1- Skills of debate

It is crucially important for students to acquire skills of debate in order for them to be able to engage in a healthy, constructive learning process. This particular element is glaringly absent from school curricula, and students are unfortunately not taught how to seek knowledge through dialogue and debate.

2- Scientific research

Equally important to debate, scientific research stands at the top of the pyramid of needed education. Most schools and colleges offer very little to encourage students to ‘dig’ for information, construct research, and present valid scientific papers. Many students tend to copy and paste information from various sources, with little reference documentation if any, and regard the outcome as a scientific paper. What’s more shocking is that most teachers do not object to, or try to alter, the situation.

3- Sex education

In a region such as the Arab world, sex is largely considered a topic to avoid talking about. It is rarely brought up by teachers to their students, or even by parents to their children. Text books normally refer to strictly biological references to the issue, and do not provide students with tangible information that would better their understanding of their own growth. Just as critical the subject is, it is systematically ignored and most teenagers refer to risky ways to educate themselves in it – which only makes the situation worse.

4- Practical, hands-on, active learning

Licensing schools that have no science laboratories and no libraries generates the lack of practical learning. In agreement with the preceding points, students need to explore “learning” firsthand and not memorize it by heart – looking at an experiment in black and white pictures in a science book is hardly the same as experimenting.

5- Emphasis on humanities

Languages, philosophy, history, and literature suffer from insufficient attention in Arab schools. Students interested in pursuing studies in humanities are discouraged by the lack of adequate and interesting curricula treating these subjects.

In a region such as the Arab World, where education suffers from major gaps in promoting key values such as democracy, tolerance, and the skills of debate and scientific research, it is imperative that the situation be remedied. Because inanimate information transfer is the dominant technique used across Arabia, poor education results and mediocre levels of progress distinguish the outcome of schools and universities. It is not the brains nor the desire to learn that are missing; it is quality education that allows active learning and student participation in the educational process.

Luckily, advances in technology and telecommunications provide outlets and ways around obvious educational glitches. Online courses and discussion boards are one form of this ongoing revolution, search tools and interactive applications are another.

The AltSchoolArabia Project is an attempt at providing a trusted source of interactive learning tools for Arab learners via the World Wide Web. It is a project that aims to bridge the gap between current educational policies in the Arab World and what learners need to learn to be active citizens of the 21st century.