Until the Foundation of the Tent is Established

" Where are you going, my son? To school. And what are you learning there? Reading, math, and other lessons."  " Rass Rous  Darr Door".

Driven by feelings of pain, and prior feelings of concern and jealousy, I decided to respond to the invitation I received via email to participate in a meeting through the internet platform "Zoom", under the title (Education and Teaching in Times of War and Crises), organized by one of the active institutions in this important field.

As I prepared and got ready to participate, the following jumped to my mind :- 

•    How many sins have we committed with our own hands against the educational system applied in our schools, and we still, consciously or unconsciously, cling to the excuse "He who strives and succeeds will have two rewards, and he who strives but fails will have the reward of effort" (the first of them was when we inserted schools into the uprising of 1987 and the negative repercussions that ensued on both behavioral and academic levels), we soon turned to it, through the popular education campaign, which began in mid-March 1988 and blossomed with the onset of Spring 1988, extending to all parts of the occupied homeland.

•    Among these sins as well, upon the commencement of the Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education, was the bias towards organizational affiliation rather than professional standards in the appointment of employees within the ministry (of course, not to generalize), which led to many cases of malfunction manifested over varied periods, in the appointment of inappropriate personnel to occupy sensitive positions, under many administrative titles similar in tasks and job descriptions, adversely affecting the quality of educational output.

•    When we began to draw and set our educational curricula (I say this arbitrarily), we overlooked the foundations, values, and basic pillars of the educational system as it is a guarantee for national security in any human community, as noted in the vision of the late educator Khalil Sakakini, which has been referred to above, represented in the role and function of the school, not as a breeding farm, but rather as an environment for social interaction, transferring from one head to all heads and from one house to all homes, in commitment to the principle of responsible partnership and ensuring freedom of thought and expression in the educational process through interactive learning among all members of the educational triangle.

•    The virus of "ego" seeped in as some began to exclude other Palestinians, believing that if they printed a book on the subject of the aforementioned meeting, and mandated students to purchase it, as it was a requirement for one of the graduate studies courses at a university, or that some think they possess the supremacy of knowledge after obtaining a doctorate or master's cardboard, without realizing that what exists in the field and what the difficult reality demands surpasses theoretical knowledge and memorizing outdated theories.

•    The absence of evaluation and the necessity of assessment is not only on the level of the official responsible body but also across all educational institutions regardless of their different designations and educational levels, evidenced by decades of meetings where we gather, not to improve but rather to lament and complain, often continuing the traditional theoretical role in alleged educational development. Here, it is necessary to point out a surprising event during that meeting, as one of those who spent more than two decades in a position of responsibility and decision-making, began to throw blame and unwarranted criticism at existing educational programs and methods, revealing himself as a distinguished expert and advisor. Here, one of the participants asked him, what were you doing during your official tenure? How many times did you practice the method of suppression and exclusion when a qualitative educational initiative reached you!!!

•    Unfortunately, due to several reasons, a trend of deepening alienation has taken root between some higher education institutions and the local community in which they operate, as evidenced by the rampant unemployment among graduates, and the acceptance of a neutral stance amid the ongoing battle represented in the pressures to "Westernize education in terms of excluding the foundations of sound education based on values and ethics, and importing knowledge and values foreign to the Palestinian reality." Everything mentioned has contributed to creating fertile ground for a copying and implementation approach without scrutinizing the extent to which this alternative aligns with our community's reality, and perhaps this explains the cases of alienation experienced by the student movement in the current educational institutions. These student movements that we have grown accustomed to leading the national endeavor, are not far removed from the early seventies and eighties of the last century, not to mention what we witness of competition through media among higher education institutions and the surplus of specializations in some universities situated in the same geographical area, as if this made university education in some of these universities a commodity more than a mission!!!

•    There is no doubt that the Ministry of Education and Higher Education is working, with all its capabilities and visions, to compensate students for the educational loss amid emergency conditions, through resorting to remote education. Here, we ask, have the teaching and administrative bodies been trained on how to manage the process of remote learning? Have we equipped them with the proposed educational means to maintain the highest possible level of the educational values we aspire to!! Why is there no coordination with the relevant ministries (culture, tourism, the Supreme Council for Youth, sports and youth, social development, women's affairs, etc., as well as popular frameworks and civil society institutions to engage in managing and implementing remote education, especially since this kind of education requires the necessary equipment and space in the home, not to mention the occasional need for parental availability in cases where the learner is newly introduced and in early childhood? If the coordination mentioned above is accomplished, we ensure not only compensating for a greater portion of the educational loss but also through the distribution of tasks and responsibilities, we can escape the circle of accusing "working to relieve obligation", and not leaving the learner a victim of the experiment after we have thrown him and the teacher into a tumultuous sea and asked them to learn to swim while they lack familiarity with the basics of swimming!!!  

•    As Sakakini mentioned in his vision, "other lessons", based on that, I suggest, not as a claim that there is negligence in the role of the official responsible bodies- but rather as an attempt to take into account individual differences (mental, emotional, economic, social, and psychological...), to propose the formation of working teams to prepare:

-    An operational guide for each educational subject containing activities and educational events that enhance self-learning and encourage creative thinking, as well as the commencement of offering a self-learning approach, not to mention the potential availability of practical opportunities to confront attempts to distort and misrepresent the current educational curriculum.

-    A guiding operational guide for the student and the guardian on how to employ their latent energies and time to invest every available opportunity to enhance self-esteem and reliance on oneself and raise the level of responsible partnership towards liberation from the detestable dependency that has become widespread in our community while we import everything from abroad, leaving the land invaded by pests and keeping ourselves as we have always been: acted upon rather than acting as we used to.

-    There must be a continuous effort to direct the compass of social media towards the commendable and not the reproachable.

-    We do not only wish but also demand the necessity of evaluating and assessing the role of the trade union frameworks for those working in education, as we are in a war whose primary goal is to eliminate our just cause, and consequently, we must adopt the principle of "to be or not to be" in this phase and the upcoming future.