JEDDAH, 9 January — Minister of Education Muhammad Al-Rasheed denied in remarks published yesterday that the Saudi school curriculum would be overhauled in the wake of criticisms from Western countries.
"Our curriculum is based on well-established principles, determined by our needs and the requirements of our society," Al-Rasheed told Al-Watan daily.
"No one has the right to interfere in our (internal) issues or dictate to us what he wants," the minister said.
Saudi Arabia has reacted angrily to Western claims that the religious-orientated education system in the Kingdom breeds extremists and needs to be changed.
Such accusations came after the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States when suicide hijackers rammed planes into New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington.
The country’s educators and newspaper columnists have dismissed such concerns.
"We are teaching our people the principles of Islam because that is our religion — this is our choice," said Mubarak Alwazrah, assistant professor of human resources at King Saud University in Riyadh.
"There is certainly a pressing need to change the curriculum in Saudi Arabia, exactly like in other advanced world countries," columnist Tareq Al-Homayed wrote in Al-Madinah newspaper yesterday.
"But the American demand for us to change our curriculum just because there were Saudis aboard the hijacked planes is illogical," Homayed added.
Higher Education Minister Khaled Al-Anqari had said in remarks published earlier that the Saudi universities were adjusting their programs to reflect the changing demands of the job market, but he did not think that they placed too much emphasis on religious education.
"In higher education, I don’t think this (focus on religion) is a problem," he said, adding that only eight of the 130 credit hours required for a four-year liberal arts degree had to be in Islamic Studies.
More than half of Saudi Arabia’s workforce is foreign, and unemployment has risen among nationals who lack the skills to replace imported labor, analysts say.
They say that universities focus too much on humanities and that Saudi firms need technical and scientific graduates.
About half of the annual crop of university graduates have degrees in literature or social studies. Many major in Islamic studies.
According to Al-Anqari, in the past five years, there had been no expansion of the humanities in university curriculums, and that several community colleges focused on technical education had been set up. "All new colleges and departments now are related to the job market and the needs of professions in areas like business and computers," he said.
There are more than five million schoolgirls and boys in Saudi Arabia. All private and public schools, including foreign schools, are under the direct supervision of the Ministry of Education.
