Two videos have gone viral in recent days that don’t bode well for us folks about to place our country’s future in the hands of the next generation.
One video showed elementary schoolchildren on the last day of school tearing up books and throwing them into the street and at passing cars. Another video depicted intermediate or high school boys ransacking a classroom while covering their faces with their ghutras.
I apologize for insulting your intelligence and stating the obvious: These kids have no respect for their school, their teachers and the education process.
It’s not a shocker. It’s become a rite of passage in recent years to have students participate in this kind of hooliganism to celebrate the end of the school year and their apparent intense hatred for the institution of learning.
To the Education Ministry’s credit, government officials have announced that no grades will be issued to the elementary school students until an investigation of the incident is completed. Hopefully, authorities will examine the video and discipline the students. As for the older boys, it’s likely that the school will eventually be identified then it’s only a matter of time before the classroom and the identity of the boys are discovered.
So why have Saudi youths stooped so low as to destroy property and the Education Ministry is powerless to stop it?
The Education Ministry once required that students return their textbooks in the condition they received them before being issued their certificates and grades. Usually those textbooks were new when issued. In times of book shortages, schools issued used, but clean and undamaged copies until the new versions were available. The ministry no longer makes such demands on students, so there are no consequences for damaging property.
Certainly many Saudi children are careless with other people’s property; in this case the property belong to schools. But the destructive behavior can’t be blamed on bad parenting and careless attitudes. Rather, schools are built like prisons, utilitarian but totally lacking in even a smidgen of warmth that makes for a good learning environment.
Rented buildings in particular are pretty grim. Girls’ schools in many areas have become death traps in case of fire or some emergency. Teachers are overworked and underpaid. The student population exceeds the capacity of school buildings. There are few recreational activities for boys and none for girls. School schedules are so tight that students have little breathing space before the next class begins or the next demand to complete a task. Having a meal is an exercise in futility. The breakfast break is only 30 minutes, 15 of which require a race to the cafeteria, standing in a queue and grabbing a stale sandwich before someone else does. Then you have 15 minutes to gulp it down and return to class.
For many students, the last day of school is like the last day of serving a prison sentence. This isn’t an excuse for bad behavior, but a logical explanation why young people behave so badly. They have nothing but contempt for the entire educational system.
It’s nice to see SR80 billion allocated for education, but doesn’t anybody wonder where all that money goes? We see artificial and superficial reforms that touch on the service of education, but see little of it used for infrastructure and new technology.
Let’s face it: The Saudi school system is primitive compared to any of its neighboring countries. New technology, the engine that will turn the wheels of Saudi Arabia in the 21st Century, is absent in our schools. It’s easy and practical to allocate funds for iPads programed with the semester’s courses and given to students for the school year. Those students return those iPads in the condition they received them in exchange for their certificates and grades. It’s a heck of a lot better than carrying tons of books each year like a donkey.
I won’t make excuses for little thugs bent on vandalism, but the Education Ministry needs to examine the causes of such criminal behavior. It’s fine to conduct investigations and ferret out the perpetrators, but those investigations do little to pinpoint the cause and find solutions to prevent it from happening again. We need research-based investigations.
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