I spent the first part of the morning yesterday meeting with the Director of English Instruction for Egypt with another participant in the Fulbright Seminar. We have the assistance of a professor for our curriculum projects, and she kindly made the connection with this woman.
The Ministry of Education at first glance looks like a white 19th century palace. To the right of the main building, we ascended the elevator with the director. We walked down a hallway toward her office where a sign on the wall proclaimed that all people are responsible for preserving Egypt’s heritage, not just the government. Her office was full of furntiture that didn’t match very well (reminding me of education offices in the US) and books that were piled high in stacks wherever there was room. She explained that she is responsible for reviewing and approving all materials used in English instruction for both government and private schools.
We discussed how Egypt is trying to train its children to be good citizens as well as how it is trying to prepare students with any kind of international curriculum. Egyptian students start studying English from first grade, and almost all the Egyptians I’ve come in contact with speak some amount of my native tongue. What they can’t say in English, they willingly manage to communicate through smiles and warmth, and I’m grateful and impressed by this.
It appears that there aren’t strong measures taken to teach students to be responsible to their community or schools, let alone the rest of the world. The odd thing is that Egyptians are so skilled at dealing with foreigners; maybe they don’t need an internationalized curriculum to teach them that.
The woman further explained the many challenges facing the education system. Sometimes classes are up to 70 students. Egypt has developed its own books with an international publisher for its own national English curriculum. We were given copies of the fourth grade books (books are supplied to students for free here at the government schools, and the majority of Egyptian attend them). Nonetheless, she explained that teachers are instructed in how to have students work in groups and how to do portfolio assessment instead of relying solely on written exams for grades.
Afterwards we continued with the group for a lecture about reform in the Egyptian education system. The Ministry of Education has written and distributed standards for learning, and they are now beginning a system of professional advancement with raises so that teachers no longer have to rely on tutoring to support their salaries, which are almost unlivable. They are rolling out these reforms this summer.
After lunch we visited a non-governmental organization called iEARN which connects children in over 100 countries to make the world a better place, primarily through the Internet. Children have then participated in international conferences and publications. The results are impressive, and we met some students who have been participating in the program in Egypt who explained that these projects have changed their lives and their sense of ability to respond to the world around them. Afterwards, I interviewed a government teacher for my project (I am trying to understand the Arab Israeli conflict from a teacher’s perspective here and in Israel and demonstrate similarities between them). She told me she teaches 40 students per class and was glad her numbers were so low and that she loves teaching. She was so warm and insightful. Afterwards I hailed a taxi to the hotel alone and took a quick swim to work through my thoughts and energy at the hotel. We followed up with a lecture about the nomadic bedouin peoples who used to live in Egypt (some remain, but very few).
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August 6th, 2007 at 2:32 am
On a recent business trip to Egypt in late May/early June, I was learned from a few of our distressed teachers that there was a new minister appointed to the department who has imposed stricter rules and Arabic-language testing, particularly for English-speaking/curriculum schools such as ours. Apparently these kind of schools are treated with an air of ’suspicion’ (or at least that is the perception of the teachers) by the Ministry and therefore a new intensive Arabic-language test was imposed mid-year, without time for teachers to plan accordingly. So, they were cramming with their students so that they could successfully pass the test over their weekend. These are students who will primarily go on to universities such as the American University – Cairo where all courses are taught in English. The teachers were lamenting that these new Arabic language requirements demonstrate more suspicion than they do the betterment of the students, not to mention an increasingly hectic workload for teachers.