THE World Bank’s Middle East and North Africa (MENA) report on education deserves close study. Even though the majority of the statistics gathered date from no later than 2004, the picture it paints of the way young people are being educated in the Arab world rings certain alarm bells, which are well characterized in the 399-page report’s doleful title “The Road Not Traveled”.
One of the principal findings is that Arab education is falling behind the rest of the world, particularly the former laggard regions in Latin America and Asia. In one key area, math scores, Arab children, says World Bank, fall below the world average. Unfortunately Saudi Arabia, along with Morocco is among the worst performers. When it comes to higher education, throughout the region 70 percent of students are opting to study humanities rather than sciences and in the Kingdom the figure is actually 76 percent.
This poses a real challenge for young people preparing themselves for careers in an increasingly technology-driven world. The report notes that Saudi Arabia, in 2004 devoted fully 20 percent of its budget to education. However, it continues that similar high levels of investment in education in leading Arab countries during the last four decades have not been matched by higher economic growth. It suggests that too many graduates are finding nontechnical jobs in the public services, a trend, which it argues, is unsustainable.
It also finds that in the Kingdom there is a higher proportion of female than male university undergraduates and though the ratio of higher education teachers to students is good, in secondary education shortages of well-qualified staff are in the offing. The government will doubtless feel that its most recent educational initiatives, not least the new SR10 billion King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), address many of these issues.
However, the challenges ahead in Saudi Arabia, as in the rest of the Arab world, are not simply the responsibility of the authorities. Young people clearly need to take a realistic view of their future and work out in what subjects they will need to train to become useful members of society. The sciences are often wrongly discarded as being harder work than the humanities. For those MENA countries such as Morocco that are still struggling, for largely economic reasons, to provide a comprehensive and effective education system for their young people, the need to address shortcomings goes beyond equipping the younger generation for an ever-more demanding high-tech world. Poor education breeds unemployment and dissatisfaction. A combination of ignorance and anger among young people creates a fertile breeding ground for the bigots of Al-Qaeda. Ill-equipped to understand the depravity and nihilism of the siren voices of fanatics, such youths can be all too easily duped into believing that all their problems will be solved by terror.
Education is the solemn duty of governments, families and young people themselves. The World Bank report, despite data shortcomings delivers in many ways a disturbing situation that must not be ignored.
