Dr. Hossam Badrawi Official Website
Education article series
The second article
The teacher is the basis of the opportunity for rescue.
Hossam Badrawi
Egypt is going through a critical juncture in the development of education. We urgently need to build a future that differs from our past and deals transparently with our mistakes and with the unsustainability of implementing our policies that we declare and even document constitutionally but do not adhere to.
The teacher comes to the fore and is what I will focus on in this article as one of the most important pillars of development.
The law of supply and demand has proven its wisdom throughout history in all services and industries, except in education in Egypt. Although there is a decision to appoint graduates of colleges of education in schools, it is not implemented, which is something that I have repeatedly failed to understand in the context of the dire need for them and the abundance of them available without work.
The factory here that produces the most important personality in society is the colleges of education, which prepare the teacher with specialized and educational preparation. For education and leading school activities included in the state’s strategy for human building, as stated in the fourth axis of the Education Vision 2030.
Colleges of general education are located in all universities and governorates. They prepare teachers of scientific, literary, and religious education subjects, in addition to special education teachers.
Colleges of specific education prepare teachers of artistic, music, and technological subjects, and some prepare specialists for educational media.
Colleges of physical education and colleges of art education.
Industrial education teacher preparation colleges.
Kindergarten colleges, which prepare teachers and facilitators for nurseries and kindergartens.
This is in addition to some of the 70 other college departments, which prepare business education teachers, social workers, home economics and environmental education teachers. These colleges grant bachelor’s and bachelor’s degrees, in addition to postgraduate degrees such as diplomas, master’s degrees, and doctorates.
Colleges of education in Egypt are facing an existential crisis, not a development crisis.
Over the years, I see a silent hostility between the Ministry of Education and the colleges of education, which in many countries of the world are called colleges of education. The natural path for graduates of these colleges has become closed in state schools despite the need for them. That is, the factory produces and the market needs, and the state does not allow the need to be met.
________________
I noticed weak institutional coordination between colleges of education and the Ministry and directorates of education in all governorates, and the lack of effectiveness of practical education (field training in schools); Due to the overcrowding of schools and the absence of students at the same time, and the failure of their officials to accept the training of student teachers, and the weakness of serious supervision in training, this is compounded by the small amount of space given to advanced teaching methods linked to multimedia, e-learning, and distance education. What do we now care about artificial intelligence alongside digitization, and the predominance of advanced teaching methods? Traditional teaching in most courses, accompanied by modest notes, and evaluation methods that rely on standardized exams in content.
Despite all that I mentioned, most teachers of private lessons, which is the parallel education system, have excelled in providing their services according to the requirements of the evaluation methods set by the Ministry, and students come to them in the thousands outside the framework of formal education provided by the state, and the families have no objection to paying the exorbitant cost of the classrooms. Sports stadiums are rented for the success of their children. We monitor the community’s lack of confidence in the education system, the low efficiency of service, and the inefficiency of educational administrations. These are challenges that require a political minister, not just a technician.
Once again, the non-compliance with appointing graduates of colleges of education in schools is something that I have repeatedly failed to understand in the context of the need and abundance that go hand in hand in a system that ends with the ordeal that the system is suffering from. In appointing class teachers in a way that insults the entire educational process and the teaching profession in particular.
I attach to this article a report on private lessons issued by the Parliament’s Education Committee in 2001, as if we were talking about today. I also attach projects that were proposed and approved by the government but were not implemented (links 1 and 2, and I invite the interested reader to read them..
Policies for developing colleges of education for teacher preparation
The relative weights of the academic, educational, and cultural components of teacher preparation programs are determined in light of the tasks assigned to the teacher to perform at the stage in which he is preparing to teach, and in light of the principle of flexibility, diversity, and decentralization that we call for and are followed by Egypt’s vision in education, and I stress their importance in higher education. The colleges of education It should compete qualitatively in light of the philosophy of the university it follows, its structural organizations, and the needs of the region in which it operates.
The policies for developing colleges of education fall within the framework of higher education development policies in general, but given the specificity and importance of these colleges, I propose a set of specific policies for their development, which include:
First: Commitment to a specific and clear mission and strategic objectives for each college in accordance with its specificity and in light of the nature and needs of the community it serves.
Second: Adapting work programs and practices in colleges of education according to the credit hour system, which exists on paper and is not implemented effectively, in a way that works to unify the complementary and sequential systems, while opening paths between colleges of education and other colleges and the possibility of rotating some of the earned hours between university fields of study suitable for those who Graduates of these colleges want to practice the teaching profession, which requires the development of some colleges that complement their teaching programs, such as sciences, arts, languages, and others.
He realized that the trend towards teaching through the credit hour system had partly overcome, over time, resistance from university administrations and faculty members and had become almost a reality… What the student learns in universities and institutes must be visible and readable in internationally recognized academic units so that this student can move. Cross and vertical without wasting his effort and accumulation of education.
Third: Developing admission systems in colleges of education by developing and applying objective admission tests to select students, similar to special aptitude tests. I know that the subject of tests to enter university colleges is also met with societal resistance, but the teaching profession is, from my point of view, a profession of a special nature. We leave our sons and daughters for sixteen consecutive years between school and university… in a framework that we created, and with curricula that we chose, in closed classrooms with teachers that we prepared… and their influence on children and youth will remain deeply rooted in their consciences… so how can the state not function properly? A professional institution that conducts the psychological and academic tests necessary to provide more than twenty-five million children and youth with… the best teacher and the greatest teacher?…
This is on one side, but the other side is: How do we motivate young people to choose this path? How do we motivate those seeking knowledge and knowledge to enter the teaching profession?
It is the responsibility of the state to make this profession attractive, and to provide it with, in addition to its appropriate stimulating financial return, a social return that builds the need for it and promotes its evaluation… Who will be aware and strive to become a teacher in the current educational conditions?! He is most likely the one who could not get another opportunity… Society and its leadership must work to make the teacher profession a positive choice for young people… They seek it knowing that within the framework of legitimacy and respect for the law, they can obtain the decent return of a decent life without private lessons and without obtaining… On the advantage, depending on the corruption of the educational process, which made these lessons outside the scope of the educational institution… a basis on which the student, the guardian, and their teachers depend.
What is the new government’s plan to achieve this?! !!!!
Each of these policies requires an action program, but unfortunately I see a clear state tendency to reduce the role of colleges of education at the present time, not accepting new students, and avoiding appointing their graduates under the pretext of their low educational standards. Also, if some religiously fanatical ideological tendencies took control of some of these colleges at a certain time, this made the government withdraw its hand from them instead of reforming them, and turn away from developing them instead of facing a crisis that deserves to be confronted, not only at the level of colleges of education, but at the level of society as a whole.
No great nation like Egypt… can face the development of education without the competent, capable, developed, open-minded, educated teacher, who instills the values of modernity and knowledge, builds character, and affirms the Egyptian identity… The call here is to take responsibility and face the challenge, not run away from it. The challenge here is not the punitive measures that have repeatedly failed, but rather confronting the disease and not just the symptom
The saying goes, “The level of education in no nation rises above the level of its teachers.”
See you in the next article about the economics of education and overcoming the challenge of lack of funding.
