Education between westernisation and preserving identity

Tareq al-Suwaidan devoted an episode of Al-Wasatiyya to "education between westernisation and preserving identity", which he called an extremely serious issue, widespread across the community. ⁶ Opening it, he said foreign culture now surrounds people like the air, in the media, films, songs and fashion, and that foreign and semi-foreign private schools and universities have spread. ^{6 7} The subject touches an earlier episode on changing the religion curricula, but it is wider: it concerns education as a whole, not only religion curricula.

The presenter asked whether the spread of these schools reflects a crisis in Arab education and a larger crisis in preserving identity, why people, especially the elite, turn to them, and whether they are really better at learning, at building character and at teaching the skills for success in life. ^{7 8} He asked in turn about their negative effect on students' identity, language, religion and morals, whether they are a calamity, a blessing or both, and where the middle way lies. ^{8 9} Several education experts took part in the studio, with an audience of young men and women, most of university age. ^{9 10}

The presenter asked the audience which schools are best for achievement in science and mathematics: 10% said government schools, 18% Arab private schools, 30% Arab Islamic schools with a clear Islamic orientation, and 42% foreign schools. ^{11 12 1} These are the votes of that episode's studio audience.

He then gave the ranking of countries in eighth-grade science on the 2003 TIMSS measure, which he said was the latest he had found published online. ¹³ As he read it: Singapore first, then South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan, with Malaysia tenth, the United States fifteenth and Britain eighteenth. ^{14 15} The first Arab country was Lebanon at 31, then Jordan 32, Tunisia 35, Egypt 36, Bahrain 37, Palestine 38, Morocco 40 and Saudi Arabia 43 of 46 countries; he commented, "we have a calamity in education." ^{15 16} He added from Arab studies that most government-school students are weak in Arabic and in reading speed, that only 31% reach the world average in science and 34% in mathematics, and that the studies agree girls outperform boys, even in engineering and mathematics. ^{17 18} These are the figures as the presenter gave them.

The presenter introduced Ishaq al-Farhan as a former minister of education, an Islamic thinker and president of several universities. Al-Farhan called the figures disturbing and said education is the community's "heavy industry", not iron, aircraft or weapons. ^{19 20 21} He estimated spending on education in the Arab world at no more than about 4 to 5%, against 20 to 30% on arms and security in some states and 60% in some rich states. ^{22 23} He explained the Islamic schools' high share of the vote by their seriousness and a sense of mission that drives them. ²⁴

Bushra Qadoumi, a school director in Jordan and head of the cultural and educational forum of private schools, said Islam urges knowledge, that Islamic schools in Jordan adopt the newest theories, and that Asian countries ranking above America and Britain shows that what counts is people's readiness to learn, not money. ^{25 26 27 28} Mahdi Ahmad Sidqi al-Dajani held that the leading countries share a lighter hand of the state, and that the more educational institutions are tied to central power, the weaker the results. ^{29 30 31}

Imad Husayn, director of the academic section of the IslamOnline network and a university professor, called the figures saddening but unsurprising, and cited the Ahram Centre for Studies as saying Egypt has one security man for every four citizens and one university professor for every thousand students. ^{31 32 33} He said 52% of Egypt's students are in private and foreign education, and the presenter put Kuwait's share at about 35 to 40%. ³⁴ Imad explained the demand by private management's responsiveness to parents, while government decisions come down from above; the presenter added that private education has a profit motive that obliges it to serve "the customer". ^{35 36}

The engineer Ahmad Milhim, a researcher on foreign schools, objected to the question itself as biased: starting with science and mathematics follows the global yardstick, and he saw the biggest problem in education as giving it a consumerist dimension within today's dominant global culture. ^{37 38} He held that the gap between Arab and Islamic private schools in the vote is the gap between education with a mission and education without one, and that renewal is faster and stronger in the West than in the Third World. ^{39 40}

The presenter said he had founded and run foreign schools, graduated from a foreign secondary school, studied abroad at every stage from bachelor's to doctorate, and that his children are going through the same experience. ⁴¹ He saw no comparison between Arab and Western curricula in science and mathematics, said the information in Arab textbooks lags about twenty years, and gave as an example an outdated model of the atom still taught in schools and universities. ^{42 43} He said there are twelve methods of language teaching, of which the Arab world uses two while a single foreign curriculum uses ten or eleven, and that a Western textbook is replaced every three years against an Arab average of ten to fifteen. ^{43 44} He closed this theme by saying that covering up the crisis will not cure it; facing it openly will. ^{44 45}

The presenter explained that by building character he meant a student's ability to debate, speak in public, analyse, research and think, political and economic awareness, and the ability to defend his rights and voice his opinion, and he asked the audience to leave religion, morals and language out of this question. ^{45 46 47 48} The result: 6% no difference, about 7% non-Islamic Arab schools, 45% Islamic schools and 42% foreign schools. ^{49 2} The presenter said he had lived the experience himself, with his children and with his students, of whom he once had 1,700. ^{50 51}

Ishaq al-Farhan said he voted for Islamic schools while acknowledging that foreign education builds character better in critical thinking, argument and research, because he wants not a personality in a vacuum but an Islamic personality. ^{52 53} The presenter recounted that while running the "Academy of Creativity", a school teaching a foreign curriculum with an Islamic identity, he decreed that any teacher who hit a student would be dismissed; everyone complied except the Islamic education teachers, whom he dismissed. ^{54 55} Al-Farhan said he issued a similar decision at Zarqa Private University, which saw no student violence in twelve years. ^{55 56} He recounted that he graduated from the American University of Beirut in the 1950s, that its nineteenth-century name was the Syrian Protestant College because it came for missionary work, and that it obliged Muslim students to attend church on Sundays; he and fellow students protested and he was dismissed, and the Mufti of Lebanon intervened. ^{56 57 58} This is his account.

The presenter held that Arab education in general, Islamic schools included, carries a kind of dictatorship and repression that keeps the student from answering back, defending himself and protesting. ⁵⁹ Al-Farhan answered that this depends on the educator, since the student learns from the teacher as a model more than from the book, what is called the "hidden curriculum". ⁶⁰ Bushra Qadoumi backed the presenter on "a strange paradox": we want a free person confident in his opinions, then repress him at school without explaining why; she also rejected the absence of red lines in some foreign schools in how students treat teachers. ^{61 62 63}

Al-Dajani objected to setting religion, language and culture aside, made students' ability to mobilise and speak out on the community's causes one measure of character, and said the schools in Arab countries are Western, European and American, not Chinese or Malaysian, and so belong to the Western onslaught on the community over the last two centuries. ^{64 65 66} Bushra Qadoumi said her children attend a bilingual Islamic school teaching part Arab and part foreign curricula, that they have become confident debaters, and that such schools require continuous intensive training for their teachers. ^{67 68 69} The presenter said his school did not celebrate Christmas or Valentine's Day, but Eid and, in Kuwait, Qarqi'an. ⁷⁰

He gave examples of life-skills subjects in the foreign school he ran, for primary pupils: a model United Nations; a subject in public speaking, oratory, debate and dialogue; a subject in managing economic projects; a robotics lab; a genetic-engineering lab; entries in non-sports international competitions; and subjects in art appreciation, history through art and analytical thinking. ^{71 72 73} A young man in the audience held that a student's character cannot be separated from his morals and Islamic upbringing, and a young woman said the West is better in every field except morals. ^{74 75}

The presenter specified that he meant foreign schools that governments oblige, under supervision, to teach Arabic and Islamic education, not purely foreign schools. ^{76 77} He said he had expected the whole audience to say Arab schools preserve identity better; the result was 60% Arab schools, 21% foreign schools and 19% no difference, which he called "strange and unexpected". ³

A professor from the sharia faculty of Yarmouk University said violence in schools is a thing of the past, and that French schools, when they decided to ban the hijab, expelled a thousand girls, asking where freedom of thought was then. ^{78 79} Ma'mun, of an educational services company, held that the identity problem arises from bringing in foreign teachers to teach foreign curricula, since the student learns from someone with his own culture, dress and manner of speech, and said his company runs a programme to prepare local teachers for the British curricula. ^{80 81 82} The presenter explained that in foreign education a teacher holds a four-year teaching licence, renewed after a test on modern curricula and teaching methods, and said this system exists nowhere in the Arab world. ^{83 84}

Another professor from Yarmouk's sharia faculty, citing Muhammad Qutb, recalled a medieval European chronicler lamenting that his people's highest hope was to study in Cordoba and to boast of speaking Arabic, and held that the problem lies in weakness, not in the other. ^{85 86 87} The teacher Nadia al-Khatib said education in Western schools is better in most respects, in research methods, character building and teacher training, but costly and beyond most people's reach. ^{88 89}

The presenter asked whether the foreign schools' effect on identity is deliberate or incidental. Al-Dajani said it is deliberate: they came to prepare an elite serving the agenda of those who came to take the country's wealth, and he asked how they could have more merits when they came with a colonial invasion. ^{90 91} The presenter replied with a question: do graduates of non-Islamic Arab schools have a clear Arab and Islamic identity? ⁹² Al-Dajani cited the mahdara in Mauritania as a traditional model that still follows old methods and refuses foreign curricula, quoting one of its shaykhs as saying they would not adopt the curricula introduced at al-Azhar. ^{93 94}

Al-Farhan agreed it is deliberate, saying that since the Crusades the West tried to colonise the lands mentally before colonising them by arms, sending missionaries, and that this accompanies foreign education wherever it spread. ^{95 96} He recounted that as minister of education he saw Israeli curricula listing Amman and Jerash among the cities of Israel, and told UNESCO: delete what they have and we will consider deleting what we have. ⁹⁷ A member of the Arabic Language Academy, he said learning foreign languages is fine, but the danger is a foreign language becoming the language of instruction with Arabic cut back from the first grade; that the Arabic of foreign-school graduates is mostly affected; and that Jordan's Arabic Language Academy declared 2007 the year of the Arabic language. ^{98 99 100 101} He held that moral problems are common in some of these schools, aided by satellite channels, and that home and school remain the two most important factors in upbringing. ^{102 103 104}

The presenter asked whether Western curricula could be used in their own languages for scientific subjects, while preserving identity, as a temporary solution until the community rises and produces alternatives; 85% agreed. ^{104 105 4} A mother and thinking-skills trainer spoke of her children's experience in a foreign system and a British kindergarten that respected their personalities; a medical student said she tries to put her foreign references into Arabic and cannot, because translated books are weak; and another young woman said family and society share with the school in building character. ^{106 107 108 109 110}

Bassam Ghanim said not a single Arab university appears in the world research rankings, called for improving the Arab teacher's material and professional standing and for the accountability missing in government schools, and said no Arab minister sends his children to a government school. ^{110 111 112} Imad Husayn cited a 102-page post-11 September American report, published on a site he called "Washington Report", as calling for American schools and universities to spread the American way of life among Arab and Muslim students; this is his statement and the report has not been checked here. ^{113 114} Ahmad Milhim held that the Western model of education is "ruinous" in the West and more so for us, being weaker economically and scientifically; al-Dajani advised young people to seek individual solutions by studying closely with teachers and shaykhs in small circles. ^{115 116 117}

Bushra Qadoumi asked the presenter, who studied in the West, whether this affected his Arab and Islamic identity. He answered that his children studied in American schools from kindergarten and their Islamic identity is sound, urged families and schools to strengthen values in children because, once strengthened, they will defend them, and said he sees students in America and England holding to their Arab and Islamic character more firmly than young people in the Arab world. ^{118 119 120}

Al-Farhan closed by calling education the community's heavy industry, naming the settings of upbringing as home, then school, then peers and the hidden curriculum, and saying teaching should be the most sacred and best-paid profession. ^{121 122 123} He said Arabisation is a political decision: he attempted full Arabisation on coming to the University of Jordan in 1976 but time and political will ran short; it could be done in two or three years given the will, and he cited Japan, which he said has a national centre translating every new scientific article within six months, as well as Vietnam and European countries teaching the sciences in their own languages. ^{123 124 125} He said Jordan's Arabic Language Academy translated dozens of university textbooks that go unused, and that he has no objection to teaching two, three or four languages provided Arabic is the foundation. ^{126 127}

The presenter said the community fell behind over centuries and this shows in education, and that renewal needs awareness, which comes only through two tools: media and education. ^{128 129} He read the growth of foreign schools as a sign of weak confidence in government education and its curricula, even among the elite. ^{129 130} He listed the merits of foreign education, the academic level, a world language and clear tools for building character, and its drawbacks: a clear effect on identity and on Arabic, by which he said he can tell a foreign-school graduate from his handwriting, and moral corruption in many such schools. ^{130 131}

He saw the solution on two levels: in the long term, a collective political will for high-quality education in our own language, with Finland as his example of a country that he said kept its identity and language and became first in the world; in the short term, using Western curricula in the pure sciences that do not touch identity, while choosing the right teachers and opening teachers' colleges to qualify them for international curricula instead of importing teachers who bring their own identity and morals. ^{132 133 134 5} He closed by saying he wants the merits of foreign education without denying them, while remaining Arabs and Muslims and preserving identity, and he called this the middle way. ⁵

The figures and statistics on this page are the speakers' statements as they gave them. The vote results are the opinions of that episode's studio audience, not representative surveys.