A few days ago, my Twitter feed went ablaze with news about a Saudi girl who won a mental arithmetic competition in Malaysia. It is a competition organized by the UCMAS (Universal Concepts of Mental Arithmetic Systems) and it happens that the school where this girl, Shahd Al-Ahmadi, is studying uses UCMAS techniques to foster its students love for science and mathematics.
And while researching the topic, I stumbled upon several other scientific and innovative events where Saudi young boys and girls shined and clinched top positions. One of such events is the First Lego League for the youth between 9 to 16 years. The event is held every year and a new challenge is announced, which usually revolves around a real world problem and teams from all over the globe are invited to participate by providing innovative solutions to the problem. Interestingly, there is a branch of this organization in the Kingdom and different Saudi teams had made it to the finals.
It is impressive, no doubt, to find Saudi youths competing head to head with their international counterparts in topics related to science and mathematics. It is relieving to know that we have the seeds for innovation; young brains that are able to dig deep in problems, analyzing them, taking them apart, and then finding a solution, or at least, the idea.
However, with all that winning excitement, one cannot help but wonder ... so what!
The truth is that wining international competitions ... could mean nothing! Yes we could argue that these young minds would use the motivation, the self confidence boost, the belief that they are able to give to the world; I agree on all of that, but again, so what!
Seeds could live for a while before going dry if not planted in a nurturing environment; and this is exactly what I mean, we may have the seeds, but we do not have the environment conducive to their growth.
There are many factors at play here; a culture that welcomes and encourages minds to wander, to ask, to challenge, and to find answers; an advanced educational infrastructure and research facilities; public and private sectors willing to participate, with time and money, in taking humanity forward.
It is sad to admit that we score very low in these areas. That is why I usually fail to comprehend any discussions that try to answer the famous question “why Arab minds flourish outside and fail back home?” The answer cannot be more obvious.
Let’s take research and development expenditure as an example, Saudi Arabia spends around $1.8 billion on research and development. Most of these funds go to the fields of oil and petrochemicals; after all, these fields have the closest of what we could call research and development centers. Now, let us take a look at the rest of the world: the US tops the list of spenders at about $405 billion, mostly in defense, health, and space researches. China spends around $297 billion in nanotechnology, clean energy, and stem cells researches. Germany spends around $70 billion in environment and health researches.
Nature, a well-known scientific magazine, asked its readers about the countries that they expect will have the highest impact on our lives in terms of their scientific researches; China, USA, India, Germany, and Japan, were chosen, respectively.
The bottom line is this ... it might be good to win international competitions, it is great to encourage young and curious minds to think about global problems, but it is certainly meaningless to stop at celebrations. A paradigm shift is needed in the way we look to education, to business, and their relation to scientific researches. And above all we need to look into ourselves, our roles in life, and the value we might be able to add to humanity.
@ smaldosari
