JEDDAH, 24 February 2006 — Listening to Professor S.M.B discuss “The Stochastic Process”, one can tell that he has a passion for, and is familiar with, the complexities of university-level statistics.
A soft-spoken Indian, he takes his profession seriously and exudes every effort to bring understanding and clarity forth to his students. His students however, encounter difficulty in understanding his lectures.
It is not the intricate analysis and interpretation of numerical data in terms of samples and populations that has them stumped so much, but the fact they don’t share a common language with their professor. Simply put, S.M.B. doesn’t speak Arabic, and his students don’t speak English.
Arab News walked into S.M.B’s Statistics class at the university Wednesday and took a seat amongst the students to observe as the professor stood at the board with marker in hand discussing the “Mean of Binomial Distribution” — all in English.
The handful of students in attendance sat listening to the lecture, but it became immediately clear from the conversations going on in Arabic between the students, that no one had any idea what Professor S.M.B. was talking about.
S.M.B. went on in the spirit of a broadcast-news journalist talking on camera without a studio audience. It was as if the students were not even there. Not a single one of his questions was ever answered, but S.M.B. always managed to go on with enthusiasm as if everyone had gotten the answer right.
There were only two words spoken in Arabic throughout the entire lecture, when S.M.B. surprised the class by saying, “’big’ is ‘kabeer’ and ‘small’ is ‘sagheer’.” One student even laughed at this and gave the professor a thumbs-up for his effort.
Seated next to Arab News was one young man who was furiously copying the English words and equations written on the board into his notebook. When asked if he knew what the words he was writing meant, he said: “I have no idea.”
S.M.B. only had time for one question before rushing off to his next class.
When asked how he managed with his students, he said, “Statistics is a universal language.”
His students tell a different story.
A group gathered just outside the classroom told Arab News that the key to passing S.M.B.’s class is either hiring a tutor or cheating.
Saleh (not his real name) told Arab News that despite the fact that he doesn’t understand much of what Professor S.M.B. says, this is the second semester that he enrolled in one of his classes.
“S.M.B. is aware of the fact that we don’t speak English, so he makes it easy for us to pass. Before beginning a new chapter, he gives us a handout that is in English. It’s from this handout that the test questions directly come,” Saleh said.
“What I do is take the handout to my Sudanese tutor and he explains it all to me in Arabic. I have to remember what English words go with which equation and look for the same words in the test. I know that certain words only go with certain solutions.”
Saleh, as a university student who receives a SR1,000 monthly award from the government for maintaining a high grade-point average. For every month that he is enrolled in one of S.M.B.’s classes, he knows that he will have to hand it all over to his tutor.
“You are not going to find a decent tutor out there for less than SR1,000 per month,” Saleh told Arab News.
When asked if being in class seemed like a waste of time, Saleh said: “A complete waste of time. I learn much more from my private tutor, but S.M.B. is popular with the students simply because his class is a no-fail class. Somehow everyone manages to pass.”
