The United Nation’s Development Program recently issued a report on human resources development in Arab countries. Governments, universities, and those involved in the region’s education cannot afford to ignore the facts presented in the report. The real yardstick, according to the report, for judging a people’s intellectual life — or its lack — is the level of education. The facts in the report, rather than any kind of economic-growth index, give the real picture of the progress made by the Arab people. At the same time, a careful study of the report is necessary in order to discover solutions.
The report estimated the cost of raising the quality of education in the region as enormous; on the other hand, the cost of remaining ignorant is surely far greater. Not only is there an inadequate selection of subjects being taught in our schools but what is even worse are the methods being used to teach those subjects. It is the quality of education, not the economic level, that is important when a country’s potential is evaluated. Our region is pathetically short of data and in-depth information which can be used to assess the extent of its own human resources development.
There are three common features among educated people in the region: an unacceptably low level of acquired knowledge, poor analytical and innovative talents and a continuing decrease in levels of information.
Educational development in the region requires a new breed of teachers trained in the latest teaching techniques. The sort of real practical knowledge which qualifies men and women to face the challenges of a constantly changing world is desperately needed. Another point noted in the report is that the Arab world came at the bottom of the list of Internet users. It also noted that the number of books translated into Arabic during the 11 centuries since the time of the Abbasid Caliph Al-Mamoun (813AD-833AD) to the present is about the same as the number of books being translated into Spanish every year.
