TV announcer Lamis el-Hadidi decided to go to Assiut two days ago to record an episode of her program Etkalem (Talk). I think that those who watched the episode noticed for the first time many things in the depth of Upper Egypt. No one can forget the scene of the school whose students gathered around el-Hadidi. When she asked them about their hopes, most of them called for building a wall around the school to protect them. The scene in the classroom where el-Hadidi sat to see whether there is any relation between a class in a school of this kind and where she received her education in the past was a painful and miserable scene.
The school, which has no fence, has no curricula, books, training or education or anything of this kind! No one knows whether the officials had seen the episode or not, but we know that talking about investment, development and renaissance is nonsense in light of such an education. During its three-day conference last November, the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) talked about important issues, including the development of education, bringing about decentralization and developing agriculture! The conference is over, but none of the three problems was solved. Indeed, NDP would be a liar if it told people that it would develop education, achieve decentralization and change methods of irrigation and agriculture at one go. In fact, the episode revealed that NDP has to choose a province to test its goals in education, decentralization and agriculture at the same time and in a short time. Those goals need enormous funds and a long time, so it is not wise to wait many years so that NDP can achieve its goals!
To put it in a nutshell, schools in all provinces are like or worse than Assuit's school that was watched by millions of viewers in el-Hadidi's program. This means that there is no hope without a real beginning to change this melancholic reality. Change would not be possible in 28 provinces at the same time, but it possible and could be tomorrow if we took Assiut as the starting point of reform. After that, we can move to another province and so on. Start with education in one of the provinces now. It is now or never!
