Zawaya

Towards a comprehensive and multidisciplinary vision

By: Iqbal Al Gharbi

It is striking that US President Barack Obama visited two notable institutions: Al-Azhar, which he considered a beacon of Islamic sciences for more than a thousand years, and the University of Cairo, which he considered as a fountain of progress in Egypt.

These visits reflect the new President’s deep belief in the importance of education as the currency of the 21st century.

This conviction was reflected in his promises to expand exchange programs, raise the number of scholarships to the USA, encourage more Americans to study in Islamic communities, and provide more training opportunities in America for promising Muslim students. Obama also promised to invest in a virtual learning system for teachers and students throughout the world via cyberspace, and create new networks to enable teens from America to have direct contact with their counterparts in the lands of Islam.

This highlights the role of globalization and the revolution in information and communication as key factors to cross-cultural fertilization, and narrowing the huge gap between traditional awareness and the modern global awareness.

However, we need to frame this cross-cultural fertilization and rationalize it in order to intensify it and accelerate its paces, and turn it into a new teaching for a renewed world.

This modern education, which represents the royal road to progress and advancement, will enable us – thanks to the information and communication revolution – to achieve in a few decades what western countries achieved in several centuries!

Developed countries are engaged nowadays in improving the education of their children, and improving their level in order to meet the new challenges in a rapidly changing world.

As for our Maghreb countries, school is still a lever for mobility between social classes on the one hand, and one of the most important mechanisms of social integration on the other hand. Opinion polls have shown that education of children is the main concern and major worry for families in the Maghreb.

What we expect from school today and what we take it accountable for is:

- Passing on knowledge, values and symbols to our children.

- Making them able to absorb information which is increasing daily, and organize it and identify its differences and basic points.

- Train them to analyze situations, address them, and take appropriate decisions.

Although we recognize that our schools succeeded in winning the bet on the elimination of ignorance and illiteracy,
they still have several shortcomings:

A piecemeal approach is still prevalent between knowledge and competencies, while we now need a comprehensive and multidisciplinary vision to understand complex and interrelated phenomena.

As for school exams, they still focus mainly on learning by heart, which sterilizes talents, and relies on individual work which enshrines selfishness and narrow-mindedness.