In an interview published by New York Times this week, US President Obama said his country will face a real economic competition from India, China, the European Union, Brazil and South Korea. When he was asked why these countries and not others, he said because competition is mainly based on one thing: education. Education in these states has become good enough to cause a worry to the United States and push it to have concerns over the level of its own education. Therefore, it doubled its support for education!
These States and the US itself do not have government or even private education, as they have civil nonprofitable education, which is entirely financed by the civil society and different forms of civil contributions. This is, in fact, the only way to save education in any country. Strangely enough, we all know and repeat this, but in vain. This may be because we do not exactly know the start towards an education of this kind in our country. I only ask you to read the article by Ayman al-Gindi in Al-Masry Al-Youm last Monday. Al-Gindi seems to be very sad at the waste of the society's enormous energy, which could be directed to civil education to make a radical change in the long run. This energy is generated by the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) Group in particular. It has been proved that this group has unlimited energy, which could be a tool for construction or destruction. But the actual problem is that the second possibility has prevailed till now. This may be because the group competes with the ruling regime, thus creating a constant headache that has incurred us many losses expected to increase in the future if such conflict continued between the two parties.
The country has been ruled by a 28-year state of emergency because of MB; the constitution was amended to cancel the judicial supervision over elections because of MB; Sadat was assassinated by MB or, to be more accurate, by a group from within MB; trade unions and all forms of civil society organizations are being attacked under the pretext of MB; and the country's future is confiscated by the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) because of MB.
What would happen if MB preferred the future to any other ambitions of power? What would happen if the group directed this great energy to civil work, starting with planting trees, campaigns to clean streets; and voluntary initiatives to improve education? What would happen if MB and any other Christian group having the ability and desire to help directed their energy for the sake of the country and not against it? What would happen, if they distanced themselves from dirty politics and decided to help millions of people to combat poverty and misery? What would happen if they gave top priority to the enlightened civil education for twenty years to come?
If they did, we would be one of the countries mentioned by Obama. Otherwise, this energy with all its potential would be wasted, and we would think that we build, but we, in fact, destroy!
