Until relatively recently, there were almost no schools in Saudi Arabia other than Koran schools, madrasahs, in which boys learned to memorize and recite the Koran, generally learning to read at the same time. Emphasis was—and mostly continues to be—on rote memorization, not analysis or critical thinking. The first private school was established in 1901, by the prominent Hijazi businessman Mohammed Ali Zainal Alireza, in defiance of the Ottoman Empire’s belief that those in the outlands should not be educated. Alireza established similar, free schools in several cities and, until the 1940s, they remained the only secondary education in the country.

There was not much need for education beyond the most basic levels. Those involved in itinerant lifestyles needed little beyond basic math skills to handle trade. What else they needed to know, they learned on the job. Similarly in the cities, trade required certain skills; more exacting skills were picked up during apprenticeships.

This standard of education extended to the Al-Saud family as well. According to Robert Lacey, in his The Kingdom (p. 177), the older princes—including the senior princes now running the country—were given traditional education. They memorized the Koran, then at age 11 or 12, were sent out into the desert to live with the Bedouin in their black tents. There, they would learn to ride and care for horse, learn shooting and marksmanship, learn tracking and desert lore. After a few years of this, they would then return to Riyadh and learn the practicalities and politics of rule by sitting in on their father’s Majlis.

It is worth noting that some of the princes did not see this as entirely adequate and sent their sons to private schools, including western universities. Faisal bin Abdel Aziz, for example, sent his sons to private primary and secondary schools in Taif, then to Princeton Univ. and other western colleges. He had his daughters educated privately. Abdullah bin Abdel Rahman, a brother of Abdel Aziz, had his daughters taught the same curriculum as his sons.

During the reign of King Saud bin Abdel Aziz (1953-64), the first state-operated secondary schools were opened. Saud also established the first girls’ school, an effort expanded by King Faisal and his wife Iffat with the establishment of the Dar Al Hanan in Jeddah in 1956. In 1960, nationwide girls education was established, but in 1963, Faisal had to send the National Guard to the conservative northern city of Buraidah to keep a girls’ school open in the face of public protest.

The building of schools, however, was the easy part. The hard part was to find teachers. As the first generations of Saudi children were being education, someone had to do the teaching. Wealthy Saudis could hire western teachers to establish private schools for their own children and those of close relatives. The state schools, however, had to find as many teachers as possible, as cheaply as possible.

It happened that there were competent teachers available, from Egypt, Pakistan, and India. These teachers were well-educated, often with western degrees. They were also coming from parts of the world with comparably low standards of living. But they brought with them political baggage.

The 1950s and early 60s saw the rise of nationalist movements around the world. The end of World War II brought with it the end of colonialism and bitter struggles to define the future of newly independent states. Egypt saw the rise of Nasser—and the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in reaction to a secularist regime. Pakistan and India, the offspring of colonial India, also featured the rise of secularist governments—and reactionary religious parties to counter them. As conflict between the religious groups and the governments grew increasingly violent, those religious groups were suppressed. Many were jailed. Others—as Sayyed Qutb, a major theoretician of the Muslim Brotherhood—were killed. Many found it convenient and timely to take well-paying jobs in Saudi Arabia.

I believe the Saudis got more than they reckoned for. In addition to conservatively Muslim, qualified teachers (which was the goal), they also found themselves hiring ideologically fervent revolutionaries. Many of the teachers went far beyond their mandate, radicalizing Saudi youth for generations to come.

The Ministry of Education, founded during the reign of King Saud—and with the current King Fahd as the first Minister—was responsible for the curriculum. What went on in the classrooms, though, was largely invisible to the government bureaucracy.

The curriculum itself was modeled on traditional education methods, emphasizing memorization at the expense of critical thinking. The texts, heavily influenced by religious authorities, compounded the narrowness of the education. No outside analysis of the Saudi textbooks had been made before 2002, so the content of those books is not really known. Following analyses in 2002, however, the Saudi government concluded that there were problems with the books:

60 Minutes

(CBS) Saudi Arabia has changed its schoolbooks because a post-Sept. 11 survey revealed that a portion of their contents were hateful and possibly anti-American, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal tells 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl.

In an interview broadcast Sunday on 60 Minutes, Al-Faisal said that, after learning that 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were Saudis, he ordered a survey of textbooks to determine whether the hijackers’ hatred for America was based in schooling. Eighty-five percent of what was being taught was not hateful, he said, but he was disturbed by the other 15 percent.

“Ten percent of what we found was questionable. Five percent was actually abhorrent to us, so we took a decision to change that and we have changed,” al-Faisal told Stahl.

The Saudi government has allowed Muslim clerics to control education for many years and al-Faisal admitted he feared that the clerics may have been poisoning students with anti-American ideas. He told Stahl that the survey was meant to discover what the books contained that would “direct Saudi Arabians to be liable to be deluded by anybody who harbors enmity against the United States
.”

And he said, “I was expecting, frankly, the worst.”

Saudi citizens that Stahl spoke to confirmed that a change had been made in the schools’ curriculum, once dominated by religion.

“Religion used to be the subject,” says Saudi businessman Hussein Shobokshi. “Now it is a subject. That is a major change, because we need good Muslims who happen to be doctors. We need good Muslims who happen to be economists. We don’t need Muslims as a full-time job.”

The American Jewish Committee performed its own analysis pointing out those problems. My office in Riyadh provided the US Congress with copies of all the texts used in Saudi classrooms in 2002. Individual Saudis with whom I’ve spoken say that the texts have been cleaned up, that the objectionable and questionable materials have been removed. I am not aware of any outside verification of this, however, though the Saudis have sought outside assistance in that task. Equally, they have asked for—and received—curriculum development assistance from countries like Australia, the UK, Japan and the US.

Even with textbooks being rewritten, however, the question about what goes on in the classroom remains. As is the case in many countries, Saudi parents have tended to let the education system educate their children, not paying close attention to what an individual teacher is doing, unless it directly affects their children. Since 9/11 and the allegations that the Saudi education system was at fault, that has changed. Many parents are being far more interested in what’s going on and have called for reform. The Saudi ministries involved with education have also been paying far more attention to the quality and content of classroom instruction. Whether this is adequate remains to be seen.

Copyright 2004-2007 Crossroads Arabia