“But the youth population of your country already stands at 60 percent being under the age of 18,” mused an American expert on the Middle East. “If you look at the average number of children per mother as a factor, seven to be exact, then that means that you’re going to have a statistic of about 75 percent very soon.”

We had been discussing a number of subjects including the contentious issue of how best to prevent young Saudis from becoming susceptible to the calls of extremism.

Although I had heard all the statistics before, I was stunned by the projected figure and it brought home to me just what an enormous challenge lay ahead of us as a society.

“I suppose that it’s important to make sure that the youngsters in our society are correctly engaged,” I proffered. “At the moment there is little to offer them in terms of providing an outlet for their creative energy and I think that’s where the vulnerability lies.”

“It all goes back to education,” volunteered a member of the group and everyone concurred with this very basic, yet incredibly potent truth.

“Has there been any significant progress made?” questioned the expert in a very general manner.

Our host, one of the Kingdom’s most intelligent and knowledgeable intellectuals, replied with an unequivocal “absolutely”.

“You can ask Lubna,” he suggested. “She has been involved in education here for years. I am sure that she will tell you that the strides we have made have been remarkable.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say that they have been remarkable,” I replied. “There has been some progress, but I don’t think that it’s nearly enough. If you want my honest opinion, then I think that the whole education system needs to be changed. It needs wholesale revision and that has not happened.”

“Maybe not in the government schools,” he retorted. “But at least there are other institutions that have opened up that have a far better perspective and now Saudi parents have the chance to send their kids to these schools that are run like their international counterparts.”

“You’re right,” I agreed. “But who do you think will be going to such schools? Once again we are talking about the educated elite and the upper middle classes. They don’t really constitute the bulk of our society anyway and, furthermore, they are not really an intrinsic part of the dilemma that we face. It is the rest of society we should be targeting. This is why we have to tackle the problem head-on instead of once again finding ways of evading the issue. The changes we seek have to be in the mainstream public schools.”

“We have to be careful here,” he reminded me. “Don’t forget that society has to be ready for such a change. It has to be incremental and at a pace that it is comfortable with.”

“In an ideal scenario that would be the case,” I objected. “But the world is not going to wait for us and, furthermore, in a decision as critical as this, I think that sometimes the government has to impose these changes from the top irrespective of the sensibilities of the conservatives being offended. It’s like when television was introduced. You know what happened then. But that hard line was completely necessary for progress. Yes, there will be resistance, but no, we cannot continue to allow this kind of blinkered and regressive attitude to hinder our path.”

“What really needs to be done is an entire re-education of the educators themselves,” concluded the expert. “There are some 500,000 teachers here. They need to be taken away and retrained. The government could sponsor them to visit other countries and learn different educational methods. They could have a reward scheme and incentives to encourage them to implement what they have learned. If that were done, then, the entire system would be re-hauled within the space of ten years.”

“I completely I agree with you and I think that this has been one of the most important failures of the so-called ‘educational reform’. It’s not solely about textbooks. In any classroom the most important factor in the educational process is the teacher. What’s worrying to me is that many teachers teach in an identical manner to how they had been taught. This means that our students are being indoctrinated with a very narrow and outdated set of values. Unless someone breaks this cycle and does something courageous nothing will change.”

“But there are measures being taken,” objected an ex-government representative. “Have you visited the research center that has been sponsored to develop the curriculum?” he asked the expert. “They have hired several American and British consultants to create a new national educational program.”

“I don’t think they should have anything to do with the Americans to start with,” she began, “but I just wish they would focus the billions of riyals on something that will have a lasting effect.”

As a parent, I have seen that instead of encouraging students to develop their creative, analytical and individual potential, schools find it simpler to quash these challenging attributes in favor of rote learning. What we have overlooked as a society is the fact that it is this very annihilation of critical thinking that has allowed members of our youth to be seduced and manipulated by spurious and dangerous ideologies. We have reached a turning point in our history and the only way to redefine ourselves is to re-evaluate our educational system. We have passed the stage of theoretical abstraction and have to understand that empty rhetoric, higher commissions and good intentions are not going to be an adequate substitute for practical implementation. Time is of the essence and in spite of all the wealth in the world, you can’t buy time.