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Eye on the Future
A Project for the Cultural Development of Arab Children and Adolescents

Introduction
Over the last three to four decades, Arab children and adolescents have been almost systematically deprived of the benefits of a 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 being mediocre and outmoded educational systems and a substantive and quantitative paucity in the amount of adequate cultural programs and activities meant for young people.

Today, the market is being filled by recycled versions of well-known folktales and stories, such as the Arabian Nights and Little Red Riding Hood. Another trend exhibits strong Islamic leanings and presents a very particular (and self-serving) vision of history and ethics that is difficult to harmonize with the needs and principles of civic education. This can lead to further alienation of non-Islamic elements in Arab society, be they civic-minded Muslims, and/or Christians.

Arab parents find themselves with almost no alternatives as the Disneyfication of Arab youth (which is another powerful and alienating force that also has little to do with the principles of civic education) proceeds at a fast pace and via a wide variety of channels: books, music, TV, films, theater, and, more recently, the Internet.

Eye on the Future is a far-reaching pro-active program designed by DarEmar to meet this challenge via all the media mentioned above. The following is a brief review of the various component invo0vled in this project.

I. The Beginning: The Theater
Any cultural program designed for young people should naturally emerge from the realm of story-telling and the theater. There is currently no children theater in the entire Arab World, including Syria. We propose to begin by founding a theater that would host and produce different activities and performances all through the year, and that would also tour the various Syrian cities and provinces, as well as the neighboring Arab countries.

Syria possesses enough qualified cadre to operate such a theater. What has always been lacking was the financing and an overall organizing vision. The existing cadres present performances every now and then, perhaps once a year, strictly aimed at children. Adolescents are, unfortunately, not taking into account. For all their qualities, these limited initiatives simply cannot fill the gap, as they remain haphazard and narrow in their focus.

In the mean time, the need for a continuing cultural activity along these lines grows by the day. In fact, there is a powerful pent-up demand for it all through the region.

The activities will include not only plays, but also encounters with famous artists and musicians.

Prominent artists would be invited to give a demonstration of their work to an audience made of up of children and adolescents, who will have the opportunity to have the artist respond to their questions, review their work, give them pointers and advice. In other words, the theater would also be used for workshops open to young people under the supervision of well-known local, Arab and foreign artists.

This will inevitably open new horizons for those adolescents taking part in the event and will teach them new skills that might play a part in their choice of  career in the future. Furthermore, these activities will even be organized in cooperation with bright young talents and could thus serve as training programs for many of those taking part in the organization. 

The plays themselves could also be presented by local, Arab and foreign groups. The important thing is to keep on presenting new things in order to satisfy the broadest possible spectrum of our young audience, and their parents.

Organizing an annual cultural festival for young people will have an important role to play in this regard. Moreover, activities will not be restricted only to the arts, science fairs will also be held with the participation of known scientists and with the same goals and benefits in mind.

All the above activities will be taped on video with sales thereof helping disseminate the benefit and generating income. This aspect could again be used to help train interested adolescents in various aspects of theater and TV production.
 

II. Books & Bookshops:

The cultural development of children and adolescents cannot simply rely on theatrical activities. Much is said these days about the appetite of young people for reading, but the fact remains that education and entertainment cannot take place without reference to books. The paucity of new writing addressed to adolescents in the Arab book market is an appallingly visible fact.

The vacuum is currently being filled either by reprints of the old standard works, which, no matter how important they remain, are not necessarily adequate or sufficient to meet the demands of the era in which we live and in which our children are growing. Or by books with strong Islamic leanings, whose limited vision cannot easily accommodate civic values.

For this reason, there is a need for introducing into the market place a new line of books aimed at children and adolescents that can simultaneously foster civic values and make up for the inadequacy of educational programs which often fail to challenge the minds of our young people.

Arab educational programs, Syria being no exception, often present information in a most unattractive form, treating young people as if they were machines made to memorize and receive input without any questioning.

In history, this is exemplified by listing dates and events and reasons for the events without seeking to clarify the meaning and significance thereof or asking the young “recipients” for their opinions, and without trying to show how people used to live, work and raise their families. History, Islamic History included,  is thus reduced to a very boring chronology, with pre-Islamic times often treated only as a necessary yet dark prelude to the Islamic era.

In science and math, the grip of tradition is most apparent in the neglect of the context in which discoveries and advances take place. Instead of actually carrying out the experiment, or showing a movie in which a particular experiment is carried out, the experiment, its steps, results, and import, are simply explained in words, and students are expected to memorize the information relayed. There are no labs, and no practical education (This gap could, in part, be bridged through workshops hosted in the theater, as we have pointed earlier).

On the theoretical side, there is a need to create something along the lines of the old Lady Byrd series, but better suited for the educational and creative needs of Arab children and adolescents. This does not mean that translation efforts, or seeking to get the rights for translating into Arabic of a series along the lines of Lady Byrd would be neglected. But translation alone will not be sufficient. A book aimed at young British people, for instances, will not introduce and stress the importance of a Hammurabi or an Ibn Sina, or an Adonis. But an educational series aimed at Arab children and adolescents will, as indeed it must.

In addition to educational books, there is a need to create a literary line of books aimed at our young audience: stories, comics, short stories, poetry, songs, etc. As such, we need to begin investing in new writers and artists by holding competitions and by commissioning works from those already working in the field who have shown promise but are unable to devote more time to this line of work due to lack of interest and funds on the part of traditional publishers.

We need to develop comic strips such as Asterix, Tintin, or even Superman, but based on our cultural realities, historical and contemporary. We also need to look for more profound and creative works along the lines of a Dr Seuss and the Little Prince. We already possess certain manuscripts that show such promise.

Alternatively, we need to translate some international works that are less Disneyesque and consumerist and more ennobling and mind-opening. There are dozens of names that can be mentioned here, all revealing the gulf between the Arab world and the western world with regards to addressing young people’s cultural needs. No matter how Disneyesque western culture is becoming, there are alternatives available to concerned parents. In today’s Arab world, there are virtually no parallels either to the Disney example or to the alternatives.

The aim, then, is to encourage the growth of a book-culture, aimed at children and adolescents, that will bridge the ever-growing gap between the Arab World and the rest of the world.
 

III. The Internet: A tool for entertainment and education
Arab kids suffer from a lack of internet sites designed to accommodate their educational and entertainment needs. Those sites that do exist are to be more commercial (and crassly commercial at that) than educational. This situation is unacceptable. The Internet should serve as an instrument of growth and development for young Arab people and not as another tool for cultural assimilationism.

For this reason, we envision the creation of several inter-linked sites to serve the educational and entertainment needs of Arab children. These would include tutorial sites where teachers and students of high academic standing can respond to questions posed by young people from all over the Arab World. Such sites could provide for more purposeful chatting between Arab children and adolescents, and would allow some adult guidance.

In time, these sites could help transform the Internet into a real educational tool for Arab youth, computers themselves will become real educational and cultural instruments and not some glorified game sets as they are mostly used these days.

This does not meant, of course, that the Internet and computers are to be used solely for direct educational purposes. On the contrary, games can still be introduced, but we must foster the creation of games that respond to the needs of young Arab people and accommodate Arab culture and aspirations. Young people must be exposed to other cultures, but it is dangerous for them to forget about or disdain their own.

Online storytelling is another avenue that should be explored. Famous artists and social figures could periodically be invited to tell stories to kids via the Internet. And, if we are allowed to dream…

We could also invite some policymakers to address kids via such sites explaining Arab stands on certain “hot” issues: political, environmental, social, economic, etc (This could take place, of course,  on our theater stage as well). The main point is to help empower young people by making them feel more involved somehow in the shaping of world around them.

And is the case with the activities to take place on our theater, the Internet  sites to be created should be constructed with the help of bright children and adolescents and should to a good extent reflect their aesthetic vision. These sites are also meant to help participants develop their knowledge and skills in the hope of easing their future choice of careers.
 

IV. Festivals and Special Events:
Festivals, recitals, forums and similar events aimed at children and adolescents will encourage wide participation in catering to the educational and cultural needs of young people and will stimulate participation by young people themselves. These events will help identify new talents in the field of storytelling, song writing, drawing, and computer programming, talents which we can adopt and foster, talents to whom we can provide a much needed creative outlet.

One potential festival is the Etana Youth Festival, an event that will feature storytelling, music, drawing competitions and other similar activities. This event will allow for direct encounters to take place between children and adolescents, on the one hand, and well-known storytellers, musicians, playwrights, artists, and community activists, on the other.

Such events are also meant to help encourage greater cooperation between participating professionals in the hope of prodding more rich and creative projects in the near future.

And as we have mentioned earlier, the Children Theater would also be a place for special training courses, and lectures by all different sorts of people, all of who has something to say and share with our young.

To help support the activities and programs of DarEmar, please contact support@daremar.org.
 

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