New horizons

By Samir Sobhi

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Frankly, until now we are not able to qualify our children for this age of information, opening borders and regional conflicts. This failure puts our children at a loss.

Bringing up a capable generation needs mutual communication, dialogue and the willingness of grown ups to answer all the youths' questions without coercion, or threat.

We need dialogue in order to be in touch with the most curious problems of our children.

Sexual education at schools must be taught in a scientific way, particularly in such an open age. It should be included in educational syllabuses in a proper way, emphasising integration among subjects of study.

For example, we can use historical understanding to talk about the marriage habits of peoples, and also religious understanding to talk about respect and the virtue of maintaining man's purity. We can use psychology to talk about the ways of dealing with opposite sex. Later on we can talk about marital law, marriage and its vices.

In my view, the book is still -- and will be -- the main source of knowledge. But this doesn't negate recent approaches of attaching CDs to books.

This is how schools should be: without boundaries and more exciting. Exams should not be an end. Technological approaches will prevail in future schools, and the horizon of education will change.

This week's Soapbox speaker is a veteran journalist at Al-Ahram .