Economist takes a look at the sorry state of education in the Arab world. Income levels, whether as a national figure or per capita, don’t seem to have much bearing on the quality of education. Arab countries, the piece states, spend more on education, on average, than the rest of the world. The only place money seems to have an effect is when students escape the state education systems by attending private schools. The article notes that until recent reforms, Saudi students spent 31% of their time on religious studies, but only 20% on science and math.
The article also notes that while KAUST is a magnificent effort, its value is diminished by an education system that does little to prepare Saudi students to deal with the real world.
Laggards trying to catch up
One reason that too many Arabs are poor is rotten educationA RECENT issue of Science, the weekly journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, was devoted to research into “Ardi” or Ardipithecus ramidus, a 4.4m-year-old hominid species whose discovery deepens the understanding of human evolution. These latest studies suggest, among other things, that rather than descending from a closely related species such as the chimpanzee, the hominid branch parted earlier than previously thought from the common ancestral tree.
In much of the Arab world, coverage of the research took a different spin. “American Scientists Debunk Darwin”, exclaimed the headline in al-Masry al-Youm, Egypt’s leading independent daily. “Ardi Refutes Darwin’s Theory”, chimed the website of al-Jazeera, the region’s most-watched television channel. Scores of comments from readers celebrated this news as a blow to Western materialism and a triumph for Islam. Two or three lonely readers wrote in to complain that the report had inaccurately presented the findings of the research.
The response to Ardi’s unearthing was not surprising. According to surveys, barely a third of Egyptian adults have ever heard of Charles Darwin and just 8% think there is any evidence to back his famous theory. Teachers, who might be expected to know better, seem equally sceptical. In a survey of nine Egyptian state schools, where Darwin’s ideas do form part of the curriculum for 15-year-olds, not one of more than 30 science teachers interviewed believed them to be true. At a private university in the United Arab Emirates, only 15% of the faculty thought there was good evidence to support evolution.
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October:16:2009 - 11:36
Well, this article preaches to the choir as far as I’m concerned. Until quite recently, in Saudi, even most private schools had to use the same government curriculum the government schools used. The main difference was a better quality facility and perhaps some additional classes-like English at an earlier grade, PE for girls, or Karate or something like that. Often the teaching quality did not improve much, but sometimes it did- and I think the parent/student ratios were better.
But the private schools have their own problems. They are businesses and want to keep customers- and sometimes that gets in the way of setting a standard. There can be pressure on teachers to give good grades to everyone, to show how well they’re students are doing. It can get very convoluted.
A few years ago they started letting some private schools run different curriculum (still with ministry approval and lots of religion)- including American diploma’s, which require external accreditation.
This year they also loosed the stranglehold on Saudi students being allowed into the international schools (should they qualify) though some Saudi students had managed to get in through combinations of legitimate excuse (child already spent many years abroad/learning disability etc), wasta and bribery. Of course, according to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child- parents should be allowed to choose without special gov’t permission. Ok. I’ll get off my soapbox now…:)
October:16:2009 - 22:32
I had an orthodox Christian education in America; and after I heard and read all the bad things about Charles Darwin, I went to the county library, found his main book and read it to form my own opinion. Perhaps my experience does not relate to any experience anyone could have in an Arab land. Better they should know why they don’t like it than to know nothing about it.
October:17:2009 - 07:51
Worse than not knowing anything about it is ‘knowing’ things about it that aren’t true. The Islamic world has its own Darwin-denialists, including the extremely popular Adnan Oktar, better known as Harun Yahya.
And Jon, Welcome!