I am not a scientist, a scholar, an educator, a government employee, a sociologist, or even a person with a high IQ. I’m just a designer who was trained to think of life as something that needs solutions. These solutions are often really simplistic, given the first statement. A trained specialist will surely shoot my logic down in under 3 seconds, but it matters not, as this is my space.
One issue that I think a lot about is public education in Jordan. Mind you, I didn’t spend a single year of my pre-college education in this country. I only moved here at 18 to study Fine Arts at Jordan University.
In my simplistic mind, we can potentially see quick, efficient, and easy improvements in our country by changing two things in our public education system. I’m talking improvements that we could see in 15 years or even less, and we’ll even cut costs. These changes are:
1. Make public education in Jordan co-ed
The benefits of co-ed public education will be numerous:
a) Boys will grow up to think of women as classmates, as peers, as colleagues, as teachers, and as friends, the artificial, almost magically mysterious quality of women will be slowly weeded out
b) Statement A will reflect positively on everything, from the exclusion of young males in society, to sexual harassment, to masochism, to even self-confidence
c) Women are likely to be better teachers because of society’s insistence on teaching not being a lofty career path for talented, intelligent men
d) Violence in male schools will drop
e) Boys will start performing better in Tawjihi because they’d have more qualified teachers
f) We’ll have more money to improve education when we cut out needless salaries, and the government can spend money equally on schools, and provide better infrastructures
g) Both males and females will be better equipped to handle co-ed university education
h) Both males and females will be better equipped to handle co-ed workplaces
i) Both males and females will be given more opportunity to partake in activities that are not gender-neutral in third world countries like Jordan (i.e. girls can be given more chances to partake in sports and boys can be given more chances to partake in the arts)
j) We’ll grow a generation that will respect the other gender for who they are as opposed to what’s in between their legs
k) Our society will become more comfortable
2. Make public education in Jordan secular
Oh, man, did I really just say that? Yes, I did, and yes, I do know that Jordan is not a secular country. But I still think education should be secular.
a) Jordan is a very diverse country in terms of beliefs and degrees of beliefs. We need to respect that, respect our minorities, and respect our differences
b) No one can be certain of how qualified a person who teaches religion in schools is; he or she could arguably be a fundamentalist, do we really need that?
c) Unlike a bad science or math teacher, a bad religion teacher could plant seeds we don’t want planted in our children’s brains, and we all know that not all teachers follow government curricula
d) Families should have the freedom to decide on what they want their children to learn about religions. I’m sure mosques and churches will be happy to provide Friday and Sunday schools to supplement religious education at home
e) Private schools do not have to be secular, and people will always the option to do that instead
See what I mean? These two items seem horribly simple to me, and I don’t see why no one just launches a few pilot projects in different areas around Jordan to test out such ideas.
I know there will be a backlash from the conservative parts of the country, but man, who are we kidding? These kids will get to work or university in a few years and will be forced to mingle with the other sex regardless.
