• A Light in the Tunnel of Arab Education

A Light in the Tunnel of Arab Education

Nobody who observes or deals with the education sector in our Arab world can doubt that there is a crisis, a suffocating crisis, like going down a long dark tunnel. Is there a light which tells us that we can get out of this tunnel?

At the end of last summer, I was in Europe at a time when destructive floods swept through the eastern parts and some of the western parts of it. This natural emergency and other things were an additional reason to contemplate ourselves and our Arab circumstances. The self which I found myself immersed in contemplating apart from the individual and personal self was our collective self as Arabs, and the implications thereof. I found myself in the middle of Europe, at the heart of one of the advanced central European locations (Germany), following the events of our Arab world with concentration and anxiety through the international, and of course some Arab, satellite channels. Two events caught my attention and made me feel some recovery and optimism. As I followed events, I wrote observations from the situation of this coverage, because of my feeling of the supreme importance of the two events in our future course as Arabs. I remained waiting for whoever would have their attention aroused by them, particularly since they came together in one period of time, or at least were close to each other in time, but I did not claim a triumph from this linkage, which it seems that the floods of Central Europe and confinement by natural storms when I was away from home had made me receive the news of the two events on one day, and make the linkage between them automatically. I recall them now, although months have passed, because in my opinion and in accordance with what I felt and still feel they are important, indeed extremely important, signs of the possible that we can we can achieve to catch up at least to some extent with others, in spite of the conditions of deterioration we are living through in the Arab world. These have been caused by a long history of subjugation, and failed reactions which have cast us into a deep abyss of a past which has gone, rather than pushing us in the direction of a future, which I fear we will lose also, after the present has been shaken in our hands and is about to be lost.

From Bir Zeit to Damascus

The first of the two events whose media coverage I followed in one day from two separate sources was the success of the professors and students of Bir Zeit University in Palestine in inventing and using a computer program which they called Ritaj (Gateway), which enabled them to continue to receive their university lessons and refer to their professors, and the professors to follow them up through the Internet, in spite of the Israeli siege which is closing their university, encircling their towns and villages, and preventing them from circulating and leaving their homes.

The second event was the inauguration of the Syrian Virtual University in Damascus, as the first university of its kind in our Arab world. While it is an extension of other Arab harbingers in the field of electronic education, both in what are called open universities and universities which provide external students with opportunities for later education, the inauguration of the event in its home country was at the summit level in decision-making and appreciation. This makes it likely that there is a serious inclination for this virtual university to continue and be developed.

These two Arab digital events reminded me of the American couple, Alvin and Heidi Toffler, who were most interested in predictive and theoretical future studies of the expected changes, with the escalation of the scientific and technological revolution in the realms of communications and information technology specifically. In that field they have presented a series of important writings, including The Culture Consumers, Future Shock, Adaptive Corporation, Power Shift and Creating a New Civilization: The Politics of the Third Wave - and these are writings which it is essential to translate and circulate to Arab readers, as in other nations of the world. Although their book Future Shock is the most famous of their writings in terms of the public, it stopped at the limits of referring to the problems of adapting to the expected future changes, whereas their book The Third Wave heralded the emergence of a new wave of civilization, the Third Wave. The two authors consider that the First Wave was the wave of civilization which was spread by agriculture, and the Second Wave was impelled by the Industrial Revolution.

The Third Wave is the post-industrial wave, the wave of the information age or of information based on the achievements of the communications revolution and the computer sciences revolution combined. The Tofflers crystallized their theory on this Third Wave in the book of that title which was published in 1980, and then in another book published some 15 years later under a title that was more confident of their vision of the future, and more definitive in its clarity: Creating a New Civilization: The Politics of the Third Wave, published by Turner in 1995. It is noteworthy that this book was introduced by Newt Gingrich, the US politician and Republican former Speaker of the House of Representatives, whom the two authors themselves described as a revolutionary and futurist conservative. The introduction is presented clearly and pragmatically as a guide to the 21st century for the use of citizens. There is a clear tone of confidence in the book that this Third Wave, its policies and its effects will come about. The Tofflers say in their book that humanity is getting ready to make a quantum leap forward as it is facing a social upheaval, and the course of creative reawakening, which is sharper than at any time before. Without being completely aware of it, we find ourselves in the position of someone who, starting from nothing, is building a civilization unlike anything that has preceded it. This is the meaning of the Third Wave.

The Sweeping Wave

From the beginning of creation up to now, humanity has known two major waves of change. Each of them to a great extent abolished previous cultures and civic situations, and replaced them with life styles of which previous generations had never thought. The First Wave the Agricultural Revolution went on for thousands of years. The Second Wave by which I mean the launching of industrial civilization took some 300 years, and that was enough.

Today the quickening pace of history is more apparent, and it is probable that the Third Wave will predominate and become an established fact in a few decades. Accordingly, those who live on this planet at such a critical moment will live and witness the third shock of civilization.

The Politics of the Third Wave is dedicated to the treatment of the political, social and production requirements of this Third Wave, which has in fact begun its course with the progress of the communications and information revolution. Newt Gingrich says that America entered the Third Wave on 5 January 1995, when operation of the Thomas system began, which enables people to make electronic contact with the Library of Congress, to obtain access to the documents they want to examine. I mention this date and this observation, first because it is linked to the subject of our discussion, and second to show the astonishing acceleration with which this Third Wave is progressing, to change the planet Earth with one of its most visible manifestations, the Internet, which has come to contain the world all but a little of it between the intermeshes of its digital web. But although the world consumes the information on this net, the extent to which it catches up with this wave varies. There are those who have swamped this wave with a flood of trivialities of silly consumerism in information offered by the Internet. This has happened with us Arabs, and we used to wonder when we would stop wasting these favorable opportunities to benefit from what is being offered us to develop ourselves, not to sink deeper into perdition.

The opportunities for culture and learning were the most obvious favorable opportunities of this international information network. But we remained for several precious years’ worlds apart from them, although relying on progress in computer sciences and information technology offers the Third World an opportunity that it was never offered before with the achievements of the industrial age. The poor people of the South were not allowed the opportunity to obtain one of these achievements except as consumers. They would buy cars, aircraft and ships without being able to produce them with their own hands except in rare cases and within the limits allowed by the wealthy North, the inventor and owner of the invention patents, the production lines and the monopoly for marketing these products. And when a large and ancient country, one of the countries of the South, namely India, wanted to produce a car that would be a 100% national industry, it found no other course but to buy an old factory with its complete production lines which a European company got rid of. This means that any South state which wanted to enter the industrial age was compelled to begin from where others had begun. But in the post-industrial age, the age of the information revolution, a rare opportunity is available to begin from where the others left off. We all know that Third World participation in the field of programming is certainly considerable, and the invasion of Indian programmers in the arena of computer programming in the West is not unknown to us. Also Arabic programming has had some surprising leaps forward, if it is compared with the poor situation of people working in this precise field and the general circumstances which obstruct instead of supporting progress and pushing it forward.

More than a Quarter of a Century

In spite of all that, and in spite of the persistent hardships from which Arab education and all those who deal with it are suffering, no assiduous and conscious attention was paid early on to the seriousness and importance of the future scenarios, which were presented in order to foresee possible developments in the field of education on the basis of early data regarding the development of digital technologies and modern means of communication. Dr. Ahmad Shawqi, one of the people seriously interested in science and scientific culture in our Arab world, has noted that the Tofflers are not the only ones who have foretold and theorized about the rapid advance of the Third Wave. For more than a quarter of a century there have been people who talked about it, like Boorstin and his book The Republic of Technology, and Brzezhinski the former US National Security Adviser in his writings about American strategy in the technotronic age (derived from the two words technology and electronic).

There was early talk about the rapidly advancing wave, and there were strategic visions. Where were we Arabs, while the field of Arab education particularly higher education was in a constricted condition, squeezing out its past and present in its narrow space, until obtaining a university education in our Arab world became like going to war, a primitive war in most cases.

We were never there at that time, and one thing that makes me say so frankly and harshly is what I read about education in the Encyclopedia of the Future published in New York by Simon & Shuster Macmillan in 1996, which was distributed in many parts of the world, like London, Mexico City, New Delhi, Singapore, Sidney and Toronto. I will mention excerpts from some of its contents under the heading Education in more than one field, from the scenarios in the encyclopedia. It is clear, a few years after these scenarios were put forward, that they were not imagined, but in fact were programs of action! Under the heading of Telecommunications, it states that the telecommunications revolution will make education much more effective, more available and more fun. Learning will become active, rather than passive, and students will be able to pace their study. Students will be able to receive much of their education without leaving home. New opportunities will be available for gifted students. Students will be able to earn a three-year bachelor s degree with the fourth year spent on a master s. Interactive programs picturing historical documents, holograms of famous people, virtual reality battles, and other features will actively involve students in learning. Interactive education will allow students to participate in highly creative hands-on exercises without the need of human instruction. Artificial intelligence programs will pick up patterns in a student s response and tailor instruction to shore up weak points. Satellite communications will be extremely cheap, enabling any person in the world to benefit from the fruits of electronic education.

With regard to the Third World, the encyclopedia said in one of its scenarios that Third World nations will be able to leapfrog other nations still adhering to traditional passive instruction techniques.

As for the side effects of this electronic education, the encyclopedia believes that Tele-education will continue to homogenize cultures and languages. It could lead to accusations of cultural imperialism among those whose language and culture are underrepresented.

With regard to the effect of educational technologies, the encyclopedia indicates that with the birth of new technologies a new definition of education will be born. Education will have no age ceiling, nor any limitations of place, and it will be open in terms of time.

The degree of confidence in schools (academic degrees, certificates and specialization) will be less important because of the need for education throughout one’s lifetime. Mass teaching, cross-cultural analysis and world consciousness will all constitute basic trends in tele-education. Adaptation, mutual support and respect, and the etiquette of dialogue, all these will be stimulated by the technical teaching networks in the schools. The schools will continue to meet the need for social dialogue, education, personal contact and mutual human support. The technologies and intelligent systems will provide for the various different needs of the students, to help them to adapt themselves to the new teaching situations.

A University which Breaks through the Siege

This phrase is mentioned in the encyclopedia when it was published nearly seven years ago (bearing in mind that thinking precedes writing, and writing precedes the date of publication). And now we see all these scenarios in fact coming true in their positive aspects and their negative nightmares. But mostly we have remained for longer than we should far away from the positive aspects and preoccupied with the nightmares, while our Arab educational circumstances in most of our countries have reached the point of disaster, without the technologies of teaching being seen from the dimension of a wide open door to get out of our educational impasses.

In view of this degree of failure, as well as the failure of Arab circumstances in general, a gleam of hope comes from the gloomiest and harshest of locations which are suffering from oppression and agonies which are imposed on them, in occupied Palestine. There is no doubt that the light from this gleam of hope reflected onto the announcement of the Syrian Virtual University which coincided with it in different circumstances. Together they double the feeling of hope in our ability to achieve the leap forward , but not a leap over the backs of other nations in order to surpass them, but rather a leap over the backs of our despair and impotence in order to surpass this despair and impotence and catch up even with the tail of the Third Wave in one of the most admirable of its aspects, like teaching and education.

This feeling of our failure to catch up with the digital teaching wave continues to stand before us and cling to the ruins of our Arab talent for missing favorable opportunities, in spite of some good first stirrings, attempts and advanced Arab educational projects, which have got lost in a sea of negative, deteriorating education which expands to volume of useless quantity at the expense of excellence and high quality.

But the attention I have paid to the two news items of the initiative of the private Bir Zeit University and the official Syrian Virtual University gave me an intense dose of optimism.

In Bir Zeit University, a lady professor and the students found themselves in the midst of a siege and destruction imposed by Israel on the Palestinians in occupied territory, threatening them with the loss of an academic year because of the closure of the university and the road to it being cut.

The Palestinian Arab intellect found a brilliant way out, to break through the siege and rise above the destruction, in these scattered computers connected to an information network and dispersed among a few houses and several coffee houses and Internet cafés. They quickly prepared a special program which they called Ritaj, and which conveyed the lectures to the students wherever they were, and brought back to the professors the students questions about the points which required discussion. The modest computers in the Palestinians houses and cafés were transformed into a parallel university which employed the latest achievements of the age which the Tofflers regarded as the Third Wave in human civilization in higher education. among the names of those in charge of this project that I have found out is that of Marwan Tarazi, Director of the Information Technology Department in Bir Zeit University. I mention it in order to congratulate him, and to congratulate his colleagues whose names I do not know, and to say that their achievement is an excellent and noel contribution, not only in the field of freeing Palestinian higher education from the noose of the Israeli siege and racist aggression, it is also an advanced contribution to freeing the Arab educational mentality from the traditional and negative submission to siege in the field of education.

The Syrian Virtual University , while it is an extension of numerous Arab attempts in the field of open education, education at a distance and electronic education combined, with the coverage it has received, nevertheless represents a crystallization of the idea, an inauguration of the project and an impetus towards maturity and development, particularly since there is clear official sponsorship for this university represented in the person of the young Syrian President, Dr. Bashar Al-Assad, who is known for his interest in the world of the computer and its uses. It is a flash of official alertness to that Third Wave which I hope will spread quickly among Arab officials, to keep pace with the speed at which the Third Wave is spreading, the wave of civilization of the information revolution and the communications revolution together.

Is There Hope?

These two Arab breakthroughs in the field of education, which I hope will not stop at the limits of temporary need, the need to get out of a temporary impasse, or the need to declare association with the language of the age. I hope that they will develop, and all the attempts and first stirrings of similar Arab projects in the field of learning from a distance or learning from the Internet will develop. This breakthrough or the employment of these modern, or rather post-modern, potentials in a beneficial and excellent manner is not a luxury of placing some cosmetic powders of the ageing face of Arab education. Indeed, it is an absolute necessity in order to save an important sector which is concerned with the Arab present and future and is suffering from a real bottleneck in the realm of higher education in particular. There is nothing more indicative of this bottleneck than the constant state of emergency in most Arab homes, which are crushed by the anxiety of educating their children, then this widespread frustration in universities which are suffocated by overcrowding and lack of means, and then these armies of Arab graduates who cannot find anything to do because their education was not related to the present or plans for the future, or was outdated and failed to speak in the language of the age and the future.

There is a hope with which small sparks are being emitted, two of which we have examined here. I hope that the Arab horizon will glow brightly with more, so that we do not lose the future, after we are on the verge of losing the present. Let us always search for hope among the rubble of the massive devastation in which our societies are living at various levels.

Sulaiman Al-Askary

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