A debate concerning the teaching of English to third graders — the third year of elementary school — has been going on for some time. As pointless as the debate is, what is surprising is that it has dragged on for such a long time. Is this the most important issue we have to deal with in Saudi Arabia? Are we really serious in asking if children should be taught a second language — in this case, English? Whether we like it or not, English is today’s language of technology and medicine and a vital instrument for dealing with the rest of the world. In this age of the Internet, satellite TV channels and scientific discoveries, it seems that logically we should be debating when to begin teaching French or Spanish to our children — in addition to English.
To those who fear that teaching English to children will endanger our religion, our culture and our traditions, I have only one question to ask: Are our religion, traditions and culture so weak that merely learning another language will put them at risk? If this were so, no one in the world would bother to learn another language or about another culture since their own would be destroyed. This is not a very well-considered argument and whoever came up with it must be living alone in a hole in the ground. He or she certainly doesn’t know much about the modern world or what makes things happen in it. If learning a second language posed any danger to the learner’s mother tongue, then we would have seen Americans in the streets speaking Spanish and Portuguese, the French speaking Dutch and the Japanese speaking English. I refuse to believe that there is any basis in fact for such thinking.
Doesn’t our Holy Book tell us that God created people belonging to different sects and civilizations so that they could know each other and benefit from that knowledge? Didn’t our Prophet, peace be upon him, instruct us to seek knowledge even unto the most remote areas of the earth?
Do we realize why we in Saudi Arabia are part of the Third World because we refuse so vehemently to open our minds and learn? We are for the most part hiding behind imagined walls, refusing to open the door to anybody or anything. And any attempt to peek over those walls is damned as dangerous, risky and of course part of a Western conspiracy to destroy Arab culture.
A commentary by Nora Al-Saad in Arab News (Local Press, July 29) is an excellent example of how stubborn people can be in refusing to live in the world: “The Ministry of Education has completely sidestepped public opinion and embarked on an extensive campaign to promote the English language at the expense of Arabic.”
She doesn’t stop here, however, so read on. “Now which is more important: Advancing Arabic by caring for the language from the early stages of education or teaching English at the hands of instructors from Bangladesh and South Africa?”
So the writer has some worries but she might be well advised to stop worrying. Our educational system cannot get much worse. It has not deteriorated — and is not now deteriorating — because of the weak English curriculum already in use. But what strikes me here is that the writer seems totally unaware that 20 years ago, our education was better, English was taught better than it is today and most students in those days were taught English by Syrian and Egyptian teachers. In those days, students studied novels and selected bits of English literature — simplified of course — but they were exposed to what was good in English and they were also taught to understand it. How many of those students, I wonder, are now wandering the streets of Riyadh, Abha or Hail speaking English instead of Arabic?
And while we are on the subject, who said that we need to get an American or British accent. English is, as we hear all the time, not our language and what is needed is the ability to read, write, speak and understand correct English — regardless of the accent. The nationality of teachers is no measure of the quality of his or her teaching.
Let’s leave the conspiracy theorists and other victims of paranoia to one side. We have to confront the fact that the syllabus should be reconsidered by brave minds who do not shrink in fear at the mention of anything new or foreign. In addition, who believes or would even suggest that the low level of scholastic achievement among our students is due to their having learned a foreign language? Most of them are weak in many areas, English included. What about the overwhelming majority of subjects that are taught in Arabic? Our students too often know almost no geography, only our old literature, hardly any history at all — shall I continue? Just have a chat with one of the many university teachers who complain endlessly about the poor quality of students, especially first-year ones. What seems glaringly obvious is that instead of whining about the imagined dangers of teaching English in the early years of primary school, we should adopt a welcoming attitude toward teaching English as a first step to treating an ailing system that needs reviving more than ever.