If we Arabs are to move into the light, the desire for knowledge must be aroused. In the Hadith, we know that Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, instructed us to seek knowledge, even if it meant going to China. For many of us, knowledge begins with reading. The love of reading should begin when we are young and increase as we grow older. Educational institutions may teach a student the alphabet and how to make the letters into words but this is a school’s secondary role. Its primary role is to produce individuals who have a positive outlook, a love of learning — seeking it throughout their lives, “from the cradle to the grave.”
Schools fuel the mind. When the fuel is exhausted, it must be replaced. Unfortunately, however, the educational systems in the Arab world suffer from slavish adherence to routine and tradition, discouraging innovation and questioning. Rote learning makes up the lion’s share of education and there is almost never any testing of how all that memorizing should be applied to practical matters. Such matters are in desperate need of review by educators and government officials.
Schools must play an important role in building societies; they should also play a role in making “free” reading a central pillar of the curriculum, thus educating generations more competent, more aware and better able to absorb the world around them than those in the past. It is rare indeed to find money in a school’s budget for a library; the schoolrooms themselves can barely contain the large number of students. We in the Kingdom are not used to visiting libraries, borrowing books or using them and so most of our public libraries — where they exist — are little used.
It is time for us to invest in reading. This particular reading project which I am advocating is simple and could be carried out easily in Arab countries. The project carries the title “Culture for Everyone” and begins by creating a number of mobile libraries — similar to those ice cream vans that travel from one area of a city to another.
The mobile libraries would carry books, magazines and newspapers to appeal to all ages and tastes on the condition that none of them are political. The mobile library would move at specified times and would have designated stops at schools, mosques as well as outside private houses. Flyers and posters in public areas and in educational institutions would introduce and explain the concept to people. Newspaper and TV advertisements would also help in spreading the word.
To encourage the idea of acquiring knowledge, during shopping festivals, merchants should be encouraged to hand out books and encyclopedias as prizes — instead of kitchen appliances or other items.
So far we have not been able to overcome this darkness because we haven’t moved onto the path of knowledge. In US history, only a very few events have been able to shake the country enough to make it take action. One of those was in 1957 when the former USSR launched the first space satellite. At that moment, the US realized that its educational system was deficient and immediate steps were taken to overcome the perceived deficiencies. As a result of those reforms, the Americans put a man on the moon before anyone else and also launched a number of space satellites and stations. One reason for America’s dominance in the world today is its reverence and respect for knowledge and its willingness to fund research which will lead to new knowledge. From those facts, we should learn.
Our cultural movement is minimal. Look at the 2002 UN Report on Arab Development. The report made it clear that all the books translated into Arabic in the last thousand years are only equal to what Spain translates in a single year.
The door to Arab thought is waiting to be opened. The reading project is a possible one that might bring the Arab street into the present day and convince it to deal with the modern world on an equal footing. Culture is for everyone. So are there any investors?
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(Wajeha Howaider is a program analyst at Aramco. She holds an MA in Reading Management from George Washington University.)
Arab News Features 31 January 2003
