Akram Khojah
THE public demands for developing education have increased. The official attempts to develop education over the past decades have failed. Our educational system continues to be closed to the outside world and cannot keep up with the latest developments around the world. This will have a negative impact on our children in both the long- and the short-term. What will happen if our children fail to master the English language, speak proper Arabic, recognize global trends and understand the differences among all four schools of thought? We have to develop our education system.
Every day, we read about Western countries that have built a strong generation of people who know how to produce results, design plans and invest properly. These countries have opened the door to discussion and debate among students and have given them a chance to ask questions, sometimes daring ones. Schools in the West do not use rote memorization or engage in single-sided opinion; they let children soar in the skies with their imagination and thinking. Our education system lags behind. Several Western countries have turned boring methods of teaching into fun. For example, Finland used to have one of the worst education systems; today, its system ranks first globally. How come? What happened? The answer is easy. Homework assignments were reduced while more time was given to students to enjoy their childhood and to be stars in the future. Our system has depressed and frustrated our children and has failed to teach them the meanings of initiative, creativity and developing one’s own projects. It continues to employ rote memorization instead of comprehension.
Students memorize lessons at home then recite them by heart in front of teachers in school. It is all memorization. They do not get any benefit from going to school. Our education system should be improved and developed to influence the life of our students and develop their skills and experiences in order to overcome future obstacles. Although technology has taken great leaps forward, some teachers continue to lag behind. Close-mindedness is one of the reasons why our education system has not been developed. The system has not instilled the values of tolerance and openness to other cultures in the minds of our students.
We need to develop a system that scouts and discovers talented students, a system that is open to the world. Teachers need to reduce the hours students spend in class and stop using traditional teaching methods. They need to replace these methods with modern ones. Children’s minds need rest and cannot absorb too much information that puts them under pressure and makes them hate education. We want our students to be creative and different.
Michael Faraday, the renowned 19th century British chemist and physicist, said: “I will simply express my strong belief that that point of self-education which consists in teaching the mind to resist its desires and inclinations, until they are proved to be right, is the most important of all, not only in things of natural philosophy, but in every department of daily life.”
