Bridging the Gap: Education in the Arab World
For many parents, education is the greatest gift they can bestow upon their children. The gift of education opens up an entirely new world for a child, one where he or she can learn and gain knowledge, discover his or her talents, and learn how to interact and communicate with other people. An educated person opens his or herself to so many opportunities, with limits that he or she can break. However, what happens when education is inaccessible, interrupted, or denied?
This is the reality that young people from the Arab world face today. According to statistics from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and published in 2014, there were 4.3 million primary school-aged children and 2.9 million lower secondary school-aged children who were out of school. When the number of children who should be enrolled in pre-primary education—a stage the UNESCO describes as the foundation on which a child’s future learning is built upon—is included, the number could total to a staggering 12.3 million. UNESCO further states that the poorest citizens, girls, and children from minority communities are among those at the greatest disadvantage. At the lower secondary level, it is the boys that register the higher drop-out level. Further, UNESCO data shows that 32.5% of adolescents of upper secondary level age in Western Asia were out of school in 2014, along with 41.6% of youths in Morocco and 22.6% in Egypt.
There are key reasons as to why young Arabs are unable to get an education. For one, decades of political instability and armed conflict have undermined citizens’ access to good, quality education. Whereas the rest of the world have been making strides in raising the standards of their educational systems, many countries in the Arab world are struggling to either maintain their standards or sustain the continuity of their system. This problem is even acuter today, with the civil war in Syria going on for five years now and the nations emerging from the Arab Spring still seeking to balance their new-found democracy with their abilities to provide services. The number of people fleeing wars and unrest, most recently coming from Syria, also mean that there are children and young adults unable to go to school. With safety and security being the paramount concern, parents are forced to put education on the back burner and focus on their peace and survival.
While some of the 22 countries belonging to the Middle East and North African region have better economies with educational systems that can compare with international standards, UNESCO cites that children are still hindered by the lack of infrastructure and poverty. Children in remote areas face a lack of schools close enough to where they live. Families who lack the financial means to sustain their children’s education might discourage them from going to school, while others no longer see the importance of education when they barely make enough to live on. Low quality of education and ill-equipped teachers are also deterrents to receiving the proper education.
Adding to this predicament is the orientation of many Arab nations’ educational systems. In an article published in the Financial Times, Safwan Masri, executive vice-president for Global Centers and Global Development of Columbia University, says attempts to suppress the Arab mind through hyper-nationalist propaganda, exclusionary rhetoric, and dogmatic religious discourse have become the defining features of the Arab nations’ educational systems. This led to Arabs being deprived of a good education, along with the fact that they have been taught to become “narrow-minded, intolerant, and ill-equipped” to participate in a democratic and globalized world. “National fervor and the assertion of the regime and territorial legitimacy became deeply entrenched in education,” Masri writes, “which in turn became the tool for the imposition of state-sponsored ideologies and militaristic doctrines.” The rise in anti-colonial sentiments led governments in rejecting foreign concepts and systems of teaching for insular knowledge and values. This issue is present particularly in formerly colonized countries such as Iraq, Algeria, and Libya, where they had to create a new educational system or reform their previous ones after achieving independence.
With this, many countries in the region experience a gap in fulfilling their citizens’ need for a good education. Their inability to provide creates a vacuum where their citizens are unable to complete their education, thus denying them the chance to secure employment and contribute to building, or rebuilding, their societies.
However, where this gap exists in governments, other organizations are stepping up to fill it. Apart from UNESCO and other aid agencies, local initiatives such as the Arab Peace Corps are being formed to address the Arab world’s needs with a localized service. Inspired by the United States Peace Corps, the Arab Peace Corps was established by the New Arab Foundation in 2015 and is composed of volunteers coming from various religions and ethnicities who will be trained to serve the underprivileged and victims of armed conflict.
Among the areas of concern that the Arab Peace Corps and other volunteer and aid organizations are focusing on are literacy through education and reading clubs, sports, and skills and job training. These organizations believe in partnering with stakeholders so as to address the underlying issues blocking access to education. Organizations may provide their services directly to students by teaching in refugee camps or in areas where teachers are lacking, or provide training to local teachers to help them improve their teaching methods. Outside of the formal education system, volunteer and aid organizations also provide technical or vocational education to help young people improve or earn a new skill, which can then translate to livelihood or entrepreneurship.
The Arab Peace Corps believes that education is the cornerstone of countries trying to rebuild its society and meet its challenges. “Is it time to invest in human development and the future,” Mr. Jamallah says, believing that working for progress and improvement of human welfare will do more good than all of the bombs dropped during wars.
While the challenges to uplifting education in the Arab world are deemed great, it is not insurmountable. As Arab countries push for peace and stability, advocates remind governments to give education back its place of importance in their nation’s development. Moreover, until the gap in education in the Middle East and Northern Africa is closed, volunteer and aid agencies will work for hand in hand with governments to give their young people something to live and hope for.
References:
Masri, S. (2016, November 22). Reform learning to enable democracy. Education in The Arab World - Financial Times Special Reports, p. 3.
UNESCO, UNICEF. (2015). Regional Report on Out-of-School Children. UNICEF MENA Regional Office.
By:
Mohamed Dekkak