• ientific and Technological Education

Scientific and Technological Education.. Self-Awakening through the Pain of Comparison

With the start of the academic year in Arab universities and schools, discussions are raging about questions of education, but the subject of scientific and technological education remains the one given least attention in these discussions, in spite of its supreme importance, of which others are aware.

One of the strange things of the dual thinking in our Arab culture is that there are concepts which we apply in our individual lives, but they are not reflected on our collective lives and their practices as human, social or political units. An example of this is the concept of looking for a good aspect in calamity, on the basis that this calamity is a test through which we discover our latent abilities in terms of determination and endurance, and we also discover the strength of our religious belief. It is a brilliant attitude, which arouses reserves of strength in our souls and our bodies transforms us from people who merely suffer calamity into resisters against it, and victors over its negative effects, with noble positive effects in most cases of calamity.

But we have been repeating for more than half a century that Israel is a poisoned dagger in the heart of the Arab nation (this is a calamity that has befallen us collectively). And we move this poisoned dagger sometimes to the back, and sometimes to the waist. But we never study this dagger closely and investigate how it was made, as if merely denouncing it and cursing it in our speeches and media guaranteed keeping it painful, but a pain that does not kill, poisonous, but a non-lethal poison.

The fact that Israel is a calamity is a matter of which there is no doubt, but why do we not apply our individual concept collectively with regard to this calamity, which has afflicted and is still afflicting us all? Why do we not find in it a test which will be the touchstone for our latent abilities and recover them, and will not stimulate them in order to attack others as Israel does, but rather in order to be worthy of an appropriate place under the sun? A place here is not merely a geographical area, which is great, but rather to inhabit this area in the best possible way, for the sake of the best possible condition of human life. This does not stop at the limits of one-fifth of human beings who are floating on the surface, it also includes as a human and moral obligation the submerged four-fifths of the total inhabitants of the Arab world who are sunk under the surface of ignorance, backwardness and poverty.

Testimonies and Comparisons

These ideas became stuck in my mind after I had read an important and painful book entitled Scientific and Technological Education in Israel, by the researcher Dr. Safa Mahmoud Abdulaal with an introduction by the master of Arab Educators Dr. Hamed Ammar, may God grant him long life, increase the abundance of his efforts and make his voice heard by those who ought to listen to this voice, which regrettably is singing solo.

This book, published in 2002, is an example of sincere effort in university scientific research. It is full of plentiful fruits of authentic observation, comparisons, figures and assiduity by the researcher, who is fluent in Hebrew and so has access to sources and documents in their original language. So this becomes an eloquent testimony and true comparisons.

Dr. Hamed Ammar states in his introduction to the book: "If wisdom is the goal of a true believer which he seeks wherever he can find it, there is no doubt that what is going on in Israel, in terms of production, development, comprehension, employment, teaching and research in the realms of science and technology must be a subject for us to study and to benefit from its lessons and expertise, in terms of action and reaction, as a prevention and a cure, response and resistance, and other conscious interactions. This should be through knowledge, not from mere haphazard, emotional reactions in many instances.

We regard the Zionist state in general as a military enemy, and we compare our strength with its strength through the results of Arab-Israeli wars and Palestinian-Israeli confrontations. But we have never looked even a little bit at the machinery and the productive mechanism of this strength. We have filled the whole image with a military conception, and have missed the civilian dimension of this dangerous little entity planted in the heart of our nation. If we leave aside the trade in advanced weapons, of which Israel is regarded as one of the great barons in the world today, if we leave this aside (in spite of the manufacture of these weapons being dependent on science and technology), details of the highly developed, civilian scientific and technological production will astonish us. As mere examples, by no means exhaustive:

Israel s exports of electronic products has increased from about US $1 billion in 1986 to nearly US $6 billion in 1999.

Israel has developed the use of solar energy and expanded its use for heating homes and various purposes, so that it employs one million solar energy units in hotels and factories. This has led to savings of $1.75 billion a year. In addition, it exports this energy and its products abroad.

In the last few years Israel has achieved a high international standard in advanced fields of medicine particularly bio-medicine genetic engineering, communications equipment, high-quality chemicals, mechanisms for alternative natural resources like scanty water sources, the development of computer systems, bio-information products, and science-intensive industries with strategic implications.

Israel is now interested in developing the ultra-precision technology known as nanotechnology. This is based on precision of the product, reduction of its size and saving the energy that it consumes. Diamonds are regarded as the most suitable option to manufacture equipment depending on this technology. The diamond industry in Israel exceeded $4 billion in 1995, when it accounted for 80% of the world’s production of polished stones. It seems that most of the diamonds in the rings and necklaces of rich Arab women originate from this production!

Israel uses knowledge-intensive industry which depends on a high degree of knowledge for the sake of precision and variety of the production lines. This has invigorated its economy in a way that exceeds its capacity, since with these techniques it only uses half the raw materials and energy used in many industrial countries.

During the 1980s, it managed to produce an advanced computer which it called Eliac- 2000. The experts regarded it as a step forward in terms of world production and design of computers. It is still developing its production in this field, and even produces and

The Israeli Ministry of Science and Technology has organized a project linked to the international space industry network. It is commercial with immense capabilities, which have opened special windows into the commercial markets for artificial satellites that meet the needs of the remote sensing sector. The cost of the network is $1 billion annually.

These are merely selected examples, which show the painfulness of our situation. This raises the question: when did Israel do all this, and how?

So We Do Not See our Shortcoming

Of course, some of us will hasten to say, Israel has not achieved this out of its own strength, but through the support that reaches it from overseas from world Jewry, and from Israel's supporters in the advanced industrialized countries, especially the United States of America. From following up the methods of the transfer of technology, or rather the theft of it by methods of technological espionage, all this is true, but it is a part of the truth to which we close our eyes so as not to see it. We do not see the extent of our shortcoming and powerlessness, if not to say our stupidity.

The truth, or at least an aspect of it, is that the story of the Jews and their state with science and technology began very early on, before Israel was established. This means that they were aware early on of the importance of science and technology as a decisive element in acquiring both military and civilian strength. In the early twentieth century, those in charge of the Zionist movement endeavored to make all their institutions of a scientific nature. Their activities, in the beginning, involved the establishment of a Culture and Science Society, which was entrusted with preparing research and development programs in the basic applied sciences. In 1913, at the eleventh Zionist Congress, the idea of founding an establishment for higher education was activated, to be a cultural and scientific center. This was the Hebrew University, whose construction began in 1918. In 1924 the idea of establishing a technical institute of a high standard was achieved, with the opening of the Technion institute of applied engineering in the city of Haifa. It is an institute which to this day is still in the forefront of scientific research agencies of a high standard.

Together with these prominent features in the process of being established, there were other features of the study of science and technology, including the National University Agricultural Institute (1920), the Agricultural Research Station in Tel Aviv (1921), the Hebrew Health Center (1924), the Microbiology Institute (1924), the Veterinary Institute (1925), and the Weizmann Institute of Science (1925). These are just examples of what preceded the project of establishing the Jewish state with an infrastructure based in science and technology, which came to develop until they completed what placed this small entity in the ranks of major powers in scientific terms, at least in comparison with its size, the number of its inhabitants and the years of its life.

From research it is clear that the structure by itself could not have achieved all this had the foundations of scientific thinking and the curricula for teaching science and technology not been firmly fixed, and had all this not been provided with lavish perseverance and strict follow-up, according to the logic that investment in science and technology has a definite and huge return, not in terms of national security alone, but also in terms of the economy and profit. Directly after the state of the Jews was established in 1948, the organization of the project ORT 2005 for professional education began, with the aim of linking education with the labor market. Then there was the project Temda 1998, which the Israeli government adopted in the mid-1950s, to introduce professional education in all educational establishments and incorporate them into the modern scientific-technological age.

So, the foundation was a group of schools, institutes and research centers, and generous spending on all that. For example, the allocations for research and development became a permanent basic category in the state budget for expenditure. It would absorb a large percentage of the Gross National Product, and was regarded as one of the highest percentages in the world, amounting to 2.4%, whereas it did not come to even one percent in any Arab country. The cost per individual during the years when he was being educated was $2,500 a year, whereas it was no more than an average of $350 a year in the Arab countries.

The volume of expenditure on education came to 7.6% of Gross National Product in Israel in 1999/2000, while in the United States of America it was 5.4%, in Japan 3.8%, in South Korea 3.7% and in China 2.8%.

Inventiveness and Freedom of Research

Of course, expenditure alone is not the secret of the scientific leap forward in scientific and technological teaching and its subsequent return in the Jewish state. There was also the teaching curriculum, which stimulates inventiveness, programs with international characteristics in their development, the formation of close relations with international research institutes and centers and scientists prominent in their fields in the developed world, exchanges of scientific visits, and the contribution of a plethora of scientific articles in specialist scientific publications. It is noteworthy that the published scientific articles by researchers and developers among Israeli scientists accounted for 1% of the total research papers published in the world. They amounted to 10,206 research papers in 1995, whereas the total published by all Arab scientists in the same year came to 6,625 research papers to say nothing of the difference in standard and quality of the researches and their direction, and the comparison of the numbers of the population. Israel occupies first place for the proportion of scientists who publish research, namely an average of 11.7 research papers for every 10,000 inhabitants, ahead of the United States with an average of 10 research papers and Britain with 8.4 research papers.

In the realm of the publication of books, which goes hand in hand with any educational or research development in the field of scientific publication, Israel in 1997 sold 12 million books, an average of three books per person per year. In that same year, the number of books translated in the Arab world came to 1.2 for every million inhabitants, whereas it was about 100 books for every million inhabitants in Israel.

All these figures, of course, can only be achieved if there is an atmosphere of freedom of scientific research, and official activity by the state that undertakes to provide and disseminate a scholastic atmosphere, and a civic society that wants to transform itself into a scientific technological society that keeps pace with the age and lives in it. This rosy picture is not perfect. There are problems which scientific research and higher education in Israel face now, including the lack of acclimatization of new immigrant researchers to the society, its potentials and its conditions, and the reluctance of skilled scientists with doctorates to have fewer advantages than their colleagues in the United States of America, as well as having to do compulsory military service. And there is a widespread phenomenon of an accumulation of personnel without any work to do in scientific establishments and centers, a lack of interest by large numbers of students in continuing their university education, researchers exasperation with the concern of universities to teach Hebrew and the Jewish religion to new immigrants, and the drain of students from science faculties to technical institutes that teach skills which provide quick job opportunities.

All that has led and is leading to a kind of brain drain and some counter-immigration. But this has not prevented the authorities concerned from acting. They have dealt with scientists emigrating from Israel on the basis that they have found better opportunities abroad, and permanent links have been strengthened with them to benefit their colleagues in Israel. Flexible study programs have been designed, together with expanding the establishment of technological sections in universities, to add training for a specific profession to scientific knowledge. Universities and institutes have helped to establish a number of industrial establishments to use researches to create products of an international standard, provide job opportunities and privileges for outstanding researchers, organize a campaign to eliminate scientific and technological illiteracy among a group of people, achieve the principle of equality of opportunity in enrolling for higher education and expand the establishment of international scientific relations. This is in addition to special characteristics like:

The training of teacher-researchers who have technological skill and sophisticated academic ability, as well as fluency in several languages. This means he is not only confined to the profession of teaching, but also participates in research and development programs. This in turn makes him an instructor of an outstanding and creative kind. (The study of Arabic has become compulsory in Israeli schools).

The opening of secondary schools for people with propensities for research and scientific talent. They begin scientific research at an early age. About 15% of the 15-18 age group join these schools every year. In brief, it is a constant movement in a society which believes in the importance of science, technology and scientific thinking to its growth and impregnability. It puts this belief into practice and then collects the plentiful harvest.

This enemy, which always defeats us with this image, must not make us turn to despair. We Arabs will not start from nothing. We have first indications that are worthy of attention, and several ancient universities. We have achievements, even if they are scattered, and intellects, even if they are neglected and not given attention and most of them are living in exile because of political and intellectual repression. We also have institutions, which need to be repaired, have money spent on them and be activated for the noble purposes of scientific research for which they were founded. Before, during and after that, we must sanctify and disseminate scientific thinking and protect it from our Arab societies, in our schools, universities and research centers, and support the aspirations of civic society, which aspires to the scientific nature visions and the humanitarian nature of technology. We must open the doors to individual thinking without restriction or oppression. Individual thinking is the basis of every invention, and freedom is the precondition for discovering everything new that is useful.

Will we rethink our characteristics, after closely studying the image of this enemy who is constantly ready to jump to the front? And will we rediscover our shortcoming by discovering the achievements of this enemy and studying him from all angles of his strength and weakness? Will his progress impel us towards more haste, not to catch up with him, but rather to catch up with what we ought to be?

If we do that, we will be like those who find the cure in the hardship of a calamity. If only we would not stand there hesitating for do long, and would start to sort out our scientific and educational situation, and not content ourselves with beating our cheeks and our breasts over what we have missed. Indeed, we should lay our situation bare on the dissecting table, and place the scalpel in the required place, namely the flabby, educational part of our body, which is unable to pull the vehicle to take us into the 21st century. We must change from teaching quantity and graduating queues of unemployed people, to teaching quality. We now have queues of thousands upon tens of thousands of university graduates without employment. The phenomenon of university graduate unemployment has become an Arab characteristic, added to the unemployment of illiteracy. A major part of these queues of unemployed people turn into criminal organizations or rebels resentful of their societies, and the forces of evil, fanaticism and backwardness recruit them easily and turn them into instruments of sabotage and destruction against their own societies and countries. The smaller portion of those with some skills remain to be picked up by advanced countries and societies to add them to their productive labor force, and to become an additional strength for these societies. The successive collapses and defeats which our societies have suffered for many decades will not cease or diminish except through serious action, beginning with a complete transformation in our thinking and our methods of working. The beginning, the point of departure, must be from school benches and scientific studies based on scientific thinking, first and above all.

Sulaiman Al-Askary

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