Arab World Still Lagging in Education, Literacy

Although western influences are bringing better educational opportunities to young Arab females and males, rigid traditions in the area prevent many among the Arab youth bulge demographic from benefiting.

"It's a very youthful region - 60% of the region's population is under 30 years of age, close to 100m new jobs will need to be created over the next 10 to 15 years in the Arab World," he explained..."If we are to create such jobs, then we have to start with education."__BBC

As the youth demographic in the Arab world explodes, little seems to be done to help this rising tide of largely illiterate youth prepare for the changing world outside of insular Arab society.

"There is a pressing need within the region to redirect educational approaches across all stages and all forms to educate students on how to think and not what to think," Marwan Musher, a World Bank senior vice president, said at the launch.

"Education systems do not support adequately the development by girls and boys of analytical skills, problem-solving skills, critical thinking and innovation," he said.___Source

While there always seem to be enough funds to sponsor fanatical Wahabi madrasas--training jihadis and suicide bombers--there is little attention given to helping youth prepare for real world employment. Illiteracy remains a huge problem for Arabs.

The number of illiterate people in the Arab world has reached 99.5 million, accounting for 29.7 percent of the whole population, the Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (ALECSO) said Monday.

Among these, 75 million people are aged between 15 and 45, the Tunis-based ALECSO said in a statement....The sharp increase of illiterate people will pose a severe threat to the social development of Arab nations, said the statement. ____Source

Of course, if parents intend for their children to live only long enough to fight and die, or to blow themselves up, perhaps the constricted viewpoint toward their future makes sense. Multiculturalists will tell us that we should not judge another culture.

Once, Arab science was supposed to have enjoyed a "golden age." Between the 8th and 11th centuries CE, the ancient wisdom of the west (Greece) met the ancient and more recent wisdom of the east (India, Persia, China) in Arab cities such as Baghdad.

But many of the early scholars were not Muslims either. Instead, what unified Muslims, Christians and Jews, Arabs and Persians, was the Arabic language. It would remain the international language of science for 700 hundred years.

The point is that there is no such thing as 'Islamic science' or 'Muslim science', as it is often portrayed both in the West and the Muslim world today. Science cannot be characterised by the religion of those who engage in it.___Source

Baghdad, Damascus, and other Arab cities were in the right place at the right time to absorb the ancient knowledge, and to contribute to the ongoing development of certain branches of science and mathematics.

When Islam grew intolerant again--as it does periodically--the "golden age" turned to dross, and discovery in science and math moved on to more open and promising societies. It has never looked back since.

Arab lands were once rich in "market dominant minorities." As long as those minorities were tolerated, Arab lands prospered. When Islam grew too intolerant for the tiniest glimpse of outside thought, Arab lands went into decline--and stayed there.

Current "oil wealth" in Arab countries exists due to development by outsiders and continued maintenance of production by outsiders.

The counter-productive attitudes toward hard work that bedevil many minority communities in western countries, are even more widespread within Arab communities. Whether hard mental work, or hard physical work, the general attitude is to avoid it. Given that mental set, educational reformers have their work cut out for them.