable attention by Arab officials, long before the Americans even identified it as a main shortcoming that the Arabs and Muslims needed to address.

In some of my old papers, I found a considerable number of articles and studies about the need to reform the educational system in the Arab and Muslim countries. I found also notes from two interviews I had conducted with the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Fahd bin Abdulaziz, including a one and a half hour television interview, one third of which was spent discussing the need to revise the educational curriculums in accordance with the Islamic Shariaa. I listened to him while he was talking with a clear vision about his pioneering experience since he was appointed minister of education to that day, and his repeated call to modernize schools and specializations. That was also what we listened to recently from Crown Prince Abdullah during his meeting with Arab intellectuals, and it was also what Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz, the Minister of Defense and Aviation, repeated on several occasions, together with a number of Saudi officials.

Moreover, during my recent visit to the Kingdom, I found that the publication of the ministry of education, Al Manahej, included valuable information about the comprehensive program being prepared, amid monumental international developments, to revise the educational curriculum. It includes the following principles:

Linking the educational material throughout the different levelsLinking the information with modern technological lifeIncluding modern skills in the modern educational programsLinkage with sources of knowledgeAllowing students to choose the activities that are suitable for their abilities and needs.Developing skills and values that are needed for productive activities.

I add two important factors: Preparing qualified teachers to lead the modernization process, and to improve their living conditions and develop the examination techniques. And in this respect, I found among my papers a number of articles I had published in Al-Hayat long before 9/11 and the call by the U.S. to modernize the educational systems in our countries.

After addressing complaints by parents and students, I wrote: We have to pose the question that has been on our minds for a long time with being answered: are the Arab educational systems useful? And are there efforts to correct them?

The answer needs specialists, but the immediate answer is that those who do not progress go backward. The main problem in that area is adopting quantity over quality, which is a problem that is likely to increase in the coming future, thus causing a social explosion due to the presence of thousands graduates who are unemployed.

In another article, I wrote: I would like to point to two new experiences that involved the teachers and students in Europe in preparation to face the European Union, scheduled for 1992.

The first experience was in Britain and aimed at filling the labor gap in the educational systems that aims at developing the students' mental abilities. It calls for the need to emerge from the isolation and get rid of traditional practices as well as carry out a comprehensive modernization program for the elementary and middle-level schools in which parents play a role in making the experience succeed.

The second experience is in Germany where the reform program has actually started in both the elementary and middle schools, and attention now began to be focused on university education. Among the proposals that are under examination is the use of the computer in a better way within a system that calls for having a dialogue between the student and the computer, which is turning into a private tutor for free.

I have posed these issues ten years ago, long before they attracted foreign interest. Progress is a natural demand, and it is part of a race among nations in which there is no room for losing.

Mr. Nizamuldin is an Arab journalist.