Hossam Badrawi Official Website
The opportunity to rescue (10)
Integrating values into education
By Hossam Badrawi
I wrote nine consecutive articles in Al-Masry Al-Youm about the state of education and how to develop it, and today I am starting a series of complementary articles about the values that must be integrated into the fabric of education because they are the foundation on which the character of the Egyptian citizen is built in the future.
In order for this goal and these articles to have greater value, I held meetings with students and youth, sometimes with the participation of parents, and I conducted dialogues with them and encouraged them to confront and be frank with me and even criticize our generations as parents, grandparents and policy makers.
One of the youth said to me: You are telling us, Doctor, that education, media and culture are the most important pillars of building the conscience, and that the family, school and society are responsible for what we see of violence, harassment and corruption, and the spread of lying, cheating and hypocrisy, so you should not criticize the youth, but rather blame yourselves as a generation responsible for all of that?
I said: You are absolutely right, my daughter.
She said: Let’s start with education, what is the position from your point of view?
I said: The child and young man spend about eighteen years of his life in educational institutions that are responsible for the state, and here lies the importance of the vision and message of the leaders of society regarding the rights of citizenship and belonging to Egypt and pride and honor in it, and respect for women and their rights in a direct and indirect cumulative manner to our children and youth. There is no place where all citizens gather for 14 years in school and 4 years in university in a framework with walls, limited in time and place like educational institutions. We must admit that if a young man graduates from these educational institutions with a single-minded mind, fanatic, and not accepting pluralism, violent or extremist or reactionary or who sees cheating and lying as one of his rights to reach his goal, then we must be doing something wrong. The young woman said: With all due respect, I doubt that the responsible generations have an agreed-upon vision and cumulative strategy, and I and my colleagues believe that the reason for the challenge facing young people is the confusion of the ideas of the parents’ generation. We, with all our mistakes, are the result of your unclear vision and confused thoughts.
I said: Give us everything you have..
She said: You are a generation that, along with those who came before you, has confused concepts politically, socially and culturally. Are we a modern civil state as some of you say and as we believe, or a Salafist religious state.. Things are mixed up before us. Does society respect freedom of opinion, respect women, believe in pluralism and have tolerance that accepts those who are different from it? I doubt that your generation is stable in its orientations. You have been in conflict over concepts since the beginning of the twentieth century and you blame us for what happened in our conscience.
I said: So that we do not enter into an argument instead of dialogue, I agree with you, but I am looking for solutions.
She said: Let’s go back to education..
I said: In Dr. Taha Hussein, the famous “Future of Culture in Egypt”, was talking about illiteracy and said wisely that eliminating illiteracy does not mean learning to read and write, but rather eliminating the illiteracy of reading, writing and understanding, because if we eliminate the illiteracy of reading and writing without understanding, then those who read but do not understand will be vulnerable to being controlled by those who think. The issue is not reading and writing, but rather an issue that includes depth of understanding, the ability to choose, make decisions, and distinguish between right and wrong. The challenge of education is a cross-border issue. There is no such thing as Egyptian or foreign education. Education is one, because it is based on the same foundations and development is proceeding in the same way. However, in the last 10 years, technology and artificial intelligence have become a major imposition in life, which cannot be dispensed with. Education has undergone comprehensive changes, as knowledge has become available to all and at no cost. The role of education has changed from merely transferring knowledge to the minds of students to students’ coexistence in school and university, and a model of coexistence within the framework of the educational institution in a digital and human enclosure at the same time. I realize that it is possible for us to succeed in developing education and use the means of development in a superior way, but we may also graduate the innovator, the scholar, the creative, and the genius, but at the same time, the extremist in thought, the violent, the liar, and the fraud. The issue is not in introducing a human rights curriculum to prevent violence or issuing instructions to prevent harassment and respect others, but rather it is a way of life within the educational institution from which this young man/woman emerges able to distinguish between right and wrong and to live within a framework that respects the rights of others without the methodology of excessive violence present in modern societies. The making of conscience takes place in educational institutions, in the family, in the media, in the climate of general culture and arts. New things such as sports, games, electronics, the use of the Internet, access to unlimited knowledge, YouTube, and others are intertwined in education. All this technology is available to children and youth without any control on our part, and whoever tries to stand in the way of its use will fail. Is this a trial or an opportunity..! If we learn how to use the tools of the age to create a conscience that allows the establishment of values that we agree upon, the acceptance and respect of difference, and peace with ourselves and others, we will have the opportunity to leap over challenges that have been built over the years. If we wait for the solution to come through prayer and wishing, society will slip further and drown in contradictions imposed on our generation and those who came before us as a result of ignorance, between modernity and Salafism, between enlightenment and ignorance, between science and knowledge and the superstitions of the past and beliefs created in people’s conscience at a time when knowledge was scarce and the methodology of science was absent. Wisdom and experience say: First: There is no educational system that rises above the level of its teachers. If we are talking about a curriculum that is taught and about an awareness of rights that is taught to modern generations, and the making of a future, and the making of a personality, then our goal must be focused on those in charge of the educational process, from teachers and managers, because they are the facilitators of the student’s acquisition of knowledge in the educational institution. We must define our goal as raising the level of the teacher and the level of education together.
The second wisdom says that to improve the level of education, the climate must be prepared for the learner. If the educational climate is ugly and lacks beauty, do not expect the learner to love beauty or to be pure. Also, if the climate is full of lies and lack of honesty, we should not expect education to rise to a higher level that we think will exist on its own. The third wisdom reminds us of what distinguishes man from other creatures and what God has placed in man that distinguishes him from them? The answer is the mind, imagination, dreams, accumulation of knowledge, and free will in making his decision. Children are the most imaginative and dreamy of us. If we contemplate the violence that we present to our children in games, movies, and cartoons, we will realize the extent of the emotional broadcast that we instill in them and that shapes their dreams. The other broadcast comes from those claiming to be religious with superstitions that have no basis in our beautiful, sound religion to complete a system of conscience that has nothing to do with modernity and science.
My respect for Al-Azhar Al-Sharif is known to everyone, but this does not prevent me from wondering how to influence the conscience of a student who spends fourteen years studying in schools and then four years in a university in Al-Azhar education and has never had a Christian or a girl sit next to him – to accept that these are citizens with him who have the same rights.
If there are policies, they must be applied to everyone because we should not have a path that allows for a single thought and another path that allows for its pluralism, as the message must change, as I have not yet encountered a message that combines the two orientations. We want more creativity in integrating ideas and removing ambiguity.
In my opinion, this is the responsibility of governments and community leaders, and we must show real seriousness in dealing with this matter. Without activating these human concepts, defining them and integrating them into new technological means, it is very difficult to expect a new generation that is more creative, more brilliant, more tolerant and less extremist at the same time.
Yes, my daughter, you are right and our generation must strive with you and through you to get out of this predicament and overcome the confusion in concepts and impose a path without contradiction between what we say and what we do.
After the dialogue, we agreed to divide the values into groups and this is what we agreed upon:
First: Freedom, justice and responsibility,
Second: Honesty, integrity and trustworthiness,
Third: Knowledge, accuracy and mastery.
Fourth: Courage, citizenship, tolerance, mercy, benevolence, forgiveness, compassion, gratitude, righteousness, solidarity and positive patience.
Fifth: Beauty, happiness and contentment
Sixth: Friendship, love and giving
Seventh: Cleanliness, environmental balance and self-respect
We agreed to leave the relative priorities between values for another discussion.
How do we integrate these values into education?
This is the content of the next article.
