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.

How Much Longer Will Muslim Women Keep Popping Them Out Like Cluster Bombs

The population of muslim countries has tripled in the past 50 years. But there are signs that even in the backwater muslim countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh, muslim women are beginning to rebel.

Consider that for the last fifty years, the population of all Moslem countries has tripled. That's population growth that is more than double the rate of the world as a whole, and about ten times the rate of Europe. It's about five times the rate in the United States.

Many of those unemployed young men are angry, and making war is a typical activity of angry young men.

....While Islamic countries tend to have very low levels of education, especially for women, the introduction of satellite television and DVDs has enabled even illiterate women to learn that there are other options. Ignorance is an excellent form of control, but when the ignorance is lost, so is the control.

....Losing control of the women is something that makes Islamic conservatives very angry. Murderously angry. This is a vicious, lethal battle taking place largely out of the media spotlight. But, long term, it is destroying the source of Islamic terrorism.

Source

Of course, by the time Islamic violence and terrorism have been trimmed by more civilised birthrates, very few non-muslims may still be alive. But then, that may be what Allah intended, and it is certainly what most muslim clerics intend. Keep killing the infidel to the last drop of muslim blood, or so it goes.

Palestinian muslims and Lebanese Shias seem particularly vicious and bloodthirsty--willing to make babies for the sole purpose of training them to be suicide bombers. That cultivated perverse hatred will only get them into trouble. It is not clear how much blame should be placed on the backward culture, and how much blame to place on the religious clerics who keep the hatred constantly inflamed.

One way or another, things will change. The level of violent hatred and violence coming from Islam cannot be sustained indefinitely.

School for Dummies

Not that kind of dummy! Schools are in fact manufacturing dummies--functional illiterates--at a record pace.

...if you think that newspaper readership follows education, you would expect it to increase. But it has declined for every level of education.

....Magazines are likewise in trouble. Paid circulation for magazines covered by the Audit Bureau of Circulation peaked in 2000 at 379 million; dropping to 362 million by 2005, in spite of increasing population, higher incomes, and educational attainment. I suspect that the greatest decline is in the magazines that offer the most in terms of knowledge and thoughtful analysis.

....One reason adults are reading less is that an increasing number of them are unable to do so. The National Center for Education Statistics conducted surveys of adult literacy in 1992 and 2003. It tested ability to read prose, documents, and quantitative materials, such as graphs, charts, and tables. At every level of educational attainment, from elementary school through college, prose and document literacy has fallen

....The decline in reading amounts to a decline in learning and knowledge. The vocabulary acquired through normal everyday conversation is limited. The much greater vocabulary of educated adults is learned mainly through reading. As to knowledge, one can learn from fiction, but not in a coherent systematic manner.

....There are cognitive differences between readers and nonreaders, and between good and poor readers. Reading and writing are more abstract, objective, and analytical than oral communication. Readers display a greater range and complexity of expression. Cognitive gains include ability to generalize instead of thinking only in particulars, to use analogy, to classify according to common abstract properties. Such abilities are found with much lower frequency among illiterates.

The philosophy prevailing in public schools has helped undermine the quest for knowledge—to rebuild literacy, we must reverse it. Two generations have been taught that they have a right to their own opinion without regard to their mastery of the subject; that all opinions are of equal value. This assumption underlies the popularity of public opinion polls as means of settling matters of fact and logic. No one told them that such an opinion is worth somewhere between a plugged nickel and a tinker’s damn. So why do one’s homework? Why read, why think?

Source.

When you combine increased narcissism, psychological neoteny, and reduced literacy and cognitive skills, large numbers of modern graduates--and dropouts--may have somewhat less to offer society than they think.

There is a strong need for efficacious schooling for children and youth--even for adults. To stop a raging epidemic (of illiteracy and functional stupidity) one must go to the source. In this case, the source (university ed schools, the education industry, teachers' unions, the media, etc.) are virtually untouchable in the US due to their vital importance to one of the major political parties.

Arab Illiteracy and Other Omens of a Stormy Future

The causes of Arab underdevelopment identified in the report are lack of freedom, marginal participation of women in public life and educational backwardness.Arab people enjoy least freedom compared to any other region in the world — less than even the countries bordering southern Sahara. Civil rights are mostly ignored though they are incorporated in constitutions and legislations in those countries. There are several impediments for the free functioning of the agencies that are supposed to ensure these rights. Arab women get the least opportunity to participate in the economic and political activities compared to any other place in the world. The level of education among Arab women is the lowest in the world. More than 50 percent of them are illiterate. One of the most alarming facts revealed by the report is the backwardness of Arabs in the field of science. The level of education in the region is falling while the per capita spending on scientific research and development is the lowest in the world. In 1996, it was 0.4 percent of the GNP which is one-third of what Cuba spent on scientific research. In 1994, Israel allocated 6.35 percent for the GNP for research programs while in Japan it was 6.9 percent. Naturally, the educational backwardness increases the rate of illiteracy among Arabs. More than 65 million people, which accounts for 43 percent of the Arab population, are illiterate.Source.

* Islamists who do not recognize that humanistic ideas can serve as a basis for society. In their view, everything has existed in the past, and is present in the holy text [the Koran]. The present and future are not in our hands, but in the hands of a force that propels us like puppets. According to these Islamists, the proper way to live is to return to the times of our forefathers, in the seventh century, and to adopt the principle of the Shura [the consultative council] of early Islam.

When it is argued that the Shura never convened in the early Islamic era, that its representatives were appointed and not elected, that the idea of a society like that of the forefathers is imaginary with no basis in historical fact... they have no answer except to curse those raising these questions and to accuse them of heresy.

Al-Houni concludes that there is no point in arguing with Islamists so long as the starting points are different. The Islamists consider the past to be the pinnacle of humanity, whereas Al-Houni's starting point is human experience and history as an unending process.Source.

Arabs seem to be caught in their own traps of illiteracy and primitive modes of thinking. There may be no escape whatsoever. Sadly, the younger generation of arabs is not only huge, but illiterate, and oddly drawn to violent and irrational strains of Islam. It does not look good for the arab world, and anyone who must deal with it.

Of all the sins Bush is guilty of, over-optimism in dealing with the arab and muslim world may be his greatest.

Arab Backwardness: Societal Suicide Bomb?

Arabs are lagging in education, economy, democracy and freedom of expression, and computers. 2003—In Arab countries, with a combined population of 284 million, a “best seller” may have a print run of just 5,000 copies, due to censorship and other constraints on independent publishers. Translations of foreign works into Arabic lag far behind figures in the rest of the world: five times more books are translated yearly into Greek, a language spoken by just 11 million people, than into Arabic. Just 53 newspapers per 1,000 citizens are published daily in the region, compared to 285 papers per 1,000 people in the developed nations, and there are only 18 computers per 1,000 people in the Arab world, as compared to the global average of 78 per 1,000.

The first Arab Human Development Report in 2002 was a bombshell dropped onto the entire arab world. The report notes that while oil income has transformed the landscapes of some Arab countries, the region remains "richer than it is developed." Per capita income growth has shrunk in the last 20 years to a level just above that of sub-Saharan Africa. Productivity is declining. Research and development are weak or nonexistent. Science and technology are dormant.

Intellectuals flee a stultifying -- if not repressive -- political and social environment, it says.

Arab women, the report found, are almost universally denied advancement. Half of them still cannot read or write. The maternal mortality rate is double that of Latin America and four times that of East Asia.

The followup report in 2003 showed the situation to be no better. A group of Arab intellectuals issued a report yesterday that found the Arab world lacking in three areas they deemed fundamental to development: freedom of expression, access to knowledge and women's rights.
The group, criticized by Arab officials for a similar report last year, said the challenges caused by the deficiencies "may have become even graver" since 2002.
After dismal reports in 2002, 2003, and 2004, the UN HDR appears to have given up on the arab world. Who can blame them? Since World War II, the Arab world has lagged the rest of the planet in economic growth. For example, 300 million Arabs, and all that oil, generate less economic activity than Spain, and its population of 40 million. The main problem has been bad government. Too many dictators, and too much government restrictions on the economy. Too much corruption and waste. Even higher oil prices don't help, as it simply provides more money to be wasted on consumption, rather than business investment.

An Economist article, titled "Self-Doomed to Failure," captures the pathetic state of the arab world. The barrier to better Arab performance is not a lack of resources, concludes the report, but the lamentable shortage of three essentials: freedom, knowledge and womanpower. Not having enough of these amounts to what the authors call the region's three “deficits”. It is these deficits, they argue, that hold the frustrated Arabs back from reaching their potential—and allow the rest of the world both to despise and to fear a deadly combination of wealth and backwardness.

•Freedom. This deficit, in the UNDP's interpretation, explains many of the fundamental things that are wrong with the Arab world: the survival of absolute autocracies; the holding of bogus elections; confusion between the executive and the judiciary (the report points out the close linguistic link between the two in Arabic); constraints on the media and on civil society; and a patriarchal, intolerant, sometimes suffocating social environment.

The area is rich in all the outward trappings of democracy. Elections are held and human-rights conventions are signed. But the great wave of democratisation that has opened up so much of the world over the past 15 years seems to have left the Arabs untouched. Democracy is occasionally offered, but as a concession, not as a right.


....•Knowledge. “If God were to humiliate a human being,” wrote Imam Ali bin abi Taleb in the sixth century, “He would deny him knowledge.” Although the Arabs spend a higher percentage of GDP on education than any other developing region, it is not, it seems, well spent. The quality of education has deteriorated pitifully, and there is a severe mismatch between the labour market and the education system. Adult illiteracy rates have declined but are still very high: 65m adults are illiterate, almost two-thirds of them women. Some 10m children still have no schooling at all.

One of the gravest results of their poor education is that the Arabs, who once led the world in science, are dropping ever further behind in scientific research and in information technology. Investment in research and development is less than one-seventh of the world average. Only 0.6% of the population uses the Internet, and 1.2% have personal computers.

....•Women's status. The one thing that every outsider knows about the Arab world is that it does not treat its women as full citizens. The report sees this as an awful waste: how can a society prosper when it stifles half its productive potential? After all, even though women's literacy rates have trebled in the past 30 years, one in every two Arab women still can neither read nor write. Their participation in their countries' political and economic life is the lowest in the world.

Governments and societies (and sometimes, as in Kuwait, societies and parliamentarians are more backward than their governments) vary in the degrees of bad treatment they mete out to women. But in nearly all Arab countries, women suffer from unequal citizenship and legal entitlements. The UNDP has a “gender-empowerment measure” which shows the Arabs near the bottom (according to this measure, sub-Saharan Africa ranks even worse). But the UN was able to measure only 14 of the 22 Arab states, since the necessary data were not available in the others. This, as the report says, speaks for itself, reflecting the general lack of concern in the region for women's desire to be allowed to get on.

...With so many paths closed to them, some are now turning their dangerous anger on the western world.

Meanwhile in an ethnically divided Iraq with sectarian divisions, the first tentative steps have been taken toward democracy, as the rest of the arab world looks on with a wary curiousity. A few cautious voices believe that, in time, the Iraqi elections will put pressure on neighboring countries to democratize.

In Cairo, Hisham Qassem, chairman of a human rights organization and chief executive officer of a new Arab daily newspaper, believes that both the Iraqi and Palestinian elections have given impetus to democratic reform.
"Once people feel there are positive effects from the democratic process, they will want the same. Especially countries like Egypt who felt they were ahead of Iraq but are now lagging behind,” he said. Many arabs must be wondering if it takes an emasculating invasion from abroad and low level civil war to bring democracy to an arab country.

It takes more than democracy to bring the arab world out of the stone age. It will take economic reform. Since Saddam was tossed out in 2003, the economy has been governed by Western rules. As a result, GDP per capita doubled by the end of 2005, and the GDP is expected to grow another 49 percent by 2008. All this despite continued attacks by Sunni Arab rebels on oil facilities and other economic targets. It's much easier to start a business in Iraq now, even though there's still a lot of corruption. The big change is that now the corruption is illegal, and there is even progress in prosecuting the government officials who take bribes or try to shake down businessmen. Lebanon is the only other Arab state to run its economy in a Western fashion, and they have thrived.

It takes education reform and freedom of expression and the press. It will take implementation of full freedoms for women. Finally, it will take religious reform. Stone aged customs, traditions, and religious restrictions virtually guarantee that arabs will remain backward, laggards of the world.

Update: Here is more from a recent World Bank report. Arabs living in the middle east and north africa are oddly resistant to modernisation and transitioning out of the stone age. Very strange, when you see how successful arabs can be when they migrate to a free environment. I suppose blaming the US and Israel will gain them at least another half century of stone age existence.