Our teacher, Hasan Al-Olaqi, has asked about educational shortcomings we faced when we were college students and now as teachers. I wish he had asked us to point out some positive aspects of education instead because it would have been easier. His question has given rise to worries and concerns we are trying to live with everyday and which we cannot ignore.
My major worry concerning education in Saudi Arabia is how serious things will be if there is no change. At present, those leaving school are worse than when they entered. Too many schools have negative intellectual and psychological effects on their students and these effects then carry over and negatively influence their views of life and the future.
What is the problem with our educational system? On the one hand, our country provides its Ministry of Education with the highest budget of all ministries. It has increased the amount for education this year by 20 percent.
On the other hand, the number of rented school buildings is more than government-owned ones. Students sometimes spend an entire semester awaiting teachers to arrive. This is not an exaggeration. In my school, students were in class a full semester without having teachers for psychology and sociology.
Our curriculum is outdated and this causes a huge gap between our world and the world outside in which we want to take our place. The Ministry of Education takes advantage of people who are desperate for jobs and hires them at low salaries in violation of the Kingdom’s labor law.
Financial support alone, however, cannot produce civilization and change; but hard work and scientific planning along with serious implementation can. Nowadays, Saudi Arabia is a member of the modern economic and political world; therefore, educational changes should be implemented at once. As a member of the World Trade Organization and in order to plan for becoming an international economic force, we have to develop an educational system which will match the demands of employers.
These problems are not with the economic aspects alone. Let us examine the intellectual and psychological factors. School — or education — should be an instructive environment in which students are taught scientific methods and techniques. It should help students deal with problems and issues in a mature way and it should make their behavior and actions easily distinguishable from that of the uneducated or illiterate. This is what should be the case; if we compare the reality to what should be, we see that what should be is no more than a dream.
Scientific approaches to learning and education ability are decreasing because of the huge number of lectures students receive; they only listen without practicing anything or discussing and arguing any points.
Students do not search or explore looking for answers; there are always references that save them from doing so. The result is a lack of conversational and argumentative skills. Basically, educational institutions make students think dysfunctionally — if at all — and this is the opposite of what they should be doing.
Mohammed Al-Enezy in Al-Riyadh newspaper reported thousands of problems that gifted students experience in special institutions.
The number of gifted students decreased to only 168 according to research done by Fadel Al-Amri. He said that the students were bored because the same outdated and ineffective methods were used to teach the gifted as are used to teach ordinary students in ordinary schools.
Serious work needs to be done to bring this problem to the center of public attention. Leaders, research centers, universities, thinkers and interested people should prioritize the issue and elevate the level of our national education to a much higher plateau.
