RIYADH, 23 October 2005 — A Saudi woman professor at King Saud University has written a book entitled “My School Is a Locked Box.” The book discusses at length the many flaws in the educational system and is available in Arabic in local bookstores. The author, Dr. Fawziah Al-Bakr, who received her education at the University of London, said that she wrote the book in order to show “how schools frame the way we look at things.”
She pointed out that there are certain extraneous factors that influence the educational system. “What happens is that textbooks are designed by institutions outside schools. We need to know, as citizens, parents and learners, who decides on these institutions and who makes the decisions within them,” she said.
Asked why she had chosen her title, Dr. Al-Bakr said that she was telling the truth in describing the Saudi education system as a “locked box.” She explained, “You send your children to school thinking that they will learn to read or write or to do math or understand science. But do we really know what is going on there, in the box? When our children sit for six hours in school, what are they taught? Only numbers and facts? No, not at all.”
She continued, “I believe that because we were unaware of what was going on in the locked box — at least for the past 20 years — that a number of elements which ultimately led to terrorism crept in.”
She gave an example of how personal views and radical cultural beliefs were in the education system. She said that in Al-Watan newspaper, a prominent journalist had written about the Saudi woman principal of a government girls’ school who enforced a strict dress code concerning how the abaya should be worn. She extended her own code to teachers, forcing them to come to school with their abayas over their heads rather than simply wearing them on their shoulders as she believed that wearing abayas on the shoulders was sinful. The school mistress sat at the entrance to the school every morning and checked the girls’ finger nails to make sure they were properly cut and that no one was wearing nail polish.
Dr. Al-Bakr asked a very pertinent question: “Who gave her these powers? It is certainly not a part of her job description.” She said that there is a general trend in Saudi society for anyone who says that he/she is defending tradition or religious values to be allowed to get away with almost anything “no matter how extreme it is. If a principal has this sort of power over teachers, just imagine the power teachers have over students. Complete submission. It is a whole culture,” she said.
Dr. Al-Bakr mentioned that the Kingdom’s girls’ schools were virtual prisons with high walls, barred windows and locked doors from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. “The message to the girls is, ‘It is OK to be locked in. You have nothing to do with the public. And you are watched wherever you are — in school or at home.’ The girls are taught that they do not have an identity.”
She said that one reason these things happened was because of forces outside the schools. The forces propagate various attitudes and orientations and make it easy for those who are supportive to play their roles while those with different attitudes are pushed to the side. Dr. Al-Bakr also said that there were hidden agendas in the Saudi school curriculum. She gave examples from an elementary school textbook. The books used in elementary schools, she said, paint a clear picture of men’s and women’s roles in society. The picture, however, is one of women having a duty to do housework and to serve men. From page 80 of a first grade girls’ textbook, Dr. Al-Bakr cited these examples — the names are all girls’ names: “Hind made a thobe for her brother” and “Mariam sweeps while Zainab washes clothes.” While the role of females is clearly related to household chores and serving men, the male roles are ambiguous. In the same book on page 86 — this time the names are boy’s names — “Saleh pulls a rope” and “Adel shakes the branch of a tree.”
Dr. Al-Bakr also wondered why certain subjects were given more class hours than others. “Who decides this? And on what basis?” she asked. She said that while a student may need only a quarter of 100 marks to pass in some subjects, in religious subjects, the pass mark is 50 percent. “It is as if other subjects were not as important as religion. All subjects should be treated the same because all of them are important,” she added.
Accepting uncritically what is being taught in schools and submitting to whatever they are told is an important element in the education of Saudi students. There is no questioning, no debate and no discussion, she said. The book discusses at length the cultural atmosphere in schools, the effects of other institutions — mainly religious ones — on the educational system and how a certain social culture is taught in schools where students are expected to mirror and parrot that culture — and thus to perpetuate it.
