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Al-Ahram Weekly 6 - 12 May 1999 Issue No. 428 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 6 - 12 May 1999 Issue No. 428
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Features Special Focus Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Out of the classroom?
By Mervat DiabMost middle-class families see private schools as the only gateway to job opportunities for their children. But increasingly, parents have come to feel that neither public nor private education offers proper preparation in necessary life skills. Hanaa Ibrahim, whose two daughters are in primary school, feels she must choose between expensive private education and overcrowded, underequipped public schools. Ibrahim found that neither government nor private schools are likely to prepare her daughters for a career. "They have to memorise hundreds of pages for a dull and difficult exam. Whatever they have learned will be forgotten in less than a month." Ibrahim's daughters are not engaged in any extracurricular activities -- they just don't have the time. "Besides," explains Ibrahim, "most schools are hardly equipped for any activities. They are a luxury that many schools cannot afford."
The crisis in government-run schools has been the subject of many a seminar, conference and report organised or issued by the Ministry of Education. Students have been attending classes in three shifts, but classes are still packed -- often with 80 or more students to a small room. Many rural areas are not equipped with even the most rudimentary educational facilities. Overburdened teachers find themselves unable to cope with the syllabus requirements.
A ministry report highlights the fact that the educational process is an integral part of the social system. This, notes the report, implies that developing and planning an educational strategy is a national responsibility. The writers caution, however, that "the educational system cannot by itself enforce the intended social and economic changes; therefore, social, cultural and political forces should be involved in the development process."
The ministry referred the outcome of the seminars and conferences on the educational crisis to the Shura Council, which in turn issued a report particularly critical of both the current system and the development plans suggested. The Shura Council report indicates that the development of the educational system in Egypt is now "a matter of life and death"; so far, however, "many of the new policies have integrated certain experiments unsuited to the Egyptian environment".
One such experiment, it was suggested, was that sponsored by the World Bank and the Ministry of Education. Known as the Comprehensive Primary Schooling programme, it was supposed to offer children vocational training as part of their primary school education. Most of the equipment provided for the school administrators, however, has never been unpacked.
So is it time to scrap the system and start all over? Advocates of reform and revolution alike agree on one point: something must be done. Perhaps the most decisive call for a change was made recently by leading Egyptian educationalist Shukri Ayyad. In his recently published book, Schools without Education, Education without Schools, Ayyad writes that the decaying educational system in Egypt has failed; firm measures should be taken to remedy this failure before it is too late. The increasing number of school-leavers, over-crowded classrooms, unqualified teachers and almost illiterate graduates, however, make it difficult to envisage a few simple reform measures.
Ayyad told Al-Ahram Weekly that if education is to correspond to society's needs, it must become an integral part of life. Schools, he argues, should be seen as part of the production process, and should therefore be set up on farms or in factories. Students could learn to read, write and count for half the normal school day, then work for the rest of the day. "It would be a way of applying what they have learned in class, but this time in a more successful, practical, and life-like environment," Ayyad explains.
The idea is not exactly new. In the early '40s, then Minister of Education Hussein Heikal launched the Al-Manayel experiment. In the village of the same name, students learned basic skills, then worked on the farm. More than 55 schools were established throughout the country. In the industrial areas, the scheme became known as the Talmaza Sina'iya, or industrial apprenticeship project.
Sami Badrawi, former professor of Arabic literature at the American University in Cairo, agrees that high school graduates in Egypt are not being equipped with the necessary skills to meet market demands. Badrawi believes that dividing high school education into three sections, based on the principal field of study -- literature and languages, science and mathematics -- is unfair to students. "Learning the basics of any branch of knowledge is the least expected of a high school graduate. Gifted students may go on to study their topic in more depth when they go to university," he argues. Badrawi wholeheartedly supports Ayyad's call for a return to "technical apprenticeship" programmes.
The gap between such pragmatic efforts and the insistence of other educationalists on the need for classical learning remains as wide today as it was then. Ibtisam Sahmawi, professor of educational philosophy at Cairo University, recalls that Taha Hussein, minister of education in the late '40s, insisted that students learn Greek and Latin. "Like many idealists, he believed that learning ancient languages would enable students to enjoy and learn from the works of the great philosophers. Although that has never been the case, Greek and Latin are still being taught at university," she comments.
Dina Abul-Futuh, studying English literature at Helwan University, would tend to agree with Taha Hussein. She feels the system combining basic education with apprenticeship is biased: "What guarantees are there that this system would offer a fair chance to hardworking students?" she asks. "Is it meant to create a new generation of craftsmen, leaving higher education only for the rich?" Abul-Futuh believes that the apprenticeship system would benefit business, to the detriment of the students themselves. "Most of the farms and factories that might host these classes are run by the private sector," she argues. "As long as they are making good profits, businessmen will never show any interest in offering their employees higher educational opportunities."
Badrawi, on the other hand, asserts that technological developments will force both businessmen and educationalists to help young people learn as much as the market requires. "They should also work with the government in a more productive way to create skilled graduates," he notes.
Unlike many educationalists and policy-makers, Sahmawi believes that, although the whole system is in bad shape, building a new one from the ground up is impossible in a developing country. "That would call for planning, studies and effective coordination between the public and private sectors to meet the technical needs of the new system -- all luxuries that a developing country might not be able to afford."
Sahmawi suggests that concrete problems should be addressed first. "The system has many loopholes," she admits: "Infrastructure, curricula, teachers, tests and evaluation are the major elements in the educational process. The point of attack for reform could be any item on this checklist. The whole system will then change."
Issues like school infrastructure could be a good place to start, she believes. "Not a single school was built between 1967 and the early '90s. Of course there are problems accommodating the increasing number of students and keeping up with educational development." On the other hand, examinations and evaluation are the weakest point in the system and the cheapest to improve upon. If tests are structured to measure different skills, then the curricula have to change, as will the teaching methods, Sahmawi says.
Citing a successful US experiment, Sahmawi suggests it could be adapted to the local environment. "Through field studies and research, a company has been working on developing school exams that match the market demands. These tests are prepared by qualified educationalists and checked by the US Department of Education before being distributed to schools for implementation."
