A curriculum in crisis By Mariz Tadros

Hamed Ammar, a prominent educationalist, believes that some of these complaints are unjustified. Ammar insists the syllabus has improved dramatically, although there is more to be done. The problem, according to Ammar, is that parents want their children's schooling to be an easy and entertaining ride. "Learning is not just supposed to be entertaining; it is supposed to be hard, arduous work as well. The new bourgeoisie is still hung up on soft pedagogy when there is a general move away from that in the developed countries." Ammar also lashes out at parents who compare the Egyptian syllabus to the "advanced" topics taught to students in the West. "Should our aim be to emulate them, or to improve our syllabus to the point where it meets our own goals?"

One of the main problems, notes Ammar, is an excessive focus on the contents of textbooks. A school curriculum is supposed to be "much more than that," he suggests. A primary school curriculum should concentrate on three things: "helping students master reading and writing skills, encouraging them to diversify their readings, and offering a wide variety of artistic and cultural activities." The fact that the Egyptian curriculum is far from achieving these objectives, says Ammar, is due to the outdated attitudes of those who set the curriculum and those who teach it. "The curriculum currently being taught in teaching colleges needs urgent and radical changes. It has not been upgraded in 30 years and the result is that teachers just don't know the right methods of teaching their own students.

Dr Aida Abu Gharib, who is in charge of the curriculum development department at the National Centre for Educational Research and Development, also believes that the problem is not the content, but how it is handled. Textbooks should play a limited role in passing on information and knowledge on to the students, she asserts, while admitting that there have been many complaints about school books. Part of the problem, notes Abu Gharib, is that, until recently, the way the ministry went about preparing the syllabus was inappropriate, with a handful of experts chosen to write the textbooks. "The centralised way in which books were prepared explains why some books do read as if they were written up by professors who had no idea what education level they were dealing with," she explains.

The new approach is more competitive. The ministry announces that it is accepting entries for a new preparatory science book, for instance, and the best suggestion is chosen. Unfortunately, however, it is unlikely that books prepared in this way will be available to students at all levels. The ministry has only managed to upgrade primary books so far, explains Abu Gharib, because the idea is to upgrade one level per year.

The lack of resources, she adds, also has an impact on the quality of textbooks. "Some books just look ugly. They are in black and white and the paper is very bad quality. I once opened a geography book where forests were shown on a map in red and purple. When I pointed this out, they told me that this was the best the printing machines could do."

Abu Gharib believes that books should not be the responsibility of the ministry alone. In advanced countries, she said, different publishing houses compete to release the best books. "This constant competition leads to improvements in the way the same information is presented to the students," she says, pointing to the advantages of having a wide range of books to learn from, rather than just one set book. Abu Gharib hesitantly admits that, if this model was replicated in Egypt, it might further aggravate the gap between well-off children who could afford to buy as many books as they liked and the poor children, who would have to resort to buying the cheapest book available.

All the same, she insists, at the end, the problem ultimately lies with the teachers, not the students. They do not encourage students to understand what they are memorising, let alone teach them how to analyse information and apply it in their daily lives. "University graduates have no skills in problem solving or in analysis and in-depth understanding, but it all starts in primary school," she notes.

According to child psychologist Fouad Abu Hatab, the educational system requires students to memorise and regurgitate information because examinations have become the ultimate criterion of success. The examinations themselves, he says, reveal nothing but the extent to which the student has been able to learn the syllabus by heart. Like Abu Gharib, Abu Hatab believes that, while parents complain about the syllabus, they are the ones who show the greatest resistance to reform. "Parents are the first to complain about examinations which seek to go beyond testing the student's ability to memorise. They are outraged if an examination question demands that the students think a little, or if the example given for a certain concept is not identical to the one they have in their books. The press immediately condemns the examination boards," he explains.

The real "crisis", he adds, is not in the syllabus itself but in the teachers' attitude. "It is almost as if they are doing society a favour by doing their job. Some put the least possible effort into class, so that students either have to take private lessons or rely on their parents' assistance." Abu Hatab dismisses the idea that shoe-string salaries justify this laissez-faire attitude, pointing to the fact that many other professionals also survive on a pittance, but that doesn't stop many of them from doing their job.

In the meantime, parents and students are waiting for a curriculum revolution, one that would put an end to the need for private tuition, extra-long hours learning one chapter after another, and parents painfully spoon-feeding their children endless lists of facts and figures.

photos: Antoune Albert, Khaled El-Fiqi and Ashraf Fares

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