US officials claim they want to reform Iraq's school system. Galal Amin* questions their motives No sooner had the Americans occupied Iraq, than US officials intimated their intention to change the country's educational curricula. Schoolbooks are to be revised; new material will be added and the old selectively excised. Indeed, the United States even intends to produce and print some of the new books, so that they can be distributed for free. The Americans have sought to justify this unusual move by claiming that they want to cleanse Iraqi schoolbooks of the personality cult of Saddam Hussein. They also argue that the educational system of all Arab countries, not just Iraq, is incompatible with modern pedagogical "best practice", for it stresses rote learning rather than creativity. The existing systems, they claim, serve only to produce lazy, terror-prone minds, not individuals who believe in democracy and know how to defend it. The forthcoming reforms are therefore intended as one more nail in the coffin of single-party states throughout the region: they will help to lift the clouds of tyranny, liberating the Arabs to bask in the glow of a healthy pluralism. Power will change hands, we are promised, and people will become more tolerant of contradictory points of view. Some Arab analysts argue that since America's aims coincide with the goals of Arab reformers, we should approve of this project, for it is the reform that matters, not the identity of those who undertake it. Other analysts, however, are against the US reform on the grounds that such an important task should not be left in the hands of outsiders. If we need reforms, they claim, we should introduce them ourselves, and not let others take the lead. Both groups are wrong. Of course, the identity of who is carrying out the reform matters; but the essence of the reforms themselves matters even more. And the proposed reforms are not the right ones. Indeed, given the identity of reformers, what else should we expect? First of all, no impartial observer can take seriously the US administration's claim that it is genuinely concerned to stamp out personality cults. The Americans have spent over half a century quite blatantly cozying up to regimes which are or were infamous for their personality cults, without once pausing to question their probity or urge any kind of reforms. As for Saddam Hussein and his Ba'ath Party, the task of dismantling the cult which they created in Iraq is hardly daunting. It could be accomplished at very little cost, and without the Americans needing to print any books for the Iraqis. Left to their own devices, the Iraqis would in the normal course of things remove any reference to the old regime from their curricula. The need to precipitate this process is not a sufficient motive for embarking on an exercise in root-and-branch reform. As for the claim that the Americans want to replace rote learning with a more analytical approach, to encourage Iraqi students to be more creative and more critical, this is simply ridiculous. It must be obvious to everyone that it is not in the interest of the US administration -- or of their Israeli allies -- for the Arabs in general, and the Iraqis in particular, to develop free and independent teaching methods and encourage their citizens to criticise what they read and hear. On the contrary, it is in US and Israeli interests for all the Arab peoples to remain forever backward and intellectually passive. Of course, some will argue that the US and Israel want us to become free thinkers because our present methods of education encourage bigotry, making students easy prey for extremist religious movements, and thus turning the region into a hotbed of terrorism. But, even if we assume that some educational systems are likely to make people more pliable than others, it still does not follow that the Americans and Israelis want the Arabs to learn to resist manipulation. What matters for the Americans and the Israelis is not whether we are manipulable or not, but the substance and purpose of the manipulation practised on us. In short, what they want is an educational system that will make the Arabs more uncritically appreciative of US policy and schemes, and that will encourage them to forget the suffering of the Palestinians, and make peace with Israel. And this is the kind of educational system that the Americans are likely to deliver in Iraq, whatever else they may claim to be doing. Indeed, their record speaks for itself. Over the last few centuries, the Americans have created in their own country an educational system that does very little to encourage critical and independent thinking. Of course, most Americans will vehemently deny this charge. But throughout their history, American citizens have proved themselves largely incapable of questioning the actions of their government and deeply disinclined to tolerate those who hold radically divergent views. One may argue that television has played a greater role than education in weakening the critical faculties of the American mind. But American schools also play their part in creating this psychological willingness to accept the dominant opinion without discussion, to believe in authority without questioning it, and to react with hostility to those who dare stray too far from the mainstream of opinion. The freedoms which the American educational system can boast are either marginal, or deceptive. As in federal elections, where voters think that they are free, when in fact their options are limited to two near-identical parties, so students are encouraged to choose, but only among a range of prepackaged "products" which are all basically alike. Nevertheless, let's assume, for the sake of argument, that the US education system does encourage critical and independent thought. Even then, the force of television and other media has clearly proved to be more than enough to counteract this trend. So where then is the advantage in introducing a US-style educational system in Iraq -- or anywhere else -- if US-style television and media are to follow? Indeed, this is not necessarily a two-stage operation, since television is already an integral part of the US school system. One of the underlying assumptions of US educational theory is that dictatorship, hegemony and repression emanate only from the state, and that the solution to all such ills is therefore to reduce the role of the state in society. This assumption, however, is deeply flawed, for there is another equally important source of repression in modern times: business corporations. The only difference between the threat posed by the state and that posed by commercial companies is not one of scale, but of method. The state has prisons, and the discipline it imposes is clearly declared and supported by the explicit threat of violence. Companies do not have prisons and police forces, but they manage to achieve the same ends in a more subtle, often imperceptible way. It is difficult to say which is worse -- the conditioning exerted by the state, or the commercialisation of every aspect of life which turns the public into an undifferentiated mass of docile consumers. But perhaps the danger is all the greater when submission and passivity are achieved by persuasion, rather than by show of force. Once an American-style educational system has been put in place in Iraq, and the American way of life has begun to pervade both the culture of that society, and its commercial practices, then the range of choices available to the majority of the population will be seriously diminished. In particular, this new way of life and learning will instill a different set of values from those to be found in the indigenous Arab culture. The very fact that American culture is touted as superior to the existing culture is a catastrophe in itself. In addition, under the new teaching system a greater proportion of classes will inevitably be conducted in foreign languages, at the expense of Arabic. This aspect of cultural domination is only to be expected, and it will do nothing to advance learning among the people of Iraq or to raise their critical awareness. If anything, it will only make the damage inflicted on them more complex, and more long-lasting. The Iraqis will lose not only whole domains of their culture, but much of their real dignity and self-respect. As their knowledge of Arabic deteriorates, their creative abilities will dwindle, and with them their capacity for innovation. The link between creativity and the ability to express oneself in one's own language has long been established by educational experts. While this may not have much effect on training in physics and technology, its impact on the social sciences and literature will be tremendous. Recently, Dr Abdel-Rashid Mahmoudi has translated and published a report by the French philosopher Louis Massignon, who taught Taha Hussein at what was then the Egyptian University, now Cairo University (Akhbar al-Adab, 15 September 2002). Writing in 1913, Massignon discussed the progress of philosophical ideas and the teaching of philosophy in Arab countries. He described the state of Egyptian students who had received a modern education in these words: "These students graduated from the government schools having learned something of most modern ideas, but only in a superficial manner. Worse still, they received this training in a foreign language, English in this case, and were given no opportunity to expand their knowledge in Arabic, their mother tongue. They are thus completely incapable of thinking in an original manner. For it would seem that, as a rule, it is impossible to innovate in a borrowed language, which can only ever be an artificial tool. Such a tool will never allow the latent potential of the personality to be released with all the flexibility that would be possible in the mother tongue." And what of rote learning, then, with which our present educational systems are so closely identified? Surely the analytical faculties the US school system is said to promote are, in themselves, intrinsically better? Of course, I have no desire to defend a system based on rote learning which excludes all analysis and understanding of causality, and where students are simply graded according to the power of their memory, with no reference to their skill in reasoning. The damage caused by such a system is clear and needs no further proof. It is torturous to the students, joyless, and a barrier to innovation. Yet, at the same time, it is simply not the case that every vital piece of information has a proof, or that every element of knowledge has a reason that should be examined. Some bits of information are best assigned to memory without further ado, such as the names of countries, cities, and regions. Of course, one can spend years examining the origin of names, but in a normal school curricula, this would not be needed. The table of multiplication is another example. Much of grammar, poetry and religious texts also falls into this category of what is best got by heart. At least for the non-specialist, some information is more useful when it is memorised rather than analysed. Some educators in the US and Europe have begun to recognise that giving excessive freedom to students in deciding what they learn and what they don't, what they memorise and what they don't, can have a negative impact on their abilities. As a result, US educators have begun to stress the need for stricter educational systems, modelled on those of Germany or Japan, for instance, in order to help their students achieve higher standards. Indeed, I would go so far as to suggest that the rising tide of violence in US schools and society is directly linked to the lack of discipline in the educational system, where students are given excessive freedom in the name of individual growth and independence. The US educational system has created a society that is intolerant of dissent, unless it is packaged and commercialised; it has also created a society in which mindless, directionless violence has reached unprecedented heights. No society, least of all America, has yet found the holy grail of education. Humility is a virtue, never more so than when one is in the business of shaping the hearts and minds of others. The US administration would do well to commit this lesson to heart, before it starts remodelling the society of Iraq by dictating how its schools are to be run. * The writer is professor of economics at the American University in Cairo.
