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 The Arab Virtual Education Initiative

“Arab educational curricula do need to undergo a period of drastic changes. But this is a long process. Should nothing be done in the interim?”
 

Introduction
Over the last three to four decades, Arab children and adolescents have been almost systematically deprived of the benefits of a humanist cultural upbringing. All governmental priorities were given, verbal assurances and promises aside, to maintaining and strengthening the hold of the existing regimes on power and, allegedly, to meeting the various challenges posed by the Arab-Israeli conflict. The result has been mediocre and outmoded educational systems and a substantive and quantitative paucity in the amount of adequate cultural programs and activities meant for young people, especially those meant to foster civic and democratic values.

Some regimes, of course, have, by their very nature, been always antagonistic towards humanist education. Of anything, these regimes have invested heavily in making sure that their particular educational systems are anything but humanistic. Moreover, they often used their financial resources to support regional projects and programs aimed at young people, which are, to say the least, quite fundamentalist in terms of both their content and their approach.

The calls to try to change Arab educational curricula are, therefore, necessary but are also very problematic. In a sense, these calls challenge the very legitimacy of various ME regimes (as is the case in many Gulf countries), or, at the very least, raise very problematic, and perhaps even confrontational, issues for them (as is the case with Syria, Egypt, and Lebanon, for instance, where the regimes remain very reluctant to seriously tackle certain issues which could incur the Islamists’ ire). As such, humanizing the curricula cannot, frankly, be seriously considered before achieving some level of social humanization first. Such process of humanization is only possible, at this stage, through the establishment of parallel unofficial educational curricula. No, we are not necessarily referring to the possibility of establishing new private and international schools, quite an elitist approach at this stage, but to supplementing the existing curricula by publishing more and more educational and literary works aimed at children, adolescents and young adults in the ME.

The Proposal
Even a casual perusal of the various literature aimed at young people (including all the above identified categories, i.e. children, adolescents and young adults) in the Arab World, among other ME societies, today reveals how little of value has been invested in this area over the last few decades, though more freedom is admittedly available here especially this day and age. 

Therefore, before we call on the very people who have played and continue to play a very negative role in the development of humanistic values in Arab and other ME countries, i.e. the various regimes involved, it sounds more reasonable and logical to try to cover the existing gap in publishing educational and literary works aimed at young people and made available through the regular book markets, and, an occasions, the Internet.

New series discussing the history of the region, both ancient and modern, aimed at different age groups, is one starting point. But the creation of new literary works, written by ME authors, is indeed no less important considering how far behind the region is lagging with regards to the development of a literary tradition aimed at young readers (The Arabian Nights, of course, cannot serve as a counter example here due to its old origin and the fact that, in its original form at least, it has never been meant for young readers or, more accurately perhaps,  listeners).

The proposal made here, therefore, is quite straightforward. The creation of a series of literary and educational works, propagated through traditional print and electronic outlets, aimed at young readers (ages 5-25). The purpose is to fill the existing gap and to counteract against the ongoing rise of fundamentalist literature also aimed at these readers.

considering the current conditions of the region, special attention should be paid here to issues related to peace, non-violence and religious and ethnic diversity. 

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