A DEBATE on our school history curriculum has been going on in a local paper. The debate began in a column which stated that what students learn in our schools is mostly outdated, lacking in details and too selective. The writer gave a list of subjects that are not to be found at any level in our school history books. The list included ancient civilizations, geographic exploration, the industrial revolution, colonialism, major liberation movements and revolutions and a modern history of the Arab world. Looking at the list I began to wonder what remained of world history but then, I reminded myself that perhaps we have our own version of history and its significant events.
The debate on developing our school curriculum is still in progress though in fact, officials tell us that development has already begun. In the Arabic newspaper, Al-Madinah, of March 14, 2004, the general director of the curriculum development unit at the Ministry of Education said, “I can promise you that next year there will be new textbooks, and we hope that they will be for all levels.” A year after the director’s statement, we are still waiting for those new textbooks which are nowhere near completion.
As is our way when dealing with anything, we have different committees doing the same job. In this case, the department for girls’ education is working separately from the one for boys. A source in the boys’ section told us that developing the new curriculum had already begun in 10 schools and the hope is that the number will increase to 40 schools next year. The areas in which the history and geography curriculums have been updated include — and I am not being more vague than the developers: major events in the modern world, the Palestinian issue, Muslim minorities, world organizations, the Crusades, Islamic civilization and, finally, Saudi history and foreign policy. Now let us be clear; not even one of these is yet in any books. The subjects are given to teachers who introduce them to their students, deciding what details they want to stress. The students are taught based on their own personal research from outside sources and then of course by discussions in class. Research? Who is going to teach our students how to do research? It is not a field that any of us are skilled in. In any case, at the end of the year, each school will make recommendations based on the topics taught and the experiences they have had.
At this point, I could not help but ask who is going to decide what constitutes the most important events of modern history? Is that decision left to the personal ideas and interests of individual teachers? One teacher might choose the two world wars while another might think that revolutions in certain countries were more important. Somehow this point seems to leave the door too open to personal interpretations and personal preferences.
Apart from the 10 schools where the new curriculum is supposedly being tested and developed, what about the rest of the Kingdom’s schools? The status quo shows us that our students do not know very much of world’s history. According to a famous study at King Saud in 2003 concerning the history textbooks taught in the three levels of our country’s education, world history occupies 1.5 percent of the textbooks with 30 percent of that being Saudi history and 68.5 percent Islamic history. To begin with world history, the researcher said that the small amount given to it is presented in vague terms, is subjective and uses a highly dogmatic and preaching tone.
I cannot help but wonder how much our students are ready to go into the world. If they do not know what is happening around them, what ideas do they have of ‘others’? Should we really be surprised by the aggressive attitudes some of them take toward other countries? After all, they have not been properly introduced to much of the world and there is an old Arab proverb which tells us “People are the enemies of what they do not know.” What they do know these days comes from other sources, rather than school or textbooks. TV is of course a major source; reading ought to be a source of information but that leads us straight back into the eternal dilemma of the lack of books, the lack of interest and sadly, the lack of reading habits.
Isn’t it strange that in the 1970s, students seemed to have learned much more about the world than they learn today? Not only did they learn more detailed history but they evidently had better curriculums in both literature and language. Now after more than 30 years we look back in frustration at how things have gone backward.
Apart from the attitude towards the outside world, there is also the matter of how much students learn of local history. In the nine history books taught in the three levels of our system, Saudi history accounts for 30 percent of the material presented. Part of this percentage of Saudi history is little more than lists of dates and names which students memorize to produce on exam papers. Very interestingly, the history of how oil was discovered in the Kingdom is not included in that 30 percent. How could this subject, with all its ramifications and related topics, be omitted from the school curriculum of a country which is dependent upon oil for most of its revenues and development? The simple and rather frightening fact is that Saudi students are not taught how this all came about. Nor in the section dealing with local history do either the problems or the resistance to girls’ education get so much as a mention.
The history and development that the Kingdom has experienced during the last 50 years has been reduced again to dates when decrees were issued, ministries established and official organizations set up. It is not only Saudi history that is missing from the curriculum; the researcher said that the history of Gulf countries is also missing from the curriculum, to say nothing of modern Arab history as well.
What is it exactly that we want our students to learn? Or let me rephrase my question: How do we expect students who do not know their own history to understand what is happening around them in the world? This is a question that might not occupy the minds of those in charge of curriculum development but it is certainly one whose answer will shape our history today.
