Hitting the books

It is back to school for the nations children starting 15 September.Al-Ahram Weekly takes the occasion to ask how students secure their seats, what they will learn and how safe are their classrooms
Hitting the books
After 10 years of curriculum reform, how far have we come, asks Mariz Tadros
Ever wondered why students carry such enormous school bags, no matter how young they are? The answer may be the assigned books they have to lug to and from school, which can literally be back-breaking. Curriculum reform has been the subject of intense debate in Egyptian society for some time now, and every parent and child has something to say about school books and their content.
At the beginning of almost every school year, reassuring official statements appear in the press about how much school syllabi have been improved. At the beginning of the 1990s, the Ministry of Education declared its commitment to the thorough revision of school syllabi, and even established a formal body for this purpose: the National Centre for Curriculum and Instructional Materials Development. So far, according to official sources, primary and preparatory school books have been completely revised and secondary school ones are in the process of being revamped.
But any parents interviewed by Al-Ahram Weekly feel that little progress has been made and eye promising statements from the ministry with suspicion. "It seems that for the Ministry of Education, upgrading the syllabi means making them bigger and bigger," said one disgruntled father. "There is no link between the syllabi and the age of the students. The syllabi are just too difficult and long. What I was being taught at preparatory level is now being taught in primary school. How are they expected to take it all in?" Many other parents agree, complaining that there is just too much information crammed in books for young students to be able to take in.
Parents also complain that because of the rambling and poor quality of government text-books, they are forced to rely on books outside of the curriculum -- so-called external books -- which summarise the material in the government texts in simple point form and offer exercises that will prepare students for examinations. Buying supplementary books to make sense of assigned school books has become a burden that affects schoolgoers of all ages and social classes. And while some parents note that efforts have been made to make material less grey and dull, they add that there is still a long way to go. "Sometimes they [the government books] use such complicated terminology," complained another parent. "You wonder how they expect can primary school children to understand what they are talking about. The material often just does not follow."
The many criticisms of the school syllabi were presented by the Weekly to Kawsar Kouchok, director of the National Centre for Curriculum and Instructional Materials Development. She nods knowingly as one complaint after another is read to her before finally declaring the objections to be misguided and "unscientific". "I respect that parents care about what their children are learning, but it is a major mistake to expect kids in the year 2000 to learn what he or she used to learn at school in the 1960s," remarked Kouchok. "If this were the case, there would be no progress or development. In fact, if the syllabi did not change, parents would complain that no development has been made," she argued.
Kouchok insists that school books have been greatly shortened and is convinced that parents are more concerned with their children passing exams than learning. "The curriculum is formulated in the light of international standards on what your child should be able to do and know in every subject at every level. We have to comply with that -- or do we want our children to fall behind?"
But does keeping up with the rest of the world necessarily require that books be written in such a confusing manner, so as to compel parents and children to rely on outside material? "A major catastrophe!" exclaimed Kouchok, when external books were mentioned. "These external books do not offer an education," she explained. "They only offer information formulated for memorisation. What these external books do is summarise the syllabus and reformulate it in point form, so that students can learn [what they have to] by heart and regurgitate it in the exams. This is not learning at all." Kouchok even went as far as suggest that these books be banned altogether.
Kouchok identifies parents' lack of faith in the educational system as a major problem. "There must be some level of trust in those responsible. When I take my son to the doctor and he prescribes medicine, I don't question why he chose that medication. Why isn't there the same trust with those responsible for educating our children? There is no trust. Parents poke their nose into what does not concern them because they don't trust that we know our work," she said.
In order to keep up with the fast pace of change in the information age, the primary school syllabi have been revised three times over the last 10 years. A series of national conferences have been held to develop the curriculum. Kouchok explained that these conferences all took place under the auspices of Mrs Suzanne Mubarak, noting that this gave the project the political backing it needed. Preparatory meetings take place prior to each conference in order to make policy recommendations about how the syllabi should be reformed and improved. Kouchok emphasised that these preparatory meetings are not just attended by education professors and experts, but also by politicians, businessmen, parents, teachers, students and experts to get as much feedback as possible. The recommendations of these meetings then contribute to developing a vision of what a syllabus should cover, which is then translated into policy guidelines.
Last week, ahead of the upcoming conference on the development of secondary school education, I attended one such preparatory meeting. Sitting in the Cairo Univeristy Student Union listening to the debate offered, it was difficult not to wonder whether I was simply unfortunate enough to attend a particularly disappointing meeting or whether they were all as tepid as this. Minister of Education Ahmed Bahaeddin started off the session citing the ministry's intention to foster greater loyalty to the country by emphasising Arabic and religion. He noted that the ministry would be paying particular attention to technology, in order to equip students to join the market. The session that followed could best be described as mild, and the questions and comments that followed the opening of the floor were neither challenging nor creative, offering little in the way of suggestions for reform. It seems that the minister himself was not so impressed, as he sarcastically noted that "it seems there is a need for a training session for those who are discussing education issues."
One remark, made by education expert Sawi Ahmed, pointed to a chronic problem of educational reform. "The problem is that the national conference will take place, but policies will not translate into reality because they will not be implemented," Ahmed said. Bahaeddin responded with assurances that the policies will be followed up. But if the national conference is a culmination of the points raised during these preparatory sessions, and they are all similar to the one I sat in on, then there are serious questions to how far, and how effectively the system can reform the school curricula.
At the end of every national conference, the ministry announces competitions for the publication of new school books, according to the suggested guidelines of the conference. "The authorship of the books was a task reserved for a distinct few, who were assigned to write them. However, the ministry now sets up general outlines of what is required and opens it up to competition -- with a generous prize."
The process of reform is continuous, affirmed Kouchok, but she insisted that the real problem with education is in how the syllabi are taught. "No matter how excellent the syllabi are, if the teacher is not up to standard, there will be no learning. On the other hand, if you have an average syllabus and a capable teacher, he can do wonders."
Mohamed Kamal Soliman, secretary-general of the Teachers Syndicate, believes that this problem could be addressed by including teachers in the early stages of reform. "You need practical experience as well as expertise," he insists. He also suggests that there must be follow-up on the syllabi, to examine how successful they are. And one more thing: "Don't come at the beginning of the school year, give a teacher a book and tell him to teach it," Soliman warns. "We need more training on the new syllabi, and we need more resources for that."
Mai El-Rekhawy, a child psychologist who has been scrutinising the primary school syllabi for the last seven years, believes there is still much progress to be made. "They may have shortened certain lessons, but on the whole, there has been no real improvement in their approach to learning," she suggested. El-Rekhawy has met and observed several children in doctors' clinics who suffer from depression, maladjustment, nervous ticks, nausea and aggressive behaviour. She believes these symptoms can sometimes be attributed to children's inability to cope with the strict requirements of school curricula. The problem, in her view, starts with children being expected to memorise so much material. While education officials have said that the problem is not with school curricula, but with the students and the teachers' way of teaching, El-Rekhawy finds such arguments unconvincing: "A thorough analysis of examination questions shows that students are tested on their ability to memorise, not on their ability to think," she says. It is this system of memorisation that inhibits a child's creative abilities, according to El-Rakhawy, making parents panic about their children's capabilities and intelligence, when neither are necessarily in question.
She points out to another disturbing occurrence: the syllabi are so crammed that children and parents have no time after school but to study and do homework. From El-Rekhawy's observations, this can cause a problem in the parent-child relationship. "The child feels trapped, between school in the morning and school at night," says El-Rekhawy. "How many parents spend some time every day playing with their children?" She also has doubts whether cramming so much information into kids heads is the most appropriate way to equip today's child with what it takes to compete with his peers elsewhere. "All you are doing is doubling the information, expecting a doubling of his memorisation capacity."
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