After a year which was characterized mainly by change demanded by
millions of young men and women who sparked off a wave of uprisings and even
sacrificed their lives for it, many voices were heard giving descriptions,
making analyses and comparisons and drawing conclusions.
In the midst of all that the
Fourth Arab Cultural Development Report appeared shedding light on many aspects
of that dramatic scene, particularly as the report is produced annually by the
Arab Thought Foundation, monitoring the events which preceded the Arab
Revolutions and focusing on youth presence in hot issues since 2010 and
throughout the past year. That s why as we read and analyse the report it looks
like reviewing, interpreting what happened and, more probably, predicting what
will happen, particularly in view of the fact that the15-33 year-old Arab youth
account for 66% (i.e. two thirds) of the total population of the Arab world.
As we repeatedly stressed the importance of the ingredients and
products of education in previous Talks we give serious consideration to the
main issue in a section of the report dealing with the key issue of university
education relevant to the labour market and how the disparity between them led
to the recent uprising, as unemployment was the main trigger for youth
protests.
Education and unemployment areas of deficiency
At the beginning of the university education and the labour market
section the report reviews the alarming increase in the number of private
universities in Egypt as an example compared with that of higher education
institutions, as in a single decade, from 1999 to 2010 the number of private
universities rose by 375% compared with that of governmental ones being 58%.
In addition, university education, private and governmental alike,
does not enjoy any independence, in contrast to European, American and Asian
universities which imposed themselves on the course of academic progress. There
is lack of independence in the following areas: academic structures, course
content, academic appointments, budget expenditure to achieve purposes and
salary scales. Faculty s salaries account for only 39% of the total salaries
and the rest (61%) goes to non-academic employees and ancillary services.
Added to the above deficiency is the fact that private universities
grant admission to students who do not score well in the secondary school
certificate and can t join top faculties in governmental universities, such as
those of medicine, engineering, economics and political science, and computing
and informatics, which means a parallel deficiency in the quality of the
graduates who will join the labour market, or rather the unemployment market
later!
Similarly, there is a wide disparity between the number of students
enrolled in theoretical and scientific specializations in governmental
universities : 49.1% in social sciences and 20.1% in the humanities versus only
10.3% and 7.2% in engineering and medical sciences respectively, and a similar
low rate in other studies. The majority of the children of poor families find
in technical education the only way to complete secondary school and often does
not led to higher education as only 0.5% of them complete secondary school
successfully.
The above reasons combined have contributed to the deterioration in
the quality of education which is one of the main forms of deficiency affecting
the relationship between such education and the labour market, and unemployment
has created a number of problems and at the same time revealed an economic
deficiency in the labour market.
This state of affairs is not limited to Egypt but applies to
Tunisia as well, as when the Tunisian university celebrated its gold jubilee
two years ago (established in 1959) two serious problems addressed by the
report spoilt that celebration: the unemployment of higher education graduates
and the low quality of such education for two decades. According to the report,
the Tunisian revolution in December 2010 proved that university graduate
unemployment was one of the main factors of the social upheaval which fed the
revolution with such a strong youth protest force. It was also one of the
scenes of hidden and severe unemployment which hit Tunisian university
graduates and made study at tertiary or even PhD level a means of coping with
unemployment and tough living conditions rather than pursuing scientific
research.
University study and beyond has become a strategy for securing
places without desirably good results, particularly in the light of the high
success rates in recent years as part of the so-called the policy of success
pedagogy , in contrast to the unprecendented rising failure rates at the
Tunisian university in the 1970s and 1980s. The number of applications for
employment at Tunisian ministries was 508,000 in 207 and the number of the
jobless rose to 740,000 last May, five months following the outbreak of the
Tunisian revolution. Southern and north-western areas accounted for a record
28% of unemployment figures. The state of university education in Egypt and
Tunisian no doubt applies equally well to the rest of the Arab world s
universities.
Writing and creativity as outlined in the report
Let s ask: Does this central problem, along with other problems
created by unemployment, appear in youth writings and literary and artistic
works? That s what we are attempting to read in the features of the writing and
publication movement covered in the Arab youth writings report including field
and statistical studies. According to the report, the works of youth novelists,
poets and researchers, as an elite group, serve as a barometer of Arabs tension
and fatigue.
To begin with, there a sharp difference between Arab youth writings
from one country to another. In Egypt the writings in recent years have openly
been carrying the early signs of revolt, perhaps due to the widening range of
the freedom of expression in society, while scenes of protests are subdued and
modest in other Arab counties. In general, youth writings in 201 were dominated
by expression of their marginalization and varying degrees of schism between
their aspirations and Arab reality.
In Lebanon, most of its young writers were born and raised among
political and security turmoil, instability and political and sectarian strife,
as most of them were born after 1975, the official date of the outbreak of the
civil war which overwhelmed society and, according to the report still includes
factors of a possible cold civil war and militant ethnic rhetoric. Syrian youth
writings reflect the severe restriction on freedom of expression and differ
from those of the youth generation of the1960s and 1970s who were involved in
politics and addressed public issues and national causes during an era of
growing pan-Arab sentiments, social transformations and ideas of radical
change.
The above feature reveals the struggle put up in the creative works
of the present youth generation who are free from the burdens of their
predecessors and no longer express their failures. However, this does not at
all mean that conditions have become better, problems resolved and wounds healed.
There are still reports of severe poverty, corruption and unemployment in many
Arab societies, but it seems that this younger generation have distanced
themselves from direct and indirect party inclinations which make their
writings different from those of their predecessors and some contemporaries
whose works look like a party manifesto rather than creative poetry or literary
ones.
The report also looks at the special interests of young men and
women, pointing out that love features prominently in the works of the latter,
but differs from the literature of the 1960s in which the familiar pattern was
romantic love culminating in marriage. Today s love is marked by uneasiness and
turbulence, not normally leading to marriage and difficult to sustain for a
long time. In addition, young women are influenced by the dominant culture of
self-restraint which contradicts and clashes with a desire for emancipation.
Moreover, the writings reflect differences among youth writers who
want to live independent and free from obligations, captivated by talking about
the body which plays a central role, revealing what is hidden and deduced, as
well as fluctuation and disagreement through giving and taking, in addition to
colloqualism or the like, which spoils the writings.
But writings are not confined to books and poem anthologies, as the
youth have found a new outlet for publishing their creative works on the
Internet.
Young Internet users in Egypt in 2000 were estimated at one
million, rising to twelve million in 2008.Blogs first appeared in 2003,and the
number of bloggers in Egypt was two million in 2010. The blogs revealed how the
(creative) youth generation have been influenced by revolutionary figures such
as Ahmad Fuad Najm, Salah Jahin, Yusuf Idris and Ahmad Bahauddin, marking
interaction between a new generation and that of the 1960s who championed major
national dreams and aspirations. Interestingly, most writers engaged in culture
in Egypt, including young men and women, are the ones who present television
programmes more than their contemporaries.
The youth and arts ... early signs of revolution
As almost all research and studies agree on the falling level of
reading as a cultural activity, which is not limited to the younger generation,
we may look at other forms of expression, such as theatre, cinema and music, in
which the youth expressed their concerns, protest and revolt.
The appearance of independent cinema in 2010 and the rise of Arab
cinema institutions supporting the seventh art and unprecedented film boldness
can lead us directly to a positive role played by the artistic movement in
youth enlightenment. Most of those engaged in film production writers,
directors and actors- were among the Egyptian youth who provoked the January 25
revolution either on Facebook or appearing directly in Tahrir Square.
But it was a different scene in Tunisia as the prestigious Carthage
festival in the autumn of 2010 opened like an empty mirror, and only two
Tunisian films were produced as the film industry has been declining for years
due to despair and indolence in the light of an ageing generation and the passing
away of another and the immigration of still another generation. This requires
that the younger, revolutionary generation in free Tunisia change the structure
of art.
The new production of Lebanese cinema introduces a note of optimism
that artists have surmounted the civil war and its memories, with no new signs
of another disaster. That s what is told by Nadin Labki s film, which was shot
in 2010 and shown last year, indicating the new sensitivity of a young
film-maker who sensed danger. Other similar films were produced during 2010 and
they appeared at Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Doha film festivals, which called 2010
the Lebanese cinema year.
In contrast to the cinema boom in Egypt, Lebanon and Morocco, and
even in Syria-despite the small volume of production which is a record compared
with that of previous years Arab drama entered a dark tunnel following the
decline of its tools. It seems that the ruralization of historical Arab cities
had a negative impact on the theatre, as there is no theatre without a city. In
addition, the Arab theatre has popularised the culture of the television
picture, as in the experiment of the UAE theatre which is covered in detail in
the report.
In Lebanon, talk about plays expressing popular sentiments, which
the report describes as disgraceful, has disappeared as the Lebanese theatre no
longer carries the audience to a different world and at the same time maintains
its special high level, and drama has lost its boldness and powerful appeal,
and the many plays now look like a single one. The Syrian theatre has also lost
talented, creative and professional generations no epical spirit or rigour. As
for the Palestinian theatre, its survival is a miracle which relies on the
strength of despair. The report s reading of the daily life of the public and
private sector theatre in Egypt comes to a shocking conclusion: decline in the
latter and confusion in the former with too much involvement in festival chaos.
The Egyptian theatre is no longer in harmony with its past, with no new experiments
due to lack of funding, and even foreign embassies have penetrated Egyptian
troupes to produce political drama.
As far as music is concerned, TV song channels attract a large
number of youth viewers, with the rise of song video clips which hide defects
in singing, low-quality music and arrangement and words. Western culture s
consumerist music has been influencing the form and content of Arab music. A
comparison between the patriotic songs not the youth s first preferences - of
the 1960s and 1970s generation, with those broadcast in 2010 showing that the
latter songs have become just celebratory ones.
However, as the report says, songs in Egypt and Tunisia before the
revolution, witnessed a number of its early signs, as in the Tunisian song They
taught us : They taught us how to turn the night s darkness into a flame. They
taught us how to hide a jasmine in our heavy hearts, as well as in Muhammad
Munir s Song Why :
I m a child who s grown very attached to you, but halfway you made
me lose my way, why?! I raise your head, but you bend mine, why?! The song,
which was banned on the Egyptian television in 2010, has become a music icon on
all channels.
The youth and information the future of the revolution
Many analysts of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions have
stressed the power of information as tools of revolution and change, but the
report adds a third dimension: how information tools and gates express the
youth s different strands of thought and even determine the future. Bloggers
have a large audience, with the highest response rate from Egypt s, Saudi
Arabia s and Kuwait s bloggers, a strong indication of he significant influence
which these blogs have on a wider sector through social networks.
The report strikes a balance between contributions and comments on
the Internet in sectors like education, and notes the popularity of the issues
raised on Facebook. It also relates more females blogs in nine countries than
male ones, taking advantage of the Internet for hiding behind an electronic
veil in masculine societies as well as women s narratives behind a virtual
curtain which may not reveal their real characters. In addition, analyses show
gender, differences: women excel in reflections, whereas men s priorities and
cinema and religious topics.
Analysis of the sample shows that the vast majority (85%) of
bloggers do not tend to specify their occupations clearly. On top of the list
of bloggers across the Arab word are journalists, writers and students;
followed by teachers, with preachers, religious scholars and business men near
the bottom of the list
Blogs are also influenced by factors of geography. Religious issues
came in first position in all Arab countries except Saudi Arabia, Sudan,
Kuwait, Djibouti, Lebanon and Egypt, where they came in second position. Cinema
issues occupied positions ranging between first and twenty fourth: First in
Saudi Arabia, second in Algeria, third in Egypt, fifth in Djibouti, followed by
Kuwait and Bahrain, ninth in Iraq and eleventh in Palestine.
Interestingly, the report shows how movement in cyberspace was
parallel to movement in the street, which requires that we reconsider opinion
poll tools and monitor the issues raised on social networks and in youth blogs.
The views and ideas serve as an early warning for the future. Arab
digital interaction in 2010 was an arena in which pubic and private affairs
raced to capture the attention of individuals and the community together, with
figures showing that the intensity of competition reached a level of vitality
far beyond reality.
Arabs, particularly the youth, are not concerned with their own
personal interests alone but rather see, fear and share in what is going around
them after receiving a multitude of information of different strands from rival
movements.
It is as if we say that it is movement within that virtual space
that provoked the popular uprising from the Internet to reality. In this way
revolutions on the Internet preceded those in the squares. That s how the youth
thought, were affected and then contrived and took to the streets carrying he
views and ideas having built up considerable momentum. In this way, whisper on
smart phones and computer screens turns into a massive wave whose impact we are
still monitoring, and we will probably keep doing that form many years to come.
Sulaiman Al-Askary
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